Anti-Bullying Blog Week(Final Post) - Wrap-up and Cyber-bullying Advice!

Anti-Bullying Blog Week is coming to an end - and despite being incredibly busy for me, it has gone really fast. It's been so humbling to see all your comments and you've had me just sitting reading my Twitter/Blog or Email smiling, or sobbing over some of your own experiences when you shared them last Wednesday. Also, a lot of other people have got involved and I've heard about everything from a library display based on Andy Robb's 'Coke Bottle Theory' - in which I've also heard whisperings of an assembly based off it; as well as Kate Maryon organising a short-film inspired by the week, which I am unbelievably excited about! I'm hoping to do a lot more to be an advocate for anti-bullying in the future!

 

 

 

Now time for me to thank everyone who has gotten involved! Siobhan Curham, Andy Robb, Natasha Ngan, Sharon Sant, Emma Pass, Cathy Cassidy and Jackie Buckle for offering your advice, support and general-awesomeness throughout the planning of ABBW and this whole week. I feel completely overwhelmed to have had you all involved. My fellow-bloggers - you have been amazing! I can't thank you enough for posting your 'Bloggers on Bullying: My Experience' posts and sending me tweets like Hawwa did saying, 'You just made my cry' and worrying me sick; when all I did was go to check my phone while I was out! Some of the stories I have read about your own experiences have really shocked me - you are inspiring! I mean, all I want to do is make sure nobody as nice as you are made to go through what you experienced again.

 

Guest Post by Jackie Buckle!

 

Hi, my name’s Jackie and I’m the author of Half my Facebook Friends are Ferrets; which is due out in January.

 

Back in the old days... 

 

It’s a long time since my school days so although I remember a bit of bullying, I have thankfully blocked out most of the details. I do remember that it mainly had to do with my spiky white hair, safety pin earrings and lashings of black eye-liner! Yes, this was the 80’s and I was a non-conforming punk. Not conforming can get you into trouble at school. It can get you into trouble with teachers who insist that pink PVC trousers are not part of the school uniform and it can get you into trouble with some of the kids, in particular the non-imaginative ones that like everyone to be the same as them – the bullies. 

 

So what’s changed? 

 

Move ahead thirty years and it seems that bullies are still as prevalent as ever and I guess it’s a fact of life that they will always exist. Now, though, there is a new way to spread the misery. Now we have cyber bullying. 

 

Cyber-bullying can be just as destructive and upsetting as bullying face to face. In some ways it’s worse as it follows you home from school and even into the sanctity of your own bedroom. It affects adults as well as children and because people can be anonymous online they can often say far more hurtful things than they would ever say to your face.  

 

A few years ago I noticed one of my daughters seemed very quiet and depressed. She was about fourteen at the time and in her second year of Secondary School. I often asked her what was wrong but she always said she was fine and for a while she did appear to be happier. Then, washing her jeans one day I found a folded up piece of paper in one of the pockets. The paper was a printout of an MSN conversation and here’s a snippet: 

 

Daughter: I don’t understand why we can’t be friends anymore? 

Other person: Because you’re stupid. I hate you. I never liked you. 

Daughter: I still don’t understand. Can you just tell me what’s changed? 

Other person: Shut up. Just leave it. I don’t like you – get it! 

 

The MSN conversation wasn’t the only thing. There were also nasty comments and pictures posted to her Facebook wall - the usual things like, you’re stupid etc. As mentioned before, bullies aren’t the most imaginative people around. 

 

So what did we do? Perhaps the only good thing about cyber bullying is that it provides you with physical evidence of the abuse. We printed out more of the conversations and confronted the bullies. I’m not saying this is always the best thing to do but in our case it worked. Tears were shed on all sides, apologies were said over and over and never once in all the intervening years have any of the girls involved ever bullied my daughter since. In fact they became firm friends. 

 

So, as much as most of us love social media, it does have its downside. Even without bullying, reading about other people’s “amazing lives” can make you feel down about your own. In my latest book my main character Josh says: 

 

“I haven’t been on Facebook for a while as I was finding it a bit depressing. Everyone is always posting amazingly attractive pictures of themselves in amazingly sexy / macho poses at amazing parties where they are the absolute centre of attention and everyone is having an amazingly epic time.” 

 

I guess we have to remember that our lives on social media aren’t necessarily representative of our real lives. The hurt people can feel through bullying online is all too real though.  

 

At least there is help available now. If you are getting bullied please don’t suffer alone. Childline have a helpline you can CALL.

 

Earlier I said that there will probably always be bullies. I think that’s true but what can change is society’s attitudes to bullying. I think there is already less acceptance of it. People don’t tend to say “It’ll make you a stronger person,” anymore, as they did when I was a kid. We still have a long way to go, but we are getting there slowly. 

 

Take care, Jackie X

Follow on Twitter: @Jackie_Buckle 

Anti-Bullying Blog Week(Day 7): Author Advice with Emma Pass

This is my second post of today; and, also my second Author Advice post. You can check out the first one, where Natasha Ngan, Sharon Sant and Cathy Cassidy all share their experiences of bullying and offer their advice, HERE.

 

Emma Pass' story is one I found so inspirational; I hope you do to.

 

 

 

 

Hi! My name's Emma Pass. I'm based in the North East Midlands, UK, and I write dark, gritty fiction for teens. My debut novel, ACID, a dystopian thriller about a girl on the run from a sinister police force, came out in April this year, and is going to be published in the US next year. I've also just found out it's been nominated for the Carnegie Medal – how insanely exciting is that?! And as if that wasn't enough, I've got another book, THE FEARLESS, coming out next year. I've wanted to be a published author since I was thirteen years old and wrote my first novel in maths lessons, with my notebook hidden under my work. I'm rubbish at maths now… but that’s what calculators are for, right?!  

 

 

When I was a kid, my home life was idyllic. I grew up at an environmental studies centre which was surrounded by countryside, and spent most of my childhood (when I didn't have my nose in a book) roaming through the fields and woods. School was a different matter. I was born prematurely, and as a result, suffer from very mild cerebal palsy. I'm incredibly lucky because it only affects my left foot, but when I was younger I had to have regular operations and wear a leg brace. This made me a target for bullies, not helped by the fact that I was bookish and introverted and interested in stuff that wasn't 'cool'. I got very good at hiding how bad the bullying made me feel, but inside, I was terribly ashamed. What's wrong with me? I remember thinking. Why does no one like me? And because I was so ashamed, and so certain that I deserved this – I didn't tell anyone. Not my parents; not my teachers. No one. The bullying followed me from middle school to secondary school, slowly but surely eroding my self-confidence to nothing. The only refuge I had was words, and I put them up around myself like a wall, dreaming of the day I'd escape. 

 

That day, aged 18, was one of the happiest of my life. Although the after-effects of the bullying took a long time to disappear, I got into art college and finally began to feel comfortable in my own skin. I also became more determined than ever to pursue my ambition to get published. I don't feel angry or bitter towards the people who bullied me; my only regret is that I can't go back and tell my younger self that there was nothing wrong with her, that she shouldn't feel ashamed, and that she should tell someone what was going on instead of suffering in silence for so many years. 

 

Website | Blog | Twitter

Anti-Bullying Blog Week(Day 4) - Author Advice

 

 I can't quite believe we're on Day 4 already! That means we're already over-halfway through the week, and the respond has been fantastic! Today, it's the first group of authors offering their advice to people who are being bullied. Thank you to Natasha, Sharon and Cathy; your stories are really inspiring and thank you for sharing them with us, despite being so personal!

Natasha Ngan

I'm Natasha, a 23 year-old half-Chinese, half-English girl who still spends most of her time the way she did as a child - in her imagination! (And now she talks in third-person because she's so used to writing it ...) My debut YA novel The Elites, a futuristic YA adventure set in a multicultural city whose residents are streamed into jobs and social classes according to their DNA, came out in September from Hot Key Books. A second standalone novel, The Memory Keepers, comes out next year with them too. Follow my publishing journey and read about my thoughts on writing over at my author blog! Outside of writing, I love food, travelling, spending time with friends and family, long walks and lazy days spent curled in bed with a book. I also run a fashion and photography blog with my boyfriend! Come say hi to me on Twitter :)  

I was bullied at school in a way I didn't recognise clearly at the time as bullying, since it came from people I trusted and liked - my friends. Sadly, I think this type of bullying is far more common that we realise. It's often easiest to hurt the people you know best. I shared something personal with a couple of my closest friends, hoping for their advice and understanding. I was 15. No matter how mature I felt at the time, looking back I can see just how young and naive I was. I wasn't perfect, and I did something I'm not proud of, but I thought my friends would help. Instead, one of them told a few others at the school, and the news travelled from there. No one asked for my own explanation, and the rumours blew what happened vastly out of proportion. Many of my friends started ignoring me or saying things about me when I was nearby loudly enough for me to hear. It went on for what felt like months (maybe it was). The worst thing was, I blamed myself entirely for what happened, because these were my friends - surely they'd only turn on me if I was the horrible one? 

 

It took a long time for me to get over what happened. I tried staying friends with the two girls I had initially told my 'secret' to, but there was just something broken between us. Eventually, I moved on, spending my free time at school either studying (lots and lots, which I guess helped me - I ended up going to Cambridge University to study my degree) or hanging out with a lovely new group of girls who already had their clique but welcomed me so warmly, and I'm still friends with some of them today. Handling bullying at school is hard. I wish I could go back and talk to my younger self - tell her it's alright, that school is temporary, that these people aren't the only people in the world. That soon I'll grow and mature, and find my own peace with what happened. Because I have done. I have found true friends, I had a wonderful experience at university, and am now working on things I truly believe in and love. But most of all, I have learnt to forgive myself. We are all human. We all make mistakes. But real friends are the ones who will help us learn from them and better ourselves, to move on positively from our wrongs into a brighter future. 

Sharon Sant

Hi there!  

 

 

I’m Sharon Sant. I live in Staffordshire with my family and I write young adult fantasy and paranormal books, including the Sky Song trilogy, Runners and The Memory Game. You can check out my blog at www.sharonsant.com or I’m always on Twitter for a chat @sharonsant.  I come from a big, working class family with four kids and we never had much money. That meant that we often had to wear hand-me-down clothes or stuff from jumble sales, and that our house was pretty ramshackle. Surprisingly, although I did get picked on at school for being poor (and also for being the shortest kid in the class and for my mum being just a little bit eccentric!) when I look back on it now, I don’t feel like I was particularly bullied. Instead, today I want to talk about my best friend, who did get bullied, and why I wish I had dealt with her bullying differently.   

 

In my book, The Memory Game, David joins in his friend’s bullying of unpopular girl, Bethany. But David really only does this because he’s so afraid of being bullied himself if he goes against his friend. I wrote David that way, because that’s sort of how I dealt with my friend’s bullying problems. I didn’t actively participate, but I’m ashamed to say that I stood by and did nothing to help her and that is just as bad. Sure, I comforted her when we were in private, and I felt incredibly sorry for her, but when we were out together and it started, I didn’t intervene. I was so close to being a target myself because of my family and home life that I was terrified if I did step in, I would become the bullied kid instead.  

 

I’m so lucky that my friend is a gorgeous and forgiving person and, even years later, we’re still best friends.  We still talk about the bullying too, and I know that it still hurts her all these years later, but she understands why I behaved the way I did. If anything, I think that the way I behaved when we were teenagers ultimately damaged me more than her, because I have to carry the guilt of letting her suffer. And out of the two of us, she’s actually become more successful – she has an incredible job as a radiographer and a degree in fine art. She’s funny, popular and interesting and totally together as a person.  So I suppose this post is more about standing up to bullies on behalf of someone else. You can save someone a lot of heartache with a few brave words. You can save yourself a lot of heartache too. You just have to do the right thing.

Cathy Cassidy

 

Hi... I'm Cathy Cassidy and I write books for preteens and young teens. My current series is the Chocolate Box Girls, but some of my stand-alone books deal with quite hard-hitting themes. I've written about bullying a few times, in Driftwood, Angel Cake and Gingersnaps. You can find me here...www.cathycassidy.com 

or 

https://www.facebook.com/cathycassidyauthor  

or 

instagram @cathycassidy 

or 

on twitter... @cathycassidyxx 

  

I'm lucky because I have never had to handle full-on bullying, just teasing. I was picked on for being very tall - at age 11 I was 5'8" and towered above my school friends... and most of the teachers! Luckily, this meant that few people took the teasing any further - bullies tend to be cowards, and look for someone vulnerable, so my height probably saved me when I think about it! Later, as an art teacher in both secondary and primary schools, I saw just how damaging bullying could be; and my job as a teen mag agony aunt for twelve years showed me how many kids were affected by this. I feel very strongly that bullying should never be acceptable... and that every child - and adult - has the right to work without being harassed and tormented. I've written about the subject several times because I want kids to think about how it feels to be on the receiving end... and to care enough to want to change things. 

 

I've thought about what makes someone a bully, and I believe that bullies are insecure and unhappy. They look for power by making others feel small, but ultimately they hurt themselves too... they need help just as much as their victims. Not all bullies can change, but some can - I wrote a short story about a girl called Lily, the bully from my book Angel Cake, which shows why she treats others so badly. It's a sad story, alas! Sometimes, my book events take the form of Friendship Festivals which encourage others to celebrate friendship and make new friends, and the Friendship Charter on my website asks readers to report and challenge bullies whenever they can. 

Keep reading, keep smiling… and follow your dreams! 

Best Wishes,  Cathy Cassidy x