David : A lesson handling bullying

David is my Humble Hero for today. David was a bright but pale seven year old boy who was being teased relentlessly by the older boys in the school.

David’s father was the local baker so, because of his pallor and his dad’s job, they nicknamed him “dough boy”.

David hated it, so much so that he ran away from school and tried to self-harm. When he came into the clinic I let him hang on to Twitch, the frustrated worrywoo.

We read the story of Twitch and all the things that frustrated him and made him angry. I used the worry bug and renamed it the Put-down bug that kept telling him he was useless, a loser, had no friends, Nigel nobody, and all the other hurtful words.

I explained that what was happening was that in his brain he has a ‘FEELING GATE”. Every message he hears has to pass through this feeling gate on its way to the brain – if the message was hurtful then the feeling gate (aka the amygdala) would take over, the brain would cut out, and he would be at the mercy of his anger.

So we decided that we would get clever and keep his mind on the job, not let feelings reign. I used the analogy of the submarine hatch; when he came under fire, he would close down the feeling gate like the hatch on the submarine and let all the hurtful words go to the counting part of the brain as it had no feelings.

Now to make sure he kept his mind (not his feelings) on the job, he had to go near the teasers, say hi so they saw him and he would count the number of put-downs they tried.

To make sure he could cope we practiced it all in the clinic - with me calling him all the horrible names that he had mentioned.

If he cried or laughed, that meant he was feeling the words not counting them so we would try again. We would keep doing this exercise until he was totally focusing on the score not the sore.

Then armed with Twitch and his newly found mind muscle David was set for the next day. If the stirrers tried to put him down, he could say “thank you” or ”have you got any new ones” but he was to count the words not feel them.

At the end of each day, when he got home, he had to write his score for the day on the kitchen calendar. I promised him that if he kept his mind on the score rather than feel the hurt, his score would drop to near zero within two weeks.

David now had mind muscle and mental power, he wasn’t at the mercy of the Put-down bug any more!

Kids need gimmicks or concrete strategies; adult words and abstract feelings just don’t work at that age.

It proved a total success; David outsmarted them so they left him alone, in fact one of them became his older buddy.

It just reminded me of the power of the mind – if kids can be mentally armed then they’re ready for the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

I lost a Twitch in the process of this exercise because David had grown attached but what we won would hopefully last him a lifetime.