Bullying is endemic to our schools and schools around the world. It seems as if there have always been and will always be kids who get a charge out of pushing around other little dudes. Basically, what we’re seeing is a lack of empathy.

Empathy is defined as the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of [...]]]> by Richard

Bullying is endemic to our schools and schools around the world. It seems as if there have always been and will always be kids who get a charge out of pushing around other little dudes. Basically, what we’re seeing is a lack of empathy.

Empathy is defined as the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. Basically what that means is that we can see things from the point of view of another person and, for the most part, get a rough idea of what it feels like to be that other person in certain circumstances.

Say, for instance, that you’re watching ESPN and the channel shows the on-field football injury to Joe Theisman’s leg. (I’m putting the link to that here for those of you who haven’t experienced it, but I’m warning you, this is difficult-to-watch stuff. I, for one, refuse to watch it. I accidentally saw it the first time it happened, but never again.) You aren’t going to laugh. You’re going to feel his emotional pain. You might wince and mouth an obscenity. You know he’s hurting and you have some idea of what it’s like.

You’re seeing things from his perspective. That, dudes, is empathy.

And that is precisely what we think that bullies lack. They can’t put themselves in the place of those they bully. To a bully, everyone else is just window dressing, no more important a cardboard cut out of a person.

Without empathy, we would have no cohesive society, no trust and no reason not to murder, cheat, steal or lie. At best, we would act only out of self-interest; at worst, we would be a collection of sociopaths.

Although human nature has historically been seen as essentially selfish, recent science suggests that it is not. The capacity for empathy is believed to be innate in most humans, as well as some other species — chimps, for instance, will protest the unfair treatment of others, refusing to accept a treat they have rightfully earned if another chimp doing the same work fails to get the same reward.

Nearly 90 percent of brain growth takes place in a little dude’s first five years. And kids who have been exposed to violence, traumatized or neglected are going to grow up with the expectation that violence solves problems. They believe they can make their lives best by exercising power over other people. But there are ways to work around this scrambling up of our innate tendency toward empathy.

Start by teaching children to understand their own behavior and feelings — it provides the basic tools for understanding the behavior and feelings of others. For instance, when dealing with a child who has hurt another person, help him or her “anchor how they felt in the moment,” says Mary Gordon, founder of Roots of Empathy, a school-based program designed to foster compassion. “We always think we should start with, ‘How do you think so-and-so felt?’ But you will be more successful if you start with, ‘You must have felt very upset.’ The trick is to help children describe how they felt, so that the next time this happens, they’ve got language. Now they can say, ‘I’m feeling like I did when I bit Johnny.’ “

But just understanding suffering alone doesn’t teach empathy. The problem is that little dudes who are exposed to violence in their formative years learn the wrong lessons. They learn that violence is the way to deal with emotions like anger and fear or to assert power.

Research shows that simple exposure to other kinds of people in a friendly setting can increase your empathy toward them. That seems like something we can start to do in our own homes, expose little dudes and dudettes to love and encouragement, show them that real adults don’t always scream and hit. Seems simple, no. But it’s going to be hard work, so let’s get to it.

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I think the thing I get the most kick out of during Christmas is watching my family rip off wrapping paper, confetti filling the air, and start squealing (and, yes, George of the Jungle and Zippy the Monkey Boy and Speed Racer all do squeal on occasion. But, they insist, only on occasion) for joy [...]]]> by Richard

I think the thing I get the most kick out of during Christmas is watching my family rip off wrapping paper, confetti filling the air, and start squealing (and, yes, George of the Jungle and Zippy the Monkey Boy and Speed Racer all do squeal on occasion. But, they insist, only on occasion) for joy over what is inside. It’s great. It’s really wonderful.

It almost makes up for the hours and hours of backbreaking, bent-over, late-night heck I’ve gone through to wrap the silly presents. I’m not even going to talk about the clues I’ve written on the stickers that get ruined by Google. No, I’m all about reducing stress this year. Still, even though it seriously cuts down on my anything else time, presents have to be wrapped. Sort of.

First I need to make something clear. I never learned how to wrap. No one ever took me by the hand, or ear for that matter, and explained the intricate, arcane secrets that go into wrapping a present well. All I got were stolen looks over the shoulders of various folks who were wrapping presents for me. I quickly got shooed out of the room and didn’t really see much of the process in any case.

For the most part, my wrapping in years past looked like the random result of a drunken chimpanzee at the tail end of a three-week bender who’s been locked into a small room with a lot of boxes, enough wrapping paper to encircle the house and enough tape to fix a rip in King Kong’s pants. Things get wrapped, yeah, but it isn’t pretty. Not by a long shot.

As the years went on, though, I have gotten better. Slowly. Painfully. Which means that, now that I know (sort of) how to do it, things take a little longer and I actually take a rather perverse sense of pride in getting well-wrapped presents under the tree. Which, again, leads to a dearth of anything else time as we stumble into the season.

Well, last year, I found my salvation. Bags, dudes, bags. I love those things.

You can get present bags in all sizes and shapes. It’s wonderful. Buy a couple dozen bags, drop in the gifts, cram in some colored tissue paper (not, I hasten to add, the sort you sneeze into. I know this from experience.), tape the top shut to keep out prying fingers and eyes and you’re good to go. Just drop those puppies under the tree and you’re done. It’s easy. It’s quick. And you still get confetti filling the air, even if you have to rip up some of it yourself. And, best of all, if the present is in a bag, the little dudes won’t know from the shape of the wrapping what’s inside.

Win, win. So get to it. Tomorrow, trick number 3.

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Okay, so it wasn’t exactly Thunderdome, but today I saw the greatest example of animal on animal violence that I’ve ever witnessed.

In case you missed the memo, we’ve adopted a labrador/pit bull/cow/beaver mix into the family. He’s about 40 lbs, 15 months and as hyperactive as a methed-out chimp pulling an all-nighter while hopped up [...]]]> by Richard

Okay, so it wasn’t exactly Thunderdome, but today I saw the greatest example of animal on animal violence that I’ve ever witnessed.

In case you missed the memo, we’ve adopted a labrador/pit bull/cow/beaver mix into the family. He’s about 40 lbs, 15 months and as hyperactive as a methed-out chimp pulling an all-nighter while hopped up on an eightball and chasing it with No-Doze by the package. So, you know, not really very sedate.

So. Anyway. I was walking Buzz this morning. We’ve got a great open field near our house where there was supposed to be a housing development. Recession, depression, etc. etc. No housing development, but plenty of open grass.

I’ll take Buzz down there of a morning, settle down on one of the brick walls out there and then let him off the leash for about 30 minutes of running like his tail was on fire. This morning I went there with Buzz, settled down and then let Buzz off the leash. What I didn’t notice and what Buzz didn’t notice was that — at some point — about 40 Canada geese had landed in the open grass about 100 yards away.

While we hadn’t noticed it before, as soon as Buzz took off. . . Well, let’s just say he noticed and he noticed hard. He picked up his speed even more, actually leaving trails of dust behind, and rushed the geese. Of course, they saw him coming, but they waited until the last minute before they took to the air. And they did so in all directions.

Buzz was paralyzed by a plethora of possibilities. Eventually he picked a couple of geese and set off after them. They landed about 10 yards from him. He closed in. They took off for about 15 yards and landed. Buzz was after them again. They kept teasing the poor dog for what seemed like hours, but probably wasn’t more than a couple of minutes.

When, eventually, they all finally took off for good, poor Buzz was so worn out he could barely move. I was actually able to get a good look at him, now that he wasn’t vibrating so fast he was in danger of going to a parallel universe.

Hmph. Well, I thought it was funny, dude.

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