Can We Create a World Without Bullies?

Imagine if bullies never learned how to bully and no kid was ever tormented.
It's kind of hard to imagine because mean people are everywhere. We experience them throughout the course of our lives.

Dealing with bullies and other obnoxious people is a basic life skill. Unfortunately, most of us aren't taught how to deal with mean people effectively. We just muddle our way through hoping for the best and always falling short.
The good news is that no one has to live that way. You can learn how to deal with mean people effectively.

And once you do it will give you the confidence to handle even the most difficult of situations.
The first skill is to learn to find compassion for mean people.

Mean people aren't happy.

They are venting their unhappiness on others.
You didn't do anything wrong.

You simply interacted with an unhappy person.
Compassion allows you to emotionally distance yourself from the anger of the other person.
When you find compassion, you will feel more sad than bad.

The second skill to learn is how to ignore an obnoxious person who is doing everything they can to bait you into responding.
They want you to get mad with them.

They want to make you upset.

The only way to get them to leave you alone is to ignore them and act as if whatever they just did wasn't obnoxious and rude at all.
The good news is that compassion makes it easier and practicing it really does allow you to respond the way you would like more automatically. As parents we have an obligation to teach these skills to our kids. The sooner they learn them, the better.

Imagine if no child was ever bullied because they were taught how to get bullies to leave them alone.

No child would ever grow up to become a bully. If we start now, imagine what our society will be like when this generation of children grows up! We can create a world without bullies. We just need to proactively and explicitly teach children these essential life skills instead of hoping they figure it out on their own.
To do this we can't just tell our kids to stand up for themselves or be confident. That is a lot like throwing a kid into the deep end of the pool and telling them to swim. It is much better if we teach them the actual pragmatic skills they need. When it comes to dealing with bullies we need to teach kids exactly what to say and how to say it.

Then we need to make them practice it until the words come easily.
They also need to be taught where to look and how to stand to project confidence even if they aren't feeling it.
These skills are simple enough that they can be taught to a kindergartner.
They just need to be taught explicitly instead of hoping kids figure it out on their own.