Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a duck? No, but it might be bullying. Along with the current explosion of bullying awareness and information there appears to be more and more confusion about what it is and what it isn’t … exactly. Bullying seems to be a hot topic of conversation, casual and otherwise. It seems as though just about every behavior known is now somehow funneled into being labeled as “bullying.”

Don’t get me wrong. Bullying is serious epidemic not only here in the U.S. but internationally. It is a topic I take seriously both personally and professionally. I get around 30 to 100 “Google alerts” on bullying a day, which are helpful in keeping me abreast on the topic. Professionally, I am often asked to interpret and help schools and the workplace determine if incidents are truly bullying or “something else.” Personally my wife and I continuously work with our first-grade daughter on how to respond to issues like exclusion and name-calling. We want to make every situation and concern our daughter brings to us a teachable moment for her to learn and develop social skills that will equip her for a lifetime.

A good thing is that more research and educational approaches on the topic are emerging with specific strategies to help combat bullying. Most media attention on the topic is beneficial as well in creating helpful awareness and educating parents, students, teachers and employers. Celebrities including musical artists are speaking out and reaching out to make a difference. The recent release of “Bully” is an unprecedented documentary about the tragic effects. Gov. Kasich signed Ohio’s new anti-bullying law in January that is called the “Jessica Logan Act.” Even our very own Lucas County has launched a recent anti-bullying campaign initiated by University of Toledo professor Lisa Kovach.

Bullying at one time may have been a simple black-and-white issue, but the tsunami of electronic media used as a weapon to cyberbully, along with “anything goes” on TV, has created multiple shades of gray. Another downside of all of the attention given to bullying is possibly sensationalizing it and creating too much hype and excessive “media buzz.” A current concern is this plethora of information and visuals surrounding bullying will give youth numerous options and opportunities to carry out specific acts never before considered.

If a student rolls her eyes in the direction of another student is that bullying? If she decides to sit at lunch with a student other than her “best friend” is that bullying? If he tags another boy “it” too hard on the playground is that bullying? If he calls him a “moron” and smiles is that bullying? How about if he says it with an angry face? If a colleague “steals” an idea, is that bullying? At first blush most of us would say “no,” none of the above is bullying when the behavior is isolated or possibly inadvertent.

There are so many nuances to behaviors, intentions and subsequent reactions to pinpoint with 100 percent accuracy that every situation is unequivocally bullying. If all we have in our response quiver is a hammer then everything is going to look like a nail. Unfortunately almost total responsibility for determining bullying behavior by youth currently falls under the auspices of schools. Investigative procedures must be in place to explore any and all mitigating circumstances surrounding a reported behavior. This is wrought with potential backlash from parents and others because, unless one is trained in investigation, there is a great deal of subjectivity that could possibly contaminate important details in an attempt to make some kind of conclusive determination. Parents (and I am one), please work in alliance with schools on bullying and other concerns. Schools (and I consult for many of them), please do everything possible to bridge communication between the school and home.

The bottom line is bullying is a dynamic involving multiple “players.” It is not really an incident but rather a social contagion problem. Any bullying incident or behavior is usually a part of a pattern or culmination of incidents. If the behavior disrupts or inhibits student learning and/or safety or employee productivity and/or safety then it can be considered harassment, intimidation or bullying. An easy acronym that can be used to define bullying is RIP, which stands for repeated, intentional and power-based. These three key elements must be in focus when attempting to determine bullying.

This column is intended to be an interactive voice for our community to work together to find solutions to the bullying problem. Together we can create and promote civility and dignity for all together and renew our sense of pride in our schools, workplaces and community. I welcome your emails at: frank@peace2usolutions.com.

Frank A. DiLallo is an author, counselor and consultant specializing in the prevention of bullying. He is a graduate of the University of Toledo, a licensed professional counselor and holds numerous counseling certifications in Ohio. Frank is the prevention/intervention schools consultant for the Catholic Diocese of Toledo. For more information, visit his website, www.peace2usolutions.com.

Tags: "Bully", bullying, Frank DiLallo, identification, schools

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 6th, 2012 at 11:59 am and is filed under Bullying, Community, Education.
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I write with a heavy heart, following news of school violence at Chardon High School. Three students dead, two seriously wounded. Many more will undoubtedly suffer a long lasting aftermath from the horrible tragedy. I am deeply saddened about young lives never lived out. Our prayers go out to the families, Chardon High School and Chardon community.

The alleged gunman, T.J. Lane, 17, faces three counts of first-degree felony aggravated murder in the killings of three students and a first-degree felony for attempted aggravated murder for allegedly shooting and injuring two other students. Following the court hearing, prosecutor David Joyce reportedly said, “This is not about bullying. This is not about drugs. This is someone who is not well.” Could this possibly be true? A random shooting for no other reason than T.J. is “not well?” If true, it doesn’t fit the historical imprint on why youth shoot at school.

Frank DiLallo

Dr. Lisa Kovach, University of Toledo professor and author of “School Shootings and Suicides: Why We Must Stop the Bullies” argues, “While I can say that bullying wasn’t and isn’t the only factor, it is the one key factor present in all previously similar shootings. The FBI and Secret Service, shortly after Columbine, described family, social and school dynamics present in all (U.S.) school shooters. I think we’d like to sleep better at night, thinking he was deranged and this was random, but I beg to differ.”

Family dynamic

T.J. Lane has had a troubled family life. His mother and father never married and each had domestic assault charges filed against the other during their relationship. The father was involved with several assault altercations over the years and spent seven months in prison for felonious assault. In 2009, T.J. himself was charged and pled true (guilty) to assault. T.J.’s maternal grandparents were legal guardians at the time of the shooting. It seems obvious T.J. was not coping with family dysfunction and is a victim turned offender.

Social dynamic

There is no typical profile of a shooter, but T.J. seemed to fit some of the indicators: quiet, “Goth” (outcast), few friends, and access to firearms. The shooting was not impulsive, but premeditated and talked about on Twitter and text messaging, also consistent with previous school shootings. Others knew, but ignored or minimized the seriousness of the message.

School dynamic

Dr. Kovach explains, “While we’re told that these particular students didn’t bully him, I wonder if others did. The location — a school — speaks volumes. He didn’t choose a mall, grocery store, or random restaurant.” Something drove T.J. Lane to shoot students at Chardon High School. Something blinded him from seeing any other options. Even if not bullying, is it doubtful T.J. Lane was a rebel without a cause. Dr. Kovach explains, “The Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis states one can only take a certain amount of repeatedly frustrating experiences, e.g., family violence, inequities, bullying/rejection, before one lashes out.”

Even knowing with certainty all the mitigating circumstances, it could never take away the pain or the fact that three innocent youth are dead — a grave injustice and another school shooting added to a growing list. No school, workplace or community can afford to deny the ever-present potential danger that this can happen anywhere at any time. We must listen and be vigilant!

Dr. Kovach makes a strong plea. “If we don’t work together as parents, educators and law enforcement, we will continue to see such tragedies in our country. Children are dying needlessly because we aren’t doing all that we can in terms of prevention. Chardon resulted in the deaths of individuals who could have had bright futures. We must learn from this and past school shootings and work fast and furiously on prevention.”

Most of the pain suffered from bullying is often felt in silence. Do not remain silent! Break the silence by sharing your truth, your stories and speaking out to stop bullying and violence in our community. In the Feb. 16 article titled “From Bully to Activist,” Sarah Ottney wrote about my story. I took a risk with the community to share my story, hoping to inspire others to do the same. I invite you to email me your story so that together we can use this column as a forum to learn from each other and speak out about the injustices of bullying. We must work together to keep our children, places of work and community safe. Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect without exception, without exemption! There is no greater investment we can make now and for our future.

Frank is a Prevention/Intervention Schools Consultant with the Diocese of Toledo and author of “Peace2U: Three Phase Bullying Solution” and co-author of “Peace Be With You: Christ-Centered Bullying Solution.” Please visit www.peace2usolutions.com or email Frank at frank@peace2usolutions.com.

Tags: bullying, Chardon High School, Frank DiLallo, school shootings, T.J. Lane

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 31st, 2012 at 10:39 am and is filed under Community, Education.
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Three boys are in a middle-school restroom. One stands in a corner egging on his friend to hit the third boy. The friend does it. He hits the boy over and over and over, because he can. Afterward, they all go back to class and never speak of it again.

Licensed professional counselor Frank DiLallo has made it his life’s work to prevent and repair the effects of bullying in schools and workplaces across the country.

One of the reasons he is so passionate about the issue is because he regrets his own bullying behavior in school. The boy doing the hitting in the restroom was DiLallo.

Positive ripple

“One of the reasons I do this is not only professional but also personal, because of my own history with this,” DiLallo said. “I want to make a positive ripple because, as I look back, there are some things I did that had some serious negative implications and was a negative ripple in the world and that’s not the kind of world I want to create.”

DiLallo grew up in a blue-collar Youngstown, Ohio, neighborhood. A gifted athlete, he was a basketball star as well as member of the baseball and track teams. By high school, most of his aggression was channeled into sports, but it took years before he connected his behavior in grade and middle school with bullying.

The realization came at a professional training seminar when he heard the song “Howard Gray,” the true story of singer-songwriter Lee Domann’s remorse over laughing at a junior high classmate.

“It actually touched me to the core. I cried, it hit me that deeply,” DiLallo said. “I realized I had treated some people in a really hard, demeaning and calloused way without giving it a second thought how they may have felt and what the implications are five, 10, 15, 20, 40 years down the road. There are huge implications.”

Frank DiLallo

DiLallo was later inspired to pen “Code of Silence,” a poem about the restroom bullying incident.

DiLallo, who now lives in Sylvania, earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Adrian College. He went on to earn a master’s degree in education in guidance and counseling from the University of Toledo.

For more than a decade, DiLallo has served as the prevention/intervention schools consultant for the Catholic Diocese of Toledo, covering the 19 Northwest Ohio counties the diocese serves. He also regularly speaks at conferences and schools across the country.

World opened up

Before the diocese, DiLallo worked as a counselor at Toledo’s Central Catholic High School, which changed the course of his professional work.

“My whole world opened up,” DiLallo said. “Not only did I feel like I had something to offer, but it had a huge healing peace to offer me. I was working with teens and in my working with them they were simultaneously healing me because I was just seeing how incredible they are. All they want is to be noticed and appreciated, like we all do.”

Working in schools was the last thing DiLallo expected. For years, he avoided the school environment, working in agencies and private practices.

“Isn’t it funny how that works? I never ever saw myself in schools. I hated school growing up. I hated being there. I know that word is strong, but I just I didn’t like it,” DiLallo said. “The only thing that really kept me going was basketball; I knew I needed to get the grades in order to play.”

DiLallo, who will write a regular column about bullying for Toledo Free Press, was inspired to develop his own bullying prevention curriculum after researching existing models and not finding one that matched his vision and experience.

“I wasn’t too impressed with the how-to,” DiLallo said. “It was good information about what bullying is, but what do you do with it once you identify it?”

He co-authored “Peace Be With You: Christ-Centered Bullying Solution,” the only Scripture-based bullying prevention curriculum he knows of. A secular version called “Peace2U: Three-Phase Bullying Solution” followed. DiLallo, who has four children, is now writing a book for parents.

“Students aren’t going to come up to us and say ‘I’ve really got a problem and I need some help with it,’” DiLallo said. “It doesn’t happen that way. It happens in code and that code is their behaviors. Their behaviors are red flags that alert us to things going on they are having trouble coping with and we need to see those red flags as such.”

One important part of any bullying prevention model is increasing people’s sensitivity to the problem, DiLallo said.

“It increases their empathy in helping them understand everything they say and everything they do has impact, not only on others, but on themselves, short-term and long-term,” DiLallo said. “That’s not something I realized until many, many, many years down the road.”

Increased empathy is especially important as technology and social media offer new opportunities for bullying, DiLallo said.

“We like to think we are communicating more and connecting more with people, but it’s in a depersonalized way,” DiLallo said. “I can click and not think about it, because I’m not looking in your eyes, not seeing your expression, not seeing the pain or sadness on your face. We’re living in this high-tech, low-empathy world where we are less compassionate with others because we’re not making human connection.”

DiLallo’s curriculum, which targets grades four through eight, has been used in more than 60 schools in Ohio and Michigan, mostly Catholic schools.

The first phase focuses on leadership and helping students understand social responsibility.

In the second phase, which focuses on interpersonal skills, students are invited to share how they’ve been wronged or wronged others and to reconcile by working through an innovative conflict resolution process DiLallo calls Clear Talk.

“This is what sets my model apart from anything I’ve studied and seen out there,” DiLallo said.

The third phase, focusing on intrapersonal skills, works to further build personal abilities to combat bullying behavior.

“Bullying is happening in so many different ways,” DiLallo said. “It’s a huge social contagion and what I’m attempting to do in the three-phase model is to shift that contagion to a more positive contagion, empowering students to see there’s a grander scheme of things and that you are really selling yourself short and you’re cheating others by treating them this way.”

DiLallo intends his Toledo Free Press column to provide the opportunity to ask questions and share concerns and stories about bullying.

“Our stories, past and present, make us who we are,” DiLallo said. “Sharing our stories is what makes us a community. This anonymous format will respectfully help us all to learn from each other and be comforted in the knowledge that we share similar concerns surrounding bullying — making this truly a shared community experience.”

Although DiLallo frequently works with students, his methods are also effective in workplace situations.

“Bullying is bullying,” DiLallo said. “It’s something that flies under the radar in a lot of ways and when it comes out it can be very startling for an employer just like it can be for a principal who may not be aware of it until long after the fact. So it’s really important that employers, just like principals, really have a pulse on their personnel and on what’s going on.”

Bullying can also come from authority figures.

“There’s a lot more talk about bully teachers, bully parents, bully bosses,” DiLallo said. “They have an approach that is disempowering and disenfranchising, not a way that helps motivate people. It’s a shaming approach, which reduces productivity. All three of those create an unsafe environment that is not conducive to our personal best.

“That’s not fair to those students just like it’s not fair to the workers who have a lot of gifts to offer the workplace,” DiLallo said. “If the social environment is so negative and so threatening, intimidating, demeaning, demoralizing, it’s hard to access my gifts and be all I’m intended to be. That environment has to shift that social contagion to a positive one, a culture of kindness if you will. A culture of honoring each other’s gifts and talents and respecting each other, seeing the dignity, worth and value in every student, in every employee. If we don’t, our culture will continue to decline.”

For more information, visit www.peace2usolutions.com.

Tags: bullying, Frank DiLallo

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 16th, 2012 at 6:15 pm and is filed under Community, Education, Featured.
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