Yesterday, the President and First Lady held a conference at the White House to highlight the epidemic of bullying in our children's schools. Also, a statement was released by them and aired on GMA yesterday morning.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-house-turns-attention-bullying/story?id=13097724
GMA put out a short followup segment this morning about bullying and highlighted some of the difficulties that parents face when their child or children are bullied.
Bullying has been a topic that has been recognized and discussed by other administrations throughout the last few Presidencies. The media has really picked up on this important topic but this has only happened after teens have gotten to the point where they take their own lives because they cannot deal with the pressures.
From my perspective, raising awareness has certainly been beneficial but it also seems that few to no changes have been made to really deal with bullies. The legislation has been slow to make it through the system and appropriate penalties for bullying are only recently starting to be enforced and be taken seriously. To me, the fog-bank of excuses like 'kids will be kids' shows me that we are still not really meeting the need of our children and the ones who we trust with their daily care in our school systems are not ready to approach this topic and deal with it appropriately.
Thanks GMA/Mr. & Mrs. Obama for your efforts but let's quit just talking about how to avoid bullies and actually DO something about the bullies.
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