Articles by Izzy
The Tragic Demise of the “Sticks and Stones” Slogan
Do you know what it’s like to be the victim of relentless teasing? It can literally ruin your life. If all the kids around you keep on making fun of you no matter how hard you try to stop them, and no matter how hard the school tries to stop them, it completely destroys your self-confidence and self-esteem. The popular kids don’t want to be caught dead talking to you. You become anxious and depressed. You become angry and full of desire for revenge. Most of the kids who committed random school shootings were victims of relentless teasing. Being a victim of relentless teasing is a major factor in teen suicide. It can affect your personality development for the rest of your life. Many adults with social and emotional problems were victims of relentless teasing when they were kids.
While the modern world is obsessed with stopping “bullying”, at least 90% of what we call “bullying” is actually name-calling, and the majority of physical fights begin with verbal insults. If you know how to handle teasing, your bullying problem is essentially solved.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me.” This wonderful slogan is the age-old solution to becoming a victim of relentless teasing. The only reason anyone gets picked on repeatedly is that they get upset. It’s no fun to pick on you if it doesn’t bother you.
The “sticks and stones” slogan encapsulates the fundamental difference between verbal aggression and physical aggression. If you hit me with sticks and stones, does my attitude toward the sticks and stones have any bearing on how much pain and damage they will do to me? Of course not! If you hit me with sticks and stones, you are the one who is hurting me. If you call me an idiot, does my attitude towards your words have any bearing on how much pain and damage they will cause me? Yes. It is entirely up to me if your words hurt me; it is not up to you if I get hurt. If you call me an idiot and I get upset, I am really upsetting myself. When kids understand this slogan, they can decide, “Oh, I don’t have to get upset by insults!”, and then they don’t become victims of relentless teasing.
But what is the educational establishment doing today? We are teaching that “the sticks and stones slogan is a lie.” Today we are telling kids, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words hurt my feelings, and that is even worse”; “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words kill.” We are telling kids that being called an idiot should hurt them even more than to have their arm broken. I don’t know about you, but I would much rather be called an idiot than to have my arm broken. And I would bet my very last cent that the adults who are teaching this to kids don’t believe it either. If I offer these adults a choice: “I am going to call you an idiot, or I am going to break your arm,” will they say, “Please break my arm, just don’t call me an idiot!” Of course they would rather be called an idiot than to have their arm broken, but this is the nonsense we are teaching kids today. We are teaching them they should be upset by insults, and then we wonder why they get so upset by insults, and why they get into so many fights over insults.
It is time we got back to teaching resilience to our children instead of encouraging them to be emotional marshmallows who get upset by insults. If we truly want to help our children, we need to resurrect the original “sticks and stones” slogan from its early grave and teach kids to stop being upset by words.
