Rachel Atkins, founder of the Bye Bye Bullying project, shares her hands-on experience with tackling bullying in the classroom

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evorah Cohen* was a sweet, clever six-year-old from a warm, stable family. She had every reason to be a happy kid, yet she was perpetually miserable.

She was sitting in a corner of her first-grade classroom when I first I met her, nursing her knee, and making whimpering noises. She looked the picture of woe.

“There’s nothing actually wrong with her knee,” her teacher confided to me. “I wish I could help her. She’s always fretting about something. Today, it’s her knee. Yesterday it was her stomach.”

I knew there had to be more to the picture. So I contacted Devorah’s mother for more information.

Mrs. Cohen was aware that Devorah was unhappy in school but had no idea why. She had spoken to Devorah several times to find out what was bothering her, but had failed to solve the mystery. Emotionally, Devorah was fine at home. Thinking something might be medically wrong, Mrs. Cohen brought Devorah to the doctor. But her physical checkup yielded a clean bill of health.

After I observed Devorah in school for a few days, the cause of her unhappiness became painfully clear. Nobody wanted to play with Devorah. Her classmates couldn’t stand her. If she got onto the trampoline in the playground, her peers immediately got off. “You’re yuch,” they’d say to her. “You smell.”

There were no obvious triggers. Though Devorah lacked a certain social savviness and was a bit gawky, there was nothing to explain her classmates’ strong negativity.

One day, a classmate pinched Devorah, and another spat on her. The teacher reprimanded the girls and gave the class a lesson on being kind to others, but things didn’t change much.

Things came to a head a few weeks later during a class outing. The teacher instructed everyone to take a partner for the trip. She didn’t envision any difficulties because there was an even number of girls.

But no one wanted to partner with Devorah. The teacher looked for the other “odd” student without a partner — a little dimpled girl named Faigy — and cheerfully invited her to join up with Devorah.

With a look of horror on her face, Faigy quickly hurried off to make a threesome with another pair, rather than hold Devorah’s hand. Devorah was left standing all alone by the wayside like a leper. She burst into tears.

From Lively to Limp

Over the last few decades, school bullying has received a lot of press. In the United Kingdom, where I live, schools are required by law to prevent and effectively tackle bullying. In America, all 50 states have adopted school anti-bullying legislation. Yet despite increased awareness, bullying is still a problem.

Statistics show that, in the previous year alone, at least two in five young people have experienced some form of bullying. By the age of 18, at least 45 percent of students will experience bullying.

Given the emphasis on middos in frum schools (and in our homes), it’s not surprising that our schools buck national trends, with better-than-average track records in countering bullying. But still, bullying occurs.

And it can start young. Take Shayna Schwartz*: She was such a bubbly, articulate, self-assured five-year-old that her mother wasn’t the least bit worried about her transition to kindergarten. But within weeks, Mrs. Schwartz noticed a change in her daughter’s behavior. “Shayna went from lively to limp,” she remembers. “She became subdued and fearful. She started biting her nails and crying over the smallest things.”

It was difficult to get any explanations from Shayna, but eventually she revealed to her mother that she was “scared” of several classmates. Mrs. Schwartz immediately contacted Shayna’s teacher. “It turned out that some of her peers had taken to laughing at her,” she says. “They would make fun of the most ridiculous things. For example, one day I gave her a mitzvah note for helping at home, and these girls mocked it as nebby.”

Bullied children often grow anxious or shy around other children, as Shayna did. They may start having nightmares, or refuse to go to school entirely. The emotional pain can express itself physically, too, with stomachaches, headaches, or other symptoms.

One of the most heartbreaking consequences of bullying is the blow to a child’s self-esteem. “Bullying makes you feel like a worm,” wrote one elementary-aged child. Another child put it this way: “It feels like a knife in you.” If nothing is done to stop bullying, it can have a lifelong negative impact. As one 26-year-old man confessed, “It took me a long time to get my confidence back — years, really. I still think about the bullying and get upset.”

Though Mrs. Schwartz and Mrs. Cohen both felt comfortable getting the school involved, some parents hesitate, wondering if they should intervene or let the kids work things out for themselves. That’s a common question I deal with. Indeed, a parent recently confided in me that her son was being bullied in class, so before contacting the school, she called up the bully’s mother. Despite this woman learning that her son was daily heckling other classmates, she refused to speak to her son about it. “Boys will be boys,” she replied. “I don’t believe in being a helicopter parent and hovering over my kid’s social dynamics.”

That’s a flawed viewpoint. Our goal isn’t to hover, it’s to teach. Just like children need to learn how to read and write, they need to learn appropriate social behaviors. This is especially the case with elementary school children, who often simply lack an adequate range of appropriate tools for navigating social interactions. That’s why it’s essential for effective anti-bullying programs to be implemented in every school.