Ch. Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

The Podcast:

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Hey, thanks everybody for being here. We’re going to talk about bullying prevention. This is Bullying Prevention podcast number 12, and I’m proud to welcome Mr. Alden Moody. He’s one of our instructors. Been teaching for many, many years for our school and an expert in bullying prevention and child safety. Thanks a lot for being here, Mr. Moody.

Mr. Alden Moody:

Thanks for having me.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

All right. So we’re going to be talking about bullying prevention and focusing on something that I find really amazing. We’ve talked about before that we know that getting a black belt is going to be reducing bullying in kids, 64% reduction in bullying. If my marker works here everybody. That’s an amazing statistic because that’s more than any school-based bullying prevention program. What we really love to talk about is that kids getting their black belt and getting second-degree black belt in martial arts is one great thing, and they can get a lot of experience in other ways, of course, they can reduce their bullying in lots of other areas besides martial arts, but what we really want them to do when they’re this confident and this capable is not just keep people from bullying them but also become a protector. We want them to protect other kids. Let’s talk about that a little bit. Mr. Moody, anything to add there?

Mr. Alden Moody:

No, you’ve covered it so far.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Okay. Sure, I dropped that on you to add things, so sorry about that. What we want to talk about a little bit here … and let me fix this screen and share it again so I can draw properly. We want to talk about the different roles that kids have in bullying. By the way, this is the same for adults. For kids and adults, we really want to translate … it’s a little bit different for adults, but think about this in some situations that you might have at work for people that are parents, or educators, or even somebody that’s watching this because they want to help kids, you might have a kid that’s being bullied and there’s other people around.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

There’s not just the person who’s attacking the kid or somebody who’s … This is the kid that’s being bullied in the middle. You might have a person that’s verbally, or physically, or doing cyberbullying, or some other type of bullying towards this kid who’s being victimized in some kind of way. Think about this scenario, this is pretty obvious, but there’s other kids that are involved or other people that would be involved. There’s also people who are followers and they’re not starting the bullying, but they’re active. They just didn’t start it. A lot of this information … we recommend the Olweus bullying Prevention Program, they have something called the bullying prevention circle, which is similar to what we’ll talk about today. There’s also people who are supporters. They may not actively bully kids, but they’re going to be egging people on.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

They might be standing on the side, they might be supporting the other kids. hey might be telling the followers or the child that started the bullying that they’re doing a good job. They might be telling them later, “Hey, we think it was really funny what you did to that child.” These kids, the one who starts the bullying, the active kid that didn’t start, or supporters, those guys are still involved in continuing this process of bullying.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Then there also the passive supports. These guys, they may not start the bullying, but they still like it. Other kids in an environment where a kid’s getting picked on, they may like the bullying happening. They may think its funny. They may be laughing on the side and it makes the kid feel worse. Plus, it encourages these other kids in the environment to continue the bullying. Now, there’s other kids involved, too, that don’t really like the bullying, but … there’s disengaged onlookers. They may not really care one way or the other.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Then there’s also a pretty big percentage, if you look at our other data that we talked in one of our earlier podcasts, is possible defenders. These are kids that don’t like the bullying, but they don’t know what to do. They think they ought to help, but they don’t do it yet. These are kids that … you can imagine this person, they see what’s going on, they think it’s really lousy what these other kids are doing to the kid who’s being bullied, but they don’t do anything. They don’t do anything at this moment.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Then, there’s the protector. This is a kid who dislike the bullying and does something. Now, this is labeled differently in different types of programs and different things that you might see, but this protector, this one here, this is what we like in our martial arts classes our black belts to be. We can overtly train kids to do this. For parents and educators and people that are working with kids, this is a great position that we would like to have kids be in. This might look a few different ways, and we’ll talk about how to do this or how to train kids to be in this position. What we like to do is, ideally, in any prevention program move kids this way.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Kids that are bullying other kids, that start it, we like to at least move them a little bit this way down this circle so that they move towards understanding that the better place to be is protecting other kids from being bullied. Mr. Moody, add anything you want in there if you like.

Mr. Alden Moody:

Yeah, this is a good example of how it works with [crosstalk 00:06:41] physically present and stuff like that. Yeah.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Yeah, and you see a lot of kids that come in at the beginner level and they move onto black belt, you see them be confident enough so they probably could do this. Right?

Mr. Alden Moody:

Yeah. They definitely gain a lot. They gain their confidence. This innate desire to actually now go out and protect rather than just stay back or help even the bully. It’s not just because they got a black belt, it’s because they did all that work and not just because we teach bullying prevention, because the way that we teach martial arts they just gain that confidence and the important stuff.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Yeah, that’s really well said. Get this idea of the position that the kids might be in and then what we need to do, if we want to help kids be protectors, is tell them specifically what to do. If you remember our statistics, about two-thirds of kids are on this side. About two-thirds of kids are over here. They either would like to do something and do something or even a bigger group is in this possible defender group that really would like to do something, but they don’t know what to do or they don’t know if the teachers will be supportive or they don’t know if the other kids will be supportive. Even though we have a lot more roles in this side of the drawing here, there’s a lot more people that we’ve listed, there’s really a larger group of kids and a larger group of people that don’t think this is a very good thing and would like to help.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

I know my drawing’s kind of messy right now, but think about two-thirds of kids when we do research either don’t like the bullying and would like to help or don’t know what to do. How can we teach them what to do? Let’s talk about what being a protector can be. Now, one piece of being a protector is in the environment that they have in school. Mr. Moody, what would you think would happen if you’re a kid and you’re in an environment in school and you’re not sure if the teachers would back you up if you were trying to protect the kid, if you thought you’d get in trouble and you’d be one of the ones that would be-

Mr. Alden Moody:

You would be much more hesitant to take action and do something.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Right. One of the problems that kids have is they worry … In the earlier part of our podcast, we talked about a lot of school environments don’t do a lot of work with bullying prevention, and so what ends up happening is the kids are very unsure if they go to protect another kid what’s going to happen. Now, if the kid that protects the kid who’s being bullied goes off and punches the kid who’s bullying, well that’s going to be a bad situation already. We don’t suggest that they do that. That’s not what we mean by protecting. Of course, we would expect that kid to get in trouble. That would be a normal thing that they should get in trouble.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

What can the protector do? Well, what the protector can do is a couple things. At the very lowest level, they can talk to the kid after. Well, at the very, very lowest level, they could talk to the kid after. Talk to bullied kid after. That way there’s no risk for the kid who’s being the protector to get involved in the scuffle or get involved in the fight. There’s no risk for the kid who wants to be a protector to do something about it to get bullied himself or herself. That’s one thing that they could do. Mr. Moody, any other things you could do that we can add in here?

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Another thing that they could do is tell a teacher. Now, we talked last time about the difference between tattling and telling. Tattling is when you’re trying to get attention for yourself or get somebody else in trouble. You have to tell the teacher in a way that you’re letting the teacher know, “Hey, Sally is getting picked on over there and I’m worry that she’s getting bullied” or “I’m worried that she needs some help.” The teacher would know that this isn’t just you tattling on the other kid that’s bullying her, so telling a teacher. If you’re a parent or an educator, role playing through this with a kid would be very helpful so they know what to do.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

If they’re reporting to you that somebody’s getting picked on at school, talk to them about how they can tell a teacher in a way that’s not going to sound like tattling because teachers hear tattling all the time. They hear it all the time, so they’re going to get inundated by that, and it’s going to sound the same a everybody else that’s trying to get attention for themselves or get another kid in trouble. Pop in if you have anything to add there, Mr. Moody.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

The third thing that they could do after tell a teacher … so they could talk to a bullied child after, they could tell a teacher, they could do both of those. The next thing they could do is they could intervene. Now, the intervene would be, in this kind of case, maybe something very simple like they could tell the kid to stop or they could just go up to the kid who’s being bullied … what we teach them in our classes is put their arm around the kid who’s being bullied and say, “Come on, you don’t need that.” Intervene in a variety of different ways. One of those is put their arm around them, again, say, “Come on, you don’t need that, come with me” and just take them away.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Now, that’s a pretty strong position to be in. You’ve got to have a lot self-confidence to be that kind of protector when the other kid’s in the middle of getting bullied or getting yelled at or getting pushed or having something more severe happen to them. This level of confidence has to be a lot higher for you to be able to do this. Did you have anything to add there, Mr. Moody?

Mr. Alden Moody:

Well, the only thing I would say is the reason that intervene is higher on what ideally a protector would do in this situation than tell a teacher, for example, is one of the reasons is it happens … you are physically going right then and taking action rather than going to a teacher and, depending on the situation, maybe the bullying has already even completed once the teacher actually does anything about it. Ideally, that protector, the highest level would be the one actually physically going and intervening rather than going and telling a teacher. Well, obviously, do that after, but in the moment.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Yeah. It’s more dangerous. I mean, it’s a little more dangerous for you, so you have to be careful about whether you’re going to do that or whether you’re going to be strong enough to do that because you don’t want to get in trouble. You don’t want to start a fight. You don’t want to escalate the situation, so it’s really important for parents or teachers, or any educators or people working with kids, to not … we have a lot of parents that will tell their kids … Mr. Moody you and I have talked to a lot of parents probably that would say I just tell kid if he’s being bullied or she’s being bullied to just push the other kid or yell back at them or hit them back.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

As martial artists, and people who have been around us a long time, I think a lot of people, especially our adult men that have kids, think that sounds really good. You know? If they punch them, hit them back, but that’s not the reality of bullying. Bullying is an imbalance of power, so if somebody’s stronger than you or they have better social status, you’re not going to get away with that. They have friends. We just drew the diagram. They’ve got friends. They’re usually bigger than you. I mean, Mr. Moody you’re a big guy. You were a defensive lineman on your football team. Probably nobody’s going to bully you at high school, right?

Mr. Alden Moody:

Not physically for sure.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Yeah, not physically. They could do it a lot of other ways, but they wouldn’t want to bother you when you were in high school. If they did, they would be huge. Right? If they were going to physically bully you, they’d have to huge, so it would be pretty hard to punch them and try to … although, you’re a fourth-degree black belt.

Mr. Alden Moody:

Yeah. Well, even if you could, you have the ability, the power, the hype, whatever, to take the sort of violent action, certainly not a good idea. One of the first things you learn in martial arts is that you shouldn’t be using martial arts on people, like punching and kicking rather. You should be using the discipline that you get, the communication that you get. Part of communication, part of respect is diffusing situations rather than escalating them. Let’s say you’re going to go protect somebody who’s being bullied, imbalance of power, they have friends, you want to diffuse that rather than escalate that. Ideally, everyone gets out unharmed. Then you can go tell a teacher later. You know what I mean?

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

That’s very, very well said. This is very much in line with learning martial arts, and that’s why we see such good results in our data when people have done martial arts. We’re not trying to tell everybody that they have to do martial arts to learn how to be a protector, but those are some of the skills that we want to transfer to everybody listening to the podcast and everybody reading about this later when they’re reading some of our transcripts of this, that the interventions are not about physically intervening in a self-defense way or to push, or hit, or kick, or anything like that. The interventions are to diffuse the situation, Mr. Moody said it perfectly, and to remove the kid that’s being bullied from the situation. Then, tell a teacher and make sure that they take care of it.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Now, what we want the teachers to do is going to be our next topic for the next time we get together and talk. To summarize this, our really highest level of what we do with the kids, when we work with them, we taught them how to think, we taught them what their stance and physical look should be, we taught them where their eyes should be, how they should project themselves with their face, what their voice should look like, how they should talk in terms of tattling versus telling, and finally this, which is the highest level and be a protector. Those are the last few podcasts we’ve done. This is how parents, educators, people that work with kids should work with them. I think everybody could take this and translate this to what happens if they’re in an adult situation. It’s really the same kind of process.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Thank you very much, Mr. Moody, for being here for this podcast. We’ll see you for our next podcast for podcast number 13 on what to do when your kid’s being bullied when they come and report it to you afterwards. Thanks a lot everybody and have a great day. Thanks, Mr. Moody.

Mr. Alden Moody:

You’re welcome, sir. Thank you for having me.

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Dr. Moody is also a licensed psychotherapist and maintains a practice at Integrated Mental Health Associates (IntegratedMHA.com) where he specializes in couples therapy and mens issues.