Ch. Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

The Podcast:

Dr. Greg Moody:

Welcome everybody to part three of our Bullying Prevention podcast about myths, truths, and what to do about preventing bullying. I’m Dr. Greg Moody, and this is Senior Master Laura Sanborn. How are you doing, ma’am?

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

I’m doing great, sir. How about yourself?

Dr. Greg Moody:

I’m doing great. Well, she’s a seventh degree black belt and senior master instructor. She’s been teaching for decades. So she’s here to be our additional speaker about bullying prevention.

Dr. Greg Moody:

Let me give you a little bit of background on myself, and this is also about her. We’re both again master instructors. My background is I’m a licensed counselor, but I’m also a PhD in Education. My focus is on bullying prevention. That’s what my area of research is. And the research that I did for my doctoral dissertation, if I didn’t mention it on the prior podcast was the benefits of martial arts for kids regarding bullying.

Dr. Greg Moody:

And what we determined in the research was, and what we’ll present here in some of the subsequent podcasts is when kids are going through a martial arts program for enough time to get their black belt, that bullying is reduced by about twice as much. Well, more than any other school-based bullying prevention program, bullying is reduced. So that’s kind of the upshot of the summary of what we’re going to talk about.

Dr. Greg Moody:

But what we want to do today, regardless of whether you’re doing martial arts or not is talk about the myths that we need to overcome to really understand bullying, understanding what bullying is and what it isn’t and then what to do. So if you haven’t watched the prior podcast, we recommend you watch those. It doesn’t mean you won’t get a lot out of that today if you’re jumping in now.

Dr. Greg Moody:

And what we’re going to cover today is jumping ahead. We’ve covered what some of the effects of bullying are on kids who bully, but now we’re going to cover a really interesting part of it, which is what are the effects of bullying on the kids who are doing the bullying, of the effects on the kids who are the bullies.

Dr. Greg Moody:

Now, a lot of times people would think, “Well, who cares about those kids? Those guys are being jerks. So why do we care about them?” But there’s a lot of very serious effects and we have to do something about this, not just to punish these kids and because they’re going to have some negative consequences in their life.

Dr. Greg Moody:

Master Sanborn, what are your thoughts on this before we kind of jump into it?

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Yeah. I was very surprised when I learned this during our original investigation into bullying, because I had assumed that the bullying kids had such high self-esteem already, that’s why they were just using that self-esteem and power to push around other people. So it didn’t occur to me that there were negative consequences to them doing the bullying.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

The reason they would bully is because it felt good and they felt better because they were being a bully and they felt more powerful. So it didn’t occur to me that there would be those type of negative consequences in their later life, even much less current while it’s happening.

Dr. Greg Moody:

Yeah. There’s a little bit of a contrasting thing. The number one thing when I ask a group about why do you think kids bully is they … Almost always whether it’s a group of teachers or a group of people that aren’t even involved with working with kids is almost inevitably somebody says, “Well, kids who bully are kids with low self-esteem. That’s the common trait.”

Dr. Greg Moody:

And what we know is kids that bully are often not kids who have low self-esteem. And we’ll talk about that a little bit later. But if the opposite is true is kids who bully tend to have about average or better than average self-esteem, why would this have a negative consequences? Well, let me just share some of the data with you.

Dr. Greg Moody:

Kids who bully are more likely to get into fights. Well, that’s not a surprise, right? But these fights aren’t with other kids. They would potentially be with kids that they are bullying, but they’re also with other kids, other kids in school. They’re getting in altercations with lots of other people.

Dr. Greg Moody:

They’re more likely to get injured. They’re more likely to steal and vandalize properly … Vandalize property, not vandalize properly. They’re more likely to drink alcohol early. They’re more likely to smoke. This is as a youngster and they’re more likely to drop out of school, be truant.

Dr. Greg Moody:

You don’t hear that word a lot, but drop out of school. They’re also more likely to have low academic achievement, so poor grades. They’re more likely to also report a negative climate at school. So these kids, even though what we’re going to find is the kids who bully do it for a variety of reasons including improving their social status, they’re also more likely to perceive that school is bad. That school is a negative environment for them. They’re more likely to bring a weapon to school than the average student, not than the kids who were being bullied but than the average person.

Dr. Greg Moody:

Now, here’s one that will probably blow your mind. In some research that was done in 1993, so it’s a little bit dated, but it still holds up in different research. It just is hard research to do, so they don’t do it frequently. In research that was done in 1993, 60%, I’m going to kind of draw a block here, 60% of boys who were bullied in middle school had at least one conviction of a felony by the age of 24.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

These were bullied or ones who did bully?

Dr. Greg Moody:

All these statistics are about kids who bullied, kids who bullied. They bullied other kids. So kids who bullied other kids in middle school had at least one felony conviction by the age of 24. Now, if you know anything about felonies and I hope that not that many people do know much about felonies on this call, but if you know anything about felonies, it’s pretty hard to get a felony conviction.

Dr. Greg Moody:

Felonies are things like murder, assault. They have to do some really, really bad things. I don’t even want to list all the things that they have to do to be a felony. Felony doesn’t mean driving too fast. Felony doesn’t even mean small, minor theft, misdemeanor theft. Misdemeanors, there’s a whole variety of crimes that are considered misdemeanors. And very frequently when people go to court, they plead down from a felony to a misdemeanor.

Dr. Greg Moody:

So convicted of a felony means it was serious enough that they didn’t even get to plead down to a misdemeanor on their first conviction. 60%, more than half of kids that were in middle school and bullied other kids were convicted of a felony.

Dr. Greg Moody:

Here’s another statistic. 40% had three or more convictions by the time they were 24. They were also four times as likely as their peers to have multiple convictions. So if we look at this picture and kids who bully get into fights, get injured, steal, drink, smoke, they drop out of school, they have lower academic achievement, get poorer grades. There’s a negative climate that they perceive at school. They are more likely to bring weapons. 60% of kids who bully in middle school are convicted of felonies and then it gets even worse from there.

Dr. Greg Moody:

Kids who bully are a group that we have to pay special attention to partly of course, because we want to protect the kids who are bullied, of course. But we also need to do something about this to make sure these kids don’t have other problems. This is not just to protect the kids who are bullied. This is to protect the kids who are bullying.

Dr. Greg Moody:

Again, we’re not trying to be nice to them for the sake of protecting the kid. We’re not trying to be nice to them in spite of their bad behavior. What we’re trying to do is understand that this is a problem that needs to be fixed for both kids’ sake. It’s a problem that needs to be fixed so that both kids have positive futures.

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