Ch. Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

The Podcast:

Dr. Greg Moody:

Now also related to this, talk about how, and for a lot of the people that are listening to this, whether you’re a parent or whether you’re … We have Master Sanborn who’s a martial arts instructor, I’m a martial arts instructor, or maybe you’re a teacher or an educator or somebody that works at a church that works with kids or anybody who does work with kids, it’s important to know how adults bully children. And we do this often without knowing how we might do this.

Dr. Greg Moody:

So, how do adults bully kids? And we all might do this unknowingly, or maybe when I tell you this, you know it but you just didn’t recognize it as bullying. Remember what was the definition of bullying? It was three things. Intention to hurt, repeated over time, and an imbalance of power. The imbalance of power as an adult, you have that automatically, so we can check that off the list. You do have imbalance of power no matter what.

Dr. Greg Moody:

Repeated over time, there’s lots of behaviors that we as adults repeat over time with kids. If you’re a teacher and you have to remind a kid of something a lot. Now intention to hurt is frequently not the case when we’re working with kids, so that wouldn’t be bullying but it might be perceived. And it might be … We have to be careful about … I wouldn’t consider you reminding the kid to do something and take their …

Dr. Greg Moody:

If you’re a parent and you’re reminding your kid to take the trash out and they get upset about it, you didn’t have any intention to hurt your kid’s feelings that way. However, it could be perceived as that. And so therefore, it might have the same emotional reaction with your kids. So, we have to be a little bit careful about how we’re perceived, that’s one piece. It’s a little bit different off topic from this.

Dr. Greg Moody:

But often, things can unintentionally or intentionally be like bullying, where adults bully kids. So let me give you some examples. Mean names, and sometimes adults do this just because they’ve been brought up that way. Like you’re crying like a baby or a parent might say something to a kid, again not mean it, I don’t hear this very much, but, “Hey, don’t be an idiot,” something like that.

Dr. Greg Moody:

Kids have reported to us in research. They try to make me look stupid, make a fool out of me, different treatment from other students. So if one student gets singled out as not performing as well, or they look different, this is common. One of the common ways kids get bullied is maybe their clothes they wear might be different. They’re not dressed as nice. And a teacher unknowingly might say something like, “Hey, where’d you buy your clothes? You buy your clothes at Walmart or you buy your clothes,” maybe because they’re ripped or maybe because they’re not fitting as good and unknowingly or knowingly.

Dr. Greg Moody:

I mean, that’s kind of mean. That’s intended to hurt somebody’s feelings. And it just may be a habit that you have as an adult. And I’ve caught myself saying things. I don’t say those kind of things, but I’ve caught myself maybe not critiquing somebody in the way that would be as good as I could. And it can be taken this way and it can be taken in a hurtful way. And it really is mean if I said something like that, if I was saying something about somebody’s clothes that way.

Dr. Greg Moody:

Sarcasm is a common way, and then embarrassing somebody. Embarrassing somebody, maybe they don’t understand new material. Maybe they didn’t get the math problem right. You were explaining something then, “Well, if you listened, you would’ve heard that.” Did anybody ever say that in front of people? Well, that’s sarcastic and embarrassing at the same time.

Dr. Greg Moody:

And you wouldn’t think that you’re being mean or you wouldn’t normally call that bullying, but it meets the criteria, doesn’t it? It’s imbalance of power because you automatically have that already because you’re teaching them. It might be repeated because you might be doing it on a consistent basis.

Dr. Greg Moody:

And because that kid might be having trouble, maybe they have a hearing issue. Maybe they shouldn’t be in the back of the room. Maybe there’s another reason why they’re not listening as well. Maybe they have other issues like maybe they have ADHD. Maybe there’s another issue that’s compounding this, and it kind of is intending to hurt.

Dr. Greg Moody:

I mean if you really think about it, there might be a different approach to saying that that would also get the kid paying attention and get the kid to listen. And you might feel like, “Well, there’s no way I can get the kid to listen, unless I say something like that.” Okay. That is true. There may be another conversation we can have. But adults do bully kids and we learn these skills to say these things from our parents and from other sources when we grew up, and that’s pretty common.

Dr. Greg Moody:

All right, let’s go on to … We’ve got to just a couple minutes more here. Master Sanborn, anything else to add?

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

A lot of the times, like you said with the adult bullying, it’s more repeated than you even realize when you’re trying to get somebody to do something and you go through several different versions of this trying to make them do what you think they should be doing. And you’re not even realizing you’re bullying because it’s just a constant barrage of embarrassing ways to say it.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

You think you’re trying to get them to do it by doing a different verbalization of it, but it turns out that you’re just embarrassing the kid or sarcasm. And I know sarcasm is a lot of times thought of as a tool for humor, but it can be overused as a tool for bullying too.

Dr. Greg Moody:

And one thing to think about that’s a really good point because we say stuff in our classes when we teach for those of us who are educators. And we also say stuff as regular people, as parents and talking to people. And we think things are funny. Sarcasm is funny and there’s other things we say to other people that are funny and it gets a laugh. And we think, “Well, it gets a laugh, so it’s okay.” And in general, I like a laugh. One of my hobbies is stand-up comedy. I do that, and I like making people laugh.

Dr. Greg Moody:

But Mark Twain said the secret to humor is truth and pain. And often when people are pointed out truths and when people are, “That’s not fun,” and when we use sarcasm that is painful. And I don’t have a problem being upfront and being … Anybody who knows me, knows that I am certainly capable of telling them the truth and letting them know when things are not working right or they’re doing something wrong or anything is not perfect.

Dr. Greg Moody:

We’re not telling anybody to be overly nice to anybody or not be assertive and confident instructor or coddling people in any way. We really want everybody to be assertive and confident. And we will direct you to some of our other podcasts about that. What we have to be careful of though, is those three criteria: Repeated over time, imbalance of power, which you have a lot of power over people, and intention to hurt.

Dr. Greg Moody:

And sarcasm is a hurtful way to explain something. Especially when you think from a kid’s point of view, they don’t feel good about screwing something up in the first place. They mess something up. They’re not doing something right. They’re not doing the math problem right. In a martial arts case, they’re not doing the kick right. They’re frustrated with it, and using sarcasm wouldn’t be appropriate unless we have a lot of rapport with somebody. And then maybe it’s fine and then they enjoy what we’re talking about, maybe or maybe not.

Dr. Greg Moody:

Now if you’re an adult teaching an adult, the same thing. In fact, I found that adults enjoy that even less. But we think that, I just said what I said. And when I said that you might hear it that, yeah, that’s true, but think about what I said. You might have felt like you agreed with me on that but probably what I said is not true.

Dr. Greg Moody:

Probably kids enjoy it even less, but they just take it because you have an imbalance of power with them and they can’t object. There’s no way for them to accept that your imbalance of power doesn’t override them objecting and saying, “Hey, don’t be talking to me that way,” because they’re five years old and how can they complain to you as the teacher, or they’re 10 years old even, how can they really complain to you as your teacher?

Dr. Greg Moody:

Well, that’s all we have for today. Next time we’re going to be talking about what to do when somebody’s bullying you. So that’s going to be a really exciting topic. I know everybody’s going to get a lot out of that, and we’ll look forward to seeing you next time in our next bullying podcast. And we’ll going to wrap this thing up and make sure everybody’s really educated on bullying myths, truths and what to do. Thanks a lot, Master Sanborn.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Thank you, sir.

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