Bullying can happen at any age

My earliest recollection of naughty playground behavior goes way back, to the days of elementary school. Once lunch was complete and our places cleaned, we all went out to the playground to mix and mingle until the bell rang that it was time for us to come back into our classrooms. This day, which I can remember quite clearly, there were lots of secretive “girl” conversations out on the playground, lots of buzzing about something. Turns out that two gals were handing out birthday party invitations both of which happened to be on the same day starting just a couple of hours apart.

I can clearly remember the word “disinvited”, was this even a word I wondered? Nonetheless this is basically what precipitated the chatter within the group. The two birthday girls were bantering back and forth as to which of them was going to change the date, neither would budge. This is when the subject regarding “disinvited” began to circulate. “If you choose her party over mine, I will disinvite you and you will NEVER ever be invited to anything I have in the future”, said one to the other. Hearing this the other classmate made the same announcement and the conversation began to escalate. I can’t recall all the details from here, but my mother who has always been the quintessential diplomat said, “Debbie, it’s easy. You will go to one party for half the time and the other for the other half of the time. The solution made total sense to me and I remember feeling the relief since even at that young age, I didn’t do well with conflicts.

Now looking back as an adult, I can see that each of my classmates were fighting to be the one recognized. Understandably at 8 or 10 they were not able to logically come up with a reasonable arrangement to appease both girls at the time. I was so grateful that my mother offered me a perfect solution to keep both girls as friends. Fast forwarding to today and here I am 60 years later continuing to see similar situations like this one occurring in my adult life. Adults challenging adults to be the top dog. Bullying on Facebook and not by kids, but by intelligent business professionals. Often, I read about plagiarism and stealing systems and protocols. Employers not giving employees the benefit of support when they are underperforming, helping them to make the changes required to meet the goals of their positions. Hearing their challenges and compassionately offering them the

help they may require. Then there are the employees, working just hard enough so that they can fly under the radar without being noticed. They could be taking advantage of CE meetings and seminars just so that they are able to get away, eat in nice restaurants and interface with fun and influential people. They have no interest in supporting your practice or have any interest in bringing some of new skills learned back with them. It’s more about serving their needs and enhancing their own interests.

Back then in grade school I learned that there are solutions that can be applied so that no one loses. I believe that today as adults we need to get back to old ways of working together. Why must so many feel that unless it helps to self-promote or get themselves noticed, they will simply take advantage of anything that benefits them and continue to step on or whoever/ whatever it takes to get them to the top!