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Permalink Reply by Alice on August 26, 2012 at 7:54am

Sounds great - I'm really curious about your method - although I just have so much on my plate at the moment and not much time to research your work. I very much like what I've seen on the website - (in a 60 second scan) - raising compassionate adults.... I like Alfie Kohn also and Unconditional Parenting and also Nonviolent communication by Marshall Rosenberg.

Permalink Reply by Jennifer Hancock on August 28, 2012 at 9:34am

Operant Conditioning is basically consciously using feedback to condition an animal to behave the way you want. So pretty much every animal trainer in the country uses these techniques. They key is to understand reward schedules and to understand that withdrawing a reward is more powerful than punishment (something that no good trainer does btw).

Bullying is a conditioned behavior for both the bully and the victim. To get it to stop, you have to withhold the reward the bully gets for bullying all the time until the bully blows out and stops. It can take time, but once you understand the behavioral management principles it's fairly straightforward.

The reason why kids have such a hard time getting bullying to stop isn't because the advice they got was bad, it's actually quite good. The missing element is the blowout which is what an animal does when they stop getting their reward, and that's what I focus on in the book. Why the bully will blow out, what to expect and how and why it is so important to ride that out.

To do this does require the victim to detach emotionally from the negativity of the bully and the best way to do that is with compassion for yourself and for the bully. I go into that quite a bit too.