Your Nine (Yes, Just 9) Seconds Could Save a Life
By Donna Shea & Nadine Briggs For the kids that attend our centers, bullying is an on-going concern. Lately, it feels to us that bullying is GROWING at an alarming…
By Nadine Briggs and Donna Shea
An innocent girl just wanting to be friends sits unknowingly at a lunch table in her elementary school. She sits with the same group of girls everyday. She likes them and she wants them to like her. The other girls are chatting excitedly with each other. But they don’t chat with her. They are enjoying this social time with 
each other but not engaging with her. She, however, doesn’t realize that she is not wanted at that table. She thinks these girls are her friends. They are not. She follows them outside to recess wanting to run, play and have fun. They are not wanting to run, play and have fun with her. They form clubs to exclude her. They tattle to try to get her in trouble. She asks to play and they say no. They do what they can to see her cry. And cry she does. Nearly every day alone in a corner seemingly unseen by the adults who are meant to keep her safe. Each day, she feels worse about herself, powerless even, and each day she keeps trying to get them to like her. Each time they make her cry, they become more powerful.
But then she learns that she’s worthy of better. She begins to see that this isn’t friendship at all. She gains self-confidence and some control over her fragile emotions. She learns that she has a choice and that within that choice lies power.
She asks them to play and they say no. They are expecting the tears. They want to see her be destroyed by their rejection. But she makes a choice. She decides that they aren’t worth the sadness. She pulls her head up, looks around for someone else to play with and she walks away. No tears, no hiding in a corner, and no sadness. She finds a new friend and she runs, plays and has the best recess ever. She has found her power and with that, the bullies have lost theirs.
Nadine Briggs, Director of Simply Social Kids and Donna Shea, Founder of the Peter Pan Center for Social and Emotional Growth are authors of the How to Make and Keep Friends books series. They specialize in creating simple tips that teach kids with social challenges the social language of friendship.
