Atheists Talk: Jen Hancock on "The Bully Vaccine"

Bullies are…well, they’re not the most creative types. They tend to have a small number of strategies they use to get what they want and make our lives miserable. That leaves their tricks vulnerable to analysis and defusing. Jen Hancock offers to do just that for you with her book, The Bully Vaccine: How to Inoculate Yourself Against Bullies and Other Petty People.

Should you have to deal with this? No, but if you or your child is suffering from bullying, you don’t have many good options. You can either allow it to continue and hope for a miracle. You can muddle along as you already have trying a variety of techniques that only serve to make the problem worse because you are inadvertently training your bully to escalate their behavior because you do not know enough about how to properly manage the rewards and punishment that affect their behavioral choices.

Listen on Sunday morning as Jen shares some of her ideas.

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Listen to AM 950 KTNF this Sunday at 9 a.m. Central to hear Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call in to the studio at 952-946-6205, or send an e-mail to [email protected] during the live show. If you miss the live show, listen to the podcast later.

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Atheists Talk: Jen Hancock on "The Bully Vaccine"
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6 thoughts on “Atheists Talk: Jen Hancock on "The Bully Vaccine"

  1. Leo
    2

    From the Amazon preview, her big secret is just a Behavorist rewarding of “Just ignore them”. Which every victim of bullying already knows about and has tried, only to break down after the bullies come back harder (ever heard of an extinction burst?). All this book is saying is “You still can’t stop bullying, but now it’s your fault for being to weak to ignore them”.

  2. 4

    lets say her solution works- the bully will probably just screw with some other kid instead. I don’t think its a workable solution to bullying as a community problem.

    I see so many websites about what to do about bullies and bullied kids. Where are the people focusing on the kids who stand by and watch it and do nothing (or laugh)? They are the majority who let it go on.

  3. 5

    skeptifem, Jen made the point about the importance of bystanders herself. She was also careful to distinguish between classic bullying and threats and assault, which need institutional intervention.

    Leo, Jen emphasized throughout the interview that established patterns of bullying were extremely hard to break for just that reason, and no, she didn’t suggest anyone should be doing this on just their own resources.

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