Bullying survivor gives tips

Blanco, always smart, different, and older than her years, was bullied mercilessly at school but told by her parents that in 20 years, she’d be a famous writer.

But she didn’t care about what her life would be like in 20 years, she hurt “now,” she wanted friends “now.”

Blanco did go on to success, as a writer and speaker about bullying. She spoke at an event last month sponsored by St. Mary’s Academy, and she acted out the roles of both her childhood self and her tormentors.

Blanco worked a Hollywood PR job, and in recent years has gained wide success with her books on bullying, the most well-known of which is, “Please Stop Laughing at Me.”

She described two types of popular kids, the inclusive ones and the “tormentors.”

She named her elite tormentor “Nadia,” and described how Nadia told her to just go to another school, that everybody hated her. She regularly had to cut out chunks of her hair because of gum spitballs on the bus, and was once held down by two kids while a third stuffed a snowball in her mouth, choking her. Her father insisted on going to the principal about it, but “that only made my life harder.”

Blanco’s advice to parents with bullied kids is to have the kid enroll in activities in the next town over, which would give the child the boost in self esteem that would make the school bullying wane.

She recounted the time in class she refused to dissect a pig. She was laughed at. “When you laugh at someone it steals a part of their spirit that they can never get back.”

She talked about how others would join in laughing at her, even though it made them uncomfortable, because they were afraid they would become the next target if they didn’t.

She said people have to recognize and live up to the qualities in themselves like compassion, strength, caring and truth.

“If you don’t, every year on graduation day your community will be sending hurt and wounded kids into the world who may never live up to what they were meant to be,” she said.

Blanco was told she could sit at a lunch table, but she could not speak or be spoken to. So she would “listen to all this girl talk and ache to be included and I never was.”

One day she walked from table to table begging to be allowed to sit with each group, and no one would allow it.

In that instance, it wasn’t something they did do, it was something they didn’t: include her.

“It’s all the nice things you never do” that hurt, she said. “It’s still bullying because someone is hurt.”

At home, she would scream into her pillow until her throat was raw. She coughed on purpose until flecks of blood came out. Her weight dropped to 77 pounds. She neglected her appearance.

She stressed to students in the audience, “There is nothing wrong with you. It is everything that is right about you that can make you a target of rejection and abuse. You are perfect the way you are.”

In high school, a person wrote in her yearbook, “Everybody hates you here and always have. You are God’s worst mistake, Love Tyler, the class of 1982.”

At college, she said, “I finally found myself.”

She had an “amazing career” after high school, and knew she would never go back there.

But by the time her 20-year reunion came, she decided to go, knowing she’d just written her first book about her experience with bullying. “I looked drop-dead, in-your-face, smoking fine.”

One classmate greeted her with, “Jodee Blanco? Man do you have guts. We thought you’d never show.”

He apologized for how he treated her, but his only concern was that his name was not in her book, she said.

He ended up asking for her help because his own daughter was being bullied so mercilessly she tried to take her own life.

At the reunion, “they were begging to sit with me” because they’d heard she worked in Hollywood and knew lots of famous people.

One classmate told her, “I always thought you were the coolest kid in our class.”

She retorted, “I was nothing but a joke. You guys hated me.”

He replied, “We were kids. We were just joking around.”

And Nadia, her chief tormentor, began to cry when thinking about her treatment of Blanco, because she was a mother now and saw things differently.

“In that moment, I forgave my classmates because really, they didn’t hate me, they just didn’t understand me.”

She said some kids are rejected so many times they never reach their potential.

“Everyone thinks they’re fine, but secretly in the dark, they think they’re not lovable,” she said.

She told parents not to tell their kids to ignore the bullies and walk away. “Why is that bad logic? You’re enforcing adult logic in a kid’s world.

“The more a child ignores the bullies the meaner the bullies will get until they get a response,” she said.

“Aren’t we asking that child to be a bystander in their own life?”

Another bit of advice —“leave them alone and they’ll leave you alone” —also doesn’t fly, she said.

“We don’t want the bullies to leave us alone. We want them to like us,” she said.

Also, if her parents told her the tormentors were “just jealous,” she would get “crazy angry.”

“I want them to tell me how I can have friends, not why I can’t have any,” she said.

She said she didn’t care why her tormentors bullied her. She didn’t want talk, she wanted action.

She asked, “Why are victims expected to be bigger people, to rise above it, to consider the source, be patient.”

She said as parents, “We believe something about our child that is not true. We believe our bullied child can think like an adult.”

Cognitive maturity does not occur until the early 20s. Abilities like impulse control, anger control, judgment, and decision-making are still being formed in the school years.

She said old souls like her seem so grown up and mature on the outside, with their language skills, poise and interests. People wrongly assume they are emotionally mature.

“On the inside, we are just as driven by the need to belong,” she said. “We don’t care why we struggle, we just want you to take action to end the struggle.”

She also cautioned parents to never say “I know how you feel.” A parent will interrupt a child, and “the whole conversation would shift to their childhood experience.”

Sometimes, kids just need a sounding board, and emotional room and safety to try and fix it themselves.

She encouraged parents to have an “intervention” with their child in a neutral location, with all devices turned off, and undivided attention provided. “Let your child vent” and resist the urge to fill awkward silences. If you sit long enough, they will talk, she said.

Then, write three points of action, and follow through on them. Don’t say, “We’ll see,” she said. Say, “we’ll talk about some things we can do.”

As for the bullies, she recommends compassionate punishment, in which bullies are asked to be kind to others, and document it.

She also recommends having bullies work with animals. “I believe domestic animals are here to teach us compassion and wild animals to teach us humility.”

They can also grow empathy through things like visiting a homeless shelter, she said.