“It’s not unusual for an individual to go into the junior high years being relatively secure, healthy and happy. Perhaps she even comes from a good home life. Her emotions are pretty much together. But she then emerges two or three years later broken and shattered emotionally from what she sustained there.”

Rejection from peers and the unkind atmosphere that many children and teens have to endure at school can scar them psychologically for years to come — even into adulthood. Grown-ups have a responsibility to stop this thing whenever it rears its ugly head in their presence. But what do parents do while their kids are at school?

One step is to find out what actions their kids’ teachers take when they see peer brutality occurring. It’s important to make sure that your kids’ teachers don’t stand by and watch while children tear one another to pieces.

It takes a lot of work for a teacher to stay on her toes to defend that underdog in the classroom. But if that does not occur, that youngster can be harassed all day long. I had a mother some years ago tell me she was a homeroom mother, and she went to school to help with the Valentine’s Day party. Valentine’s Day is a dangerous day for kids.

In the course of the party, the teacher announced that they were going to play a game that required the boys and the girls to pair up as teams and then compete with one another. The moment the teacher said that, the boys all turned and pointed at one girl in the class named Hazel. They all laughed and said, “Oh, no! I don’t want to be put with Horrible Hazel! Anybody but her!”

Unkindness from your own sex is extremely painful, but that is nothing compared to ridicule by the opposite sex. Here you have a little girl in the fourth grade experiencing one of the most difficult moments of her life because she was unattractive. She was overweight and her teeth protruded, and she didn’t dress very nicely. So here the boys are having a ball at her expense.

It’s a lonely moment for the little girl. Yet, the teacher said nothing and left this girl to cope all by herself. She flushed and looked down and kind of slid to the back of the room. When I was a teacher, it was my goal to establish an understanding in the class early in the year that would prevent these situations from occurring. I would say to the students, “We are a family here, and we are not going to do that to one another.”

But if I had not done my homework, and if a similar situation took place in my classroom, I would have come to the defense of that girl. Those boys would have gotten the worst I had to offer. They would have seen anger from me that day, only I would have been under control.

I would have said:

Hey, wait a minute! I hear all you guys laughing; I see you pointing; I hear the things you’re saying about Hazel. I’d like to know something: I want to know which one of you does not have something in your life, something you’ve done, some aspect of who you are that we could not all laugh at if we knew about it. You know what? I have your records in front of me. I know something about your homes. I know who you are. I could, at this moment, pull things out and share it with others that would make them all laugh at you. But you never have to worry about me doing that –– not in a thousand years would I do that.

You are completely safe in this room. I would not permit it. Do you want to know why? Because it hurts when you do things like that to others. Have you ever had anybody turn and laugh at something you said? Have you ever raised your hand in class and said something really stupid, and then had everybody turn and laugh at you? Do you remember what that felt like? That’s what you just did to her, and I’m here to tell you, you won’t do that anymore in this class. If you do, you’re going to deal with me. We will not treat each other that way in this class.

What I’ve found is that when a strong, respected teacher comes immediately to the defense of the least respected student in the class, the whole classroom breathes a sigh of relief –– because they know they’re safe from that ever happening to them. They know they are protected, too. That highly competitive, hostile, angry environment that many children live in can be improved when we teach kindness and respect for others by insisting on civility in our classrooms and in our homes. When we do this for our children, we’re laying a foundation for human kindness in the world of adulthood to come.

— Adapted from a broadcast by Dr. James Dobson