What to read after And Words Can Hurt Forever?

Despite the Best Itentions of school administrators, educators, and parents, many high schools -- even those that have addressed bullying and are considered safe -- unwittingly support and enable hostile and threatening environments. As a society, we are only just beginning to understand the degree of damage that bullying inflicts on individual teenagers and on their relationships later in life. In this groundbreaking work, James Garbarino, the best-selling author of Lost Boys, and Ellen deLara uncover the staggering extent of emotional cruelty and its ramifications and counter the nursery rhyme that words don't hurt. Through hundreds of interviews, the authors provide a direct word-for-word view into the thinking of adolescents and the strategies they use to keep themselves safe during the school day. The latest opinion polls and sociological research show that bullying is the foremost problem in the minds of teenagers, yet no book, until now, has focused exclusively on the experiences and needs of older children. Bullying has long been regarded and tolerated by adults and students alike as a way of school life or rite of passage. But the trauma of Columbine altered students' sense of security at school. Their reactions to emotional violence in the classroom and on the playground, in the form of harassment, intimidation, and fear, now, and finally, are driving parents to consider this insidious phenomenon the serious problem it has always been. And Words Can Hurt Forever, however, not only calls attention to the problem; it not only tells what individual parents can do to protect their child; it also throws into sharp relief the issue of adult responsibility for improving our children's emotional lives.