Hello CJs,
We bully people who are different from us because they make us feel uncomfortable. Our comfortableness is present in sameness and commonalities.
In doing a pilot program with the Voices of CJ in several preschools, I created a way to overcome this. Each week the children had a new buddy. They had to spend that week with their buddy sharing different activities that helped them to feel comfortable with each other. An interesting thing happened. When a bully was paired with one of his targets, within a week, they were buddies and the bullying ceased between the two. Yes, it works.