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UTAH COUNTY -- No one knows more the pain that bullying can cause than the victim. But one Utah County man has found power and healing in sharing his story.
He is also pretty bold in what he says will stop bullying.
Dan Pearce opens his seventh grade yearbook to show his picture. It's scribbled over. He did it himself. "Because I didn't want anyone to ever see that kid," he said.
Pearce runs a popular blog called "Single Dad Laughing." One day he said he felt he had to write down what had happened to him in school.
"Once I wrote it, it became a lot easier," he said.
He wrote that the bullying started in fifth grade. Every day it got worse. Being called names, being slammed into the locker, pushed out of the bus, being isolated, day after day after day. He hated himself, and he prayed that his bullies, or he, would die.
Any child who really loves themselves is not going to be bullied and they are not going to become bullies themselves.
–Dan Pearce
"In extreme cases, kids begin to internalize this and become severely depressed," said Dan Olympia, a University of Utah educational psychology associate professor.
"(They go through) things like school avoidance, anxiety, depression," Olympia told KSL.
"Happy kids are successful kids," explained Verne Larsen, the Safe Schools coordinator at the Utah State Office of Education.
Larsen said kids cannot learn if they don't feel safe. That's why Utah requires all schools to have anti-bullying policies.
But Pearce, whose bullying finally stopped in high school, says it takes more than helping the victim. It takes loving the bully, as well.
"Other kids need to put their arm around the bullies and say they expect more of them, that they are capable of more, that they are loved," Pearce said.
Pearce says parents must tell their children from the time they are very young that they are strong, intelligent, and independent.
"Any child who really loves themselves is not going to be bullied and they are not going to become bullies themselves."
E-mail: mrichards@ksl.com
