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Really, he’s kind of cute! Photo by Jacco Rienks on Unsplash
I was looking over the schedule for the upcoming NAIS national conference, Thrive 2025, and I noted that psychologists Michael Thompson and Rob Evans are doing a featured session on Coping with Parents Who Bully the School. If you haven’t seen them in action, it is well worth it; they also wrote this 2016 piece on the same topic which shows off their signature combination of humor and straightforward, effective advice. Read it! I have sat on the floor at many of their crowded presentations over the years.
What I found particularly interesting is the use of the word “bully.” Just coming right out and saying it. I think sometimes there is no other word that can be used although I truly think over the years, the meaning of it has been denigrated to the point where it has lost its resonance. Thompson and Evans comment on this in a footnote of their 2016 article and underscore the definition they are applying to “bully” - I think the word has continued to degrade since then.
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