Bullying breaks my heart. This form of abuse affects most kids at one time or another, whether they’re on the receiving end, the witnessing end (aka, the bystanders), or the ones doing the bullying.

 Good resources on bullying are few and far between. So many books on bullying take a blame-the-victim stance, as I talk about here. That’s why I think books like Lerner’s How Can I Deal with Bullying?: A Book about Respect (cover pictured) are so very important.

Of course, no one book can singlehandedly solve the bullying problem. (Don’t we all wish?) But How Can I Deal with Bullying? gives some great tips and tricks to help kids who bully to improve their social skills, build up their self-confidence so they don’t feel the need to bully, and learn how to make friends and relate appropriately to peers. All these things are the key to fixing our bullying problem, because hurt people, hurt people. Happy, confident people are interested in building others up—not in bullying.

I hope you’ll consider being an anti-bully in your school or community by sharing some supportive words with any kids you see dealing with bullying—whether as the bullied, the bystander, or the bully. And if Lerner’s book on bullying helps even one kid who’s struggling with this issue, then I consider it an unmitigated success.