The John Tesh Radio Show

Monday - Friday: 7:00 PM - 12:00 AM

The John Tesh Radio Show is packed with plenty of real-life knowledge, random intelligence, and expert advice on the subjects that are important to you and your family, along with all your favorite music from the 80's, 90's and NOW!

Schoolyard bullying can definitely turn tragic, like the Spring case of Phoebe Prince – a 15-year-old girl who committed suicide after classmates taunted her, sent threatening text messages, shouted insults in the hallway, and defaced her school photo with obscene drawings. According to LiveScience, suicides caused by bullying are rare, but the case raises a troubling question: What makes kids so cruel?

René Veenstra is a sociologist in the Netherlands. He says that bullying is different from friendly teasing, because it’s long-term, unwanted, and is often used to maintain the social pecking order. Bullying can cause depression, poor performance in school, and low self-esteem that can last for years. What motivates bullies? They want to be noticed. Veenstra points out that 85% of bullying happens for the benefit of an audience, and bullies strategically pick victims that few of their classmates will defend. Kids who are socially awkward are more vulnerable to bullies – but there’s no one thing that makes a child a target. It could be anything from wearing pink – to being short – to wearing glasses – to tripping and dropping their books in the hallway.

So, why don’t more kids defend classmates who’re being bullied? Because a lot of kids have a hard time intervening without the support of teachers and authority figures, who are sometimes too quick to dismiss bullying as “kids being kids.” Adults don’t always set good examples. For example, grown-ups often tailgate slow drivers is an effort to intimidate them. That’s a page right out of the bullying handbook. Rosalind Wiseman created the anti-bulling program “Owning Up.” She says anti-bullying programs do work, but schools can’t just have an assembly, say the school has “zero tolerance” for bullying and call it a day. For the message to sink in, teachers have to be trained to respond to bullying on a daily basis – and the school has to continuously reinforce the idea that bullying is not acceptable. If you’d like to go further – whether you’re a student, a teacher or a parent - check out the website NoBully.com.

When the economy’s bad, shopping is one of the first things cut out of the budget. According to USA Today, more women are exchanging swapping for shopping. Some friends get together at homes for swapping parties - trading gently worn clothing. Strangers are also exchanging stuff online or at organized meet-ups. Sometimes there are DJs, massages, hair and makeup consultations and more.  Whatever’s left over after the swapping gets donated to charity.

It’s not just clothes being traded, either. DVDs, video games, books, house wares, unopened toiletries and energy bars – anything that would’ve gone to waste in one person’s house is ripe for swapping. Most people have something they could swap. Goodwill found out that about 24 million pounds of clothes and textiles end up in landfills every year. The swap site, ThredUp, found that a quarter of a person’s closet goes unworn, and that by age 17, kids have outgrown more than 1,300 articles of clothing. Those are just a couple of reasons swapping is so hot right now.

Another thing that makes swapping cool is that it restores the social element to shopping. Swap parties, like direct-sales parties for jewelry and makeup, turn the experience into ‘shopertainment.’ Melissa Massello, co-founder of The Swapaholics, says it gives you the same high as standard bargain hunting. Her Boston-area swap meets have become so popular over the last year that she’s expanding them from monthly to weekly. The online swap sites are just as popular. SwapMamas.com started as a baby-gear exchange. Now their 20,000 visitors a month are bartering things like wedding china for clothes, or a Burberry trench coat for 20 cloth diapers.