I asked Clint; “So what kind of tips would you give to a parent whose kid is being bullied? She knows. He knows that they’re being bullied. What would you recommend?”

There’s a couple of things. What people don’t understand is, I use this thing called the dialogue model, and in the dialogue model, it says with two people talking like we are right now, if there’s even a hint of NO safety in the conversation, people won’t talk about it. And this is where I encourage parents to talk to their children about creating safety for them to feel comfortable to talk about anything. Because a lot of times kids might be bullied.

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They don’t want to say certain things because they feel scared. So they don’t say they go underground and they suffer in silence. So a big part of that is a bit as a parent taking the step to actually create safety for your child, to have the conversation where you’re saying no matter what I’ve said in the past, you know, sometimes like you mentioned, you know, our, my background too, my dad, I was born in South Africa, fairly robust dad, you know? Encouraging parents to take the step to say, I’ve got to create safety for my child, because one of the worst things, when I was doing a lot of the research and talking to parents who have lost kids through suicide, a lot of them didn’t know.

Clint is the author of a book called Lighting the Blue Flame. The book is written as a story of a teen who commits suicide because of being bullied, but wants his death to at least have an impact to change things so it doesn’t happen to others. So he decides to send those he believes are responsible for him being bullied, those who watched and laughed and the school for not doing enough. Ultimately the school gets Clint involved as a character in the book to help them and the students deal with the suicide, but also look at how they can prevent it from happening again. Clint’s character also helps the mother deal with her grieving process.

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