Almost nine years later she has a book and im still on the show. 100 chicken recipes with 50 vegetarian and you know i said i have to and what ive learned is chicken is the most fertile versatile ingredient you can use in the kitchen. You can do anything to it. You can bake it, rustic, barbecue it, just amazing. Lorraine wallace are these are recipes . All of my recipes and they been tried and tested and its what i love to do. I am the tester. I have not cooked any of them but i had eaten everyone. It has family stories, family recipes and a family tip that about a. Can you give us a little background on you two, how long you have been married . We have six children and we have been together for 16 years. But i have to say if the oldfashioned way. I had four and she had two. Getting your family around the table and trying to figure out everybody schedule and their needs, including their husband who has 5 00 in the morning get up on sunday. Its amazing, so this great book helps you do that. What time do you be the chicken on sunday . We eat saturday night. Soup is on sunday. Hence the night, saturday night chicken. You would think i would have caught that. Mr. Sunday saturday night chicken, Lorraine Wallace, chris and Lorraine Wallace thank you very much. Thank you. Up next on booktv, after words with guest host antibullying at davids an action plan for teachers, parents and communities to combat the bullying crisis. This week Cynthia Lowen and her book bully. Ms. Lowen talks about her documentary film and talks about essays from antibullying and stopping the epidemic of bullying in the u. S. Host i am so delighted to be here today with Cynthia Lowen, the producer of the widely acclaimed and really important new documentary, bully and the coeditor of the book of the same title. Both of which, as our nations 30 little secret about bullying in schools across america. Both the movie and the book put a human face on what its about, how it impacts kids, on both sides and on the sideline, and their families. So thank you so much cynthia for being here today. Why dont we start with you telling us a little bit about yourself . How did you get here . How did you get drawn to the issue . Y. Here, why now . Guest i come from a background as a writer and when i was in middle school, i was one of those kids who was really shy. I think i try to sail under the radar and i was someone who and i didnt know what to do about it. All of us i think in this country were starting to see people coming out in talking about their experience with this phenomenon that so many of us had have experienced in one way or another and have had no word for it other than adolescents, other than growing up. Finally, people were starting to stand back and say, hold on, this isnt a normal part of growing up. This is not a normal rite of passage. I think there was a moment where there was a possibility for change and director lee hirsch and i started the film out of that feeling, that voices were bubbling up, coming up to the surface to say, this isnt something we can except anymore as a normal part of our culture. So in 2009, april about month, it was right after to young people took their own lives, Justin Carrera and carl in springfield massachusetts. Both of those tragedies really i think ignited a National Recognition of what has been going on for so long and we were seeing parents riding on Message Boards and we were seeing every new story that came up we would see in the comments section , hundreds of comments from parents saying my child is going through this. Kids riding in themselves saying im going through this and i feel hopeless and helpless and i dont know what to do. From educators writing in and then saying we dont know how to handle this, we dont have the tools to respond to this and we decided at that time to start meeting the kids and families and educators on the frontline as an issue. Host so, what is the difference between teasing and bullying . Is everything bad that happens to a kid olean, or is it like a global definition of olean that really works . Guest yeah, i think we all in our lives tease each other. There are things that are goodnatured and teasing as part of our way of communicating with each other. Not all bullying, not every fight is a case of bullying. There are instances where there will be conflict, where kids get in fights. There will be violence and that is not necessarinecessarily bullying. It is bullying when the target does not have the ability to make it stop, when its something that is going on over time, continued abuse, which the endgame is to isolate them, to alienate them, to humiliate them and prevent them from being part of the community. Host is a leading something something bullying something that is mainly just about words . Is a just physical . Is it a combination . Guest today we are seeing that it takes all different kinds of forms. One thing parents often asked me is is bullying worse today than it has ever been before . We have heard a lot about cyberbullying and theres a lot of awareness going around and which bullying is finding new platforms and new ways to take place. Well that is absolutely a significant piece of the picture, the good oldfashioned bullying is still quite alive and well. I think its something that is happening with physical interactions and in the boley we see a child who every time he gets on the school bus he is pretty likely to know that he is going to be shoved by someone, hes going to be pushed by someone. He may be pushed out of his seat. He is going to hear things. People are going to call him names and i think that is when things are very prevalent. Among girls, it can be ostracization. Everyone has decided to throw a party and somehow you are made very aware that you are not invited to this. Social exclusion is a big part of it and again on line, passing pictures and spreading rumors. So, i think it takes a lot of different forms. I think what underscore is bullying i think and why it is so hard to work out is that its about social dynamics. Its about social hierarchies and between kids and adolescents that are not particularly middle school that are jockeying for power or they are figuring out how to use their social power. Is complicated. The child who may be the most popular person on their sports team may be the same person who is holy clinic it on their boss. So it reflects the social dynamics of the group and the semantics or ice changing so i think thats part of what makes it really not just one thing that we can say and we need to stomp it out wherever we see it. The kids who really are sophisticated in a lot of understanding the dynamics of who has power and who doesnt. Host how prevalent is bullying . Can you give us some information about like, how likely children generally are to face bullying and also whether there are are special populations of kids who are particularly vulnerable . Guest absolutely. We know that 13 million kids will people lead in the United States this year. That is a lot of kids. We know that kids who are lgbt are four times more likely to be bullied than other kids. Host and that is kids that are transgender, bisexual or perceive to be . Guest absolutely. Kids dont necessarily have to identify being picked on or harassed for a gender ster. That is another rt of the picture. Another population that is very vulnerable our kids with autism. A very high number of kids on the autism spectrum are bullied. Often, kids who are at what they call the high functioning autism, they are mainstreamed into school so they have great great. They look like everybody else, and yet they have a disability that is invisible and which plays out in the social context of not understanding the behaviors that someone may be doing our olean and are not friendship. Host and you describe in the book that kids with special needs, for them bullying is a pandemic. Guest absolutely. Guest one of the things, kids with autism and kids with learning disabilities and kids with dyslexia, talks about going through his adolescence and theyre being bullying all over the place and it is playing out in different ways in the community but in later life he was dyslexic and a lot of folks now, now that we have a lot more awareness and of looking back on their time of going through middle school and going through high school where they were considered to be stupider not until unsure intelligeintellige nt or made fun of for what we now understand as a learning disability. Host just to clarify for the viewers, who is joe penciling no . Guest he is a wellknown actor who was nosed most wellknown for his role in [inaudible] host you mentioned Junior High School kids. Is there a subset in Junior High School that is particularly vulnerable . Guest we know about what is happening and what makes such a hotspot for bullying is kids brains are changing. Literally, their frontal cortex is rearranging. Their behaviors are more impulsive. Any of us who have been there or who have kids there are there and feel like, my child is turning into a total alien. A lot of emotion, a lot of hormones, just really learning how to process things. What happens in that phase is that you can make a lot of decisions that you look back on later and say gosh, i really didnt think that one through. Another thing that is really happening at that point is the influence of peers is becoming more important than the influence of family or parents. So theres a real shift that takes place in who they they are important elements are and where they are looking for support. And i think that is what really makes some of the jockeying for power and popularity really feel like this kind of almost life or death thing when youre in middle school. If you have been ostracizeostracized, no one invites you to things, can feel like the entire world has turned against you and i think with what we see taking place on line and on the internet, that sense that the entire world knows something about you or has spread a rumor about you or do not like you can really snowball very quickly when messages are being put on facebook or Text Messages and things like that. Host so is it really just like different kids who are perceived as weaker perhaps and different perhaps in whatever way, shape or form it is. I am sure that there is holy that goes on of kids who are perceived as overweight or underweight or of one National Origin or another. I know here in new york we have several incidents where some sick kids is seek kids were targeted by bullyings and physically assaulted so its about really a way of not coming to terms with differences. Is there anything about the families of kids who are bullied that arouse any sort of conclusions to be drawn, or does it cut across all different kinds of things quests. Guest while i think families have a picture across the Spectrum Kids who manifests bullying behavior and i think thats one of the things that is really needed when we look at bullying. We cant just focus on what happens in the hours of the kids are in school. Theres a huge amount of pressure from educators to address bullying when they see it in their schools. There are laws passed to varying degrees of effectiveness that have really mandated that schools must be aware of this issue and that must be providing special development and we have gotten to a point in a short period of time really since 2009 for a thing school see their responsibility with regards to this issue in a totally different light. That said, i think that bringing it into the fold and working with parents on this remains really typical. I think schools are scared that if they admit that there is a bullying problem, they will be attacked or that they may be liable to lawsuits. I think they feel very vulnerable in their ability to say, we have a problem here and we need help. We need tools and we are trying to work on this. So i think that parents of kids can be empowered in a lot of different ways. I think that one of the things is that alex doesnt tell his parents and this is absolutely what happens. Parents do not necessarily know whats going on with their kids when they walk onto their bus, when they are at school and i think that often kids will know when their parents are under stress and there is a lot going on at home and parents are busy. You know, the communication isnt great. Or even if the communication is great, often kids are ashamed. They are afraid that either their parents wont take them seriously or if they do take them seriously that they are going to march into school and do something thats going to make the situation even worse. There are situations where kids dont trust that the adults are going to be able to make their situation better or make it stop without actually making them feel more alienated or making the bullies know that they have bullied in such a way that now its worse. Kids dont want to tell and kids dont often necessarily want to perceive whats going on his bullying. I think that one of the things for parents to who suspect their kids might be bullied or any kids is to find ways to talk to their kids about whats going on in school in a way that isnt necessarily saying, are you being bullied . Host you raise an interesting point that kind of rolls off the tongue in finding ways to talk to your kid about whats going on in school and to identify whether there is bullying or not. But i think that its probably fair to say that most parents would give their left arm to know how to do that. What kinds of suggestions you have for parents, to help their kids talk to them . I think it gets harder as kids get older and very much want independence and they want to be able to handle situations on their own. So i think at a different level the questions in the and the conversations can be more or less direct. I think for kids who are at the younger stages or the end of elementary school, it can be much easier to broach the topic. Questions or conversations about you know, who fits in with the group, who was playing with whom . Who seems to be ostracized . I think those questions can be answered more direct way for kids who are younger. I think when kids get to middle school, its more roundabout. I think one way of getting a sense of what the social fabric looks like in school is asking questions about . I think kids are fascinated by changing clicks and changing social dynamics, how different roofs identify themselves. I think asking some questions were getting a sense through conversations about what is the social fabric looking like . Where do you feel that you fit in . Where do you feel like you are not wanted or who are you offended by . Host can you give us examples of questions that you think work for kids . We all know that, are you being bullied in school . Does not work. Guest because they are like no, absolutely not. I think questions around things like drama. Is their drama going on in groups . Do you have a group of kids and you notice that someone is not there . Wheres janine today . Whats going on with her . Is everything okay between you two . I think the question, some of the questions i brought up before, how do kids break down . Who is wearing what . What do you call the different kids in their groups . How do they identify and what are some of the things that they do together and that they dont do or who is part of that group . Similar questions like, who do you sit with at lunch . Some kids will be open to answering that, some wont. But i think that those are some ways to get into it. Afterschool activities, what are some of the things that are available . What interests you . If your child is interested in something and then suddenly seems to be withdrawn from that, i would definitely probe a little further. Maybe its just that their passions or their interests have changed and that happens all the time but maybe its because the activity has become toxic somehow. Host what do you say is the responsibility that all parents and we know all parents want to know what goes on at school and all parents have a tough time finding out. That is a given, but the object of finding out what is going on in school and in part to know whether your kid is being hurt, terrorized our bullied . Those are i would imagine them important for all parents, whether or not the kids are being bullied, to find out what their kids role is in the social fabric. I am sure that there are lots of parents who think their kids are perfectly happy in school and it turns out that they may have, they may be bullied. So, questions like you know, what is the atmosphere like on the schoolbus . What is the school bus like . Is it fun or to the people hated . Hated . Where do you sit on the schoolbus . Host thats a great question. Guest that i think you will find a lot of kids will say, you didnt go to the back of the schoolbus unless you really wanted to get it. I was at the front of the schoolbus because i was terrified of what was going on back there so i think thats a great question and you learn a lot about what its like there, by what is going on. Where did you sit . Where does this seem not really safe and where do you feel safe . I also think parents kind of know a lot more about the social dynamics with the groups of kids that will come to their house after school or that they will see on the weekends. I think its being inched involved in your childs life in making sure that they are there for dinner every night. I think family dinners are really important time where its possible for parents to be there. Often its not possible when parents are working or have other commitments but making that time to make sure that theres a there is a safe place at home, where, even when, i remember when i was in high school, the last thing i wanted to do was to sit down to dinner but i knew that was what we did every night. Just that we were going to spend that time together, things come out. I think its important. I think right now there are incredible pressures on families and i think it can be very very difficult to take the time to sit down, put down the iphone, put down the computer and turn the tv off. And i think that that is one way that some of that information and patterns or things that seemed to seem to be out of whack often will arise. Host when you were making the documentary, there came a moment of when you took off your filmmaker hat. That was with alex. Tell us about that. Guest we have been following alex as you know, through the school year and we were aware that he was being bullied on the schoolbus and it was something that was escalating over the course of the school year. We had let the school no early in the school year on the very first day that he had been punched on the bus on the right to school and the response was sort of, yeah school buses are pretty rough. They are bad. But not saying and as we were witnessing alex getting bullied more severely over the course of the year and as new things were happening, we came to a point where we knew that on the one hand, our responsibility to the film and the partnership with alex wh