1st Draft of Foreword to Picture Book

When growing up almost every child experiences teasing. Most of the time it's innocent, playful, and doesn't really hurt kids. Usually it stops really quickly. But when teasing continues and it starts to annoy and hurt the person getting teased, it becomes bullying. Bullying can be verbal or physical, but both hurt people. Over 30% of youth experiences some kind of bullying going on in their life right now. Bullying in sports can affect athletes confidence and performance while playing in the game. It can make them cry and they might be scared to go play. This can cause children to stop enjoying sports and they will just drop out of playing them.

I myself have been playing soccer on a team for a few years now and it always wasn't really fun. Other kids would laugh at me if I would do bad in games, and sometimes be mad at me for not performing well. But I took all of the laughing behind me and that just motivated me to do better and better. The coach also helped me and others on the team by telling us to ignore others comments and just do your best. Now the only time I get made fun of is when we're fooling around, or I just mess up in practice. So it is mostly teasing and doesn't hurt anyone. But Throughout my years in school, I have noticed and seen a lot of bullying happening. Kids fighting others, or groups of people bullying one kid. I wish I could have helped but I didn't really react. However teachers and Guidance counselors did help them and there was no more bullying.

I have read and noticed that bullying affects kids very negatively and makes them really depressed. Sometimes it even causes youth to commit suicide. But it can be solved. Coaches on a sports team can encourage athletes to report bullying and say that the bully will be severely punished for it. The coach can also watch his or her players, when they are by themselves, and observe how they act. If there is any bullying, they should stop it immediately and everything will be well. Kids should also notice that bullying someone is bad. They should think about themselves and if they would like to be bullied. If every kid would do that, bullying would be really rare or even wouln't exist.