As in ‘Ant Bully,’ even small behavior lessons can be mighty

“The Ant Bully,” animated film written and directed by John A. Davis.

The premise

LUCAS NICKLE (voice by Zack Tyler Eisen) is a short, spectacled 10-year-old boy whom his mother calls “Peanut” and treats him like a much younger child. He is bullied by Steve (Myles Jeffrey), who says, “What are you going to do about it? Nothing, because I’m big and you’re small.” Lucas turns his pent-up anger and humiliation toward an ant colony in the garden, besieging it with a water hose until the ant wizard Zoc (Nicolas Cage) devises a magic potion to shrink “Lucas the Destroyer” down to ant size. The ants then capture the shrunken boy, and the queen ant (Meryl Streep) decides to teach him the ways of the ants: mutual respect, teamwork, rules of cooperative behavior. Ultimately, these lessons enable a newly confident, full-sized Lucas to stand up to his mother and to defeat the old bully.

The medical questions

DO bullies attract a coterie of innocent bystanders as the movie portrays? Are victims of bullies prone to identify with the aggressor and transfer this aggression to weaker targets? Can parents contribute to the problem by undermining a child’s self-esteem? Can learning to respect others and working as part of a team build confidence in real children?

The reality

“MANY bullies were once bullied themselves and they have learned to identify with the aggressor,” says Dr. Heather Krell, associate professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at UCLA. “It is totally believable that Lucas would transfer his aggression to the ant colony.”

Like Lucas, many children who are bullied are not treated properly even by their own parents until they learn to “respect themselves and find their own voice,” she says. This parental treatment can contribute to a low self-esteem and sensitivity that bullies then prey upon, continuing a vicious cycle.

But, Krell adds, bullies -- and those they bully -- can be taught more social, respectful behavior.

Over the last three years, UCLA researchers have conducted several groundbreaking studies on bullying.

They’ve found that bullies are often popular and considered cool, while their victims suffer from social isolation and are often depressed and anxious. Almost half of the sixth-graders surveyed reported having been bullied, they found.

As in the movie, a collection of misfit bystanders can become part of a bully’s ring rather than take the chance of being bullied themselves. “Some kids can try to ignore the bully but it feels like a loss of power -- it goes inside and feels toxic,” says Ava de la Sota, a health educator at UCLA’s Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School.

She’s developed a program that teaches one-liners to kids like Lucas who are sensitive about being short or wearing eyeglasses. They learn not only how to defend themselves verbally, but how to deflate conflicts and understand others’ points of view. The program, de la Sota, says, can prevent them from being bullied -- and from becoming bullies. In this environment, bullies are no longer able to thrive.

“Bullies know how to go for the weakness. This can be overcome with a carefully developed school-wide, ant-like support system that promotes resilience and offers mediation and follow-through.” For de la Sota, ants stand as a metaphor for an adult community that teaches children the mature adaptive skills needed to combat bullies.

Dr. Marc Siegel is an internist and an associate professor of medicine at New York University’s School of Medicine. He is also the author of “False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear.” In the Unreal World, he explains the medical facts behind the media fiction.