Suspend Bullying: 6-Year-Old Starts Awareness Campaign Featuring Suspenders

Six-year-old Bryan Jenkins of Georgia came up with his own anti-bullying campaign thanks to a pair of super cool suspenders. Bryan started first grade this year and decided to express himself on Picture Day. Bryan picked out his own outfit that he wanted captured in the yearbook forever.

The photo above shows what Bryan chose to wear that day. Unfortunately, kids made fun of him, laughed at him and made fun of his outfit. Fortunately, Bryan held his head high and was mostly unaffected by the ridicule. Bryan’s brush with bullying over his choice of clothing, though, made him consider how other kids might feel by being teased.

“That weekend, he was at the mall with me and his brothers and he got new suspenders and he said, ‘You know mama bullying is bad some people can brush it off like me but other people cant’,” Mindy Grubbs, Bryan’s mom, said, explaining her son’s thought process.

“For one day we should all be friends and be nice to each other,” Bryan told his mom. “On November 10, we should all wear suspenders.”

Mindy was curious why her son suggested everyone should wear suspenders.

Mindy said that her son looked at the suspenders and explained his clever play-on-words, “To suspend bullies even if it’s just for a day.”

Unlike Ray Rice who made the news with his anti-bullying “Ray’s Links of Kindness” and then later again when, according to The Daily Beast, he allegedly knocked out his future wife in an elevator, Bryan has nothing to gain from his anti-bullying campaign. He just wants people to be nice to each other.

Bryan also has never suffered extensive turmoil from bullying like the late Ryan Halligan, the victim of years of bullying and cyberbulling. John Halligan, a nationally renowned anti-bullying speaker and Ryan’s father, will share Ryan’s heartbreaking story at yet another school today, according to The Intelligencer.

Bryan is just a creative, loving little boy full of hope for the future… and for November 10, 2014, the day Bryan hopes the nation will join him in wearing suspenders in an attempt to suspend bullying.

Bryan is quite a character. He loves swimming, Legos, SpongeBob, playing on his tablet and his Playstation like most children do, but he is also a retired beauty pageant participant. He put down that hobby to take up hip hop and jazz dance classes. He said he’d be willing to do a pageant again, but only if it is one that actively helps other people. He enjoys service to others and is active in scouting.

Bryan loves coming up with new crazy outfits to express himself like the one he created for his picture day that spawned the “Suspend Bullying” campaign. His mom said that he loves to be noticed when he enters a room. He especially likes Ellen Degeneres and looks up to her. Bryan says he likes how she treats people and also how she dresses. Bryan especially likes bow ties, rock and roll shirts and, of course, cool suspenders.

Mindy told Inquisitr that her son is a caring loving boy. Bryan, according to Mindy, is the type of child who would stop and help someone that had fallen down even if everyone else had passed by them. Bryan told his mom that it makes him feel bad when grown-ups and children bully each other. Bryan wants to suspend bullying forever, but for now, he will settle for one day: November 10.

Anyone interested in sharing in Bryan’s big day by joining the “Suspend Bullying” campaign can post photos of themselves to Instagram, Twitter and Facebook using the hashtag #SuspendBullying anytime, but especially on November 10.