How to Teach Kids Compassion

June 17 -- We've all heard it said that children can be cruel, and all of us remember childhood teasing.

But when Sally Clark, a second-grade teacher from Denver, heard about a boy who had endured six years of bullying, she followed one of "Murphy's Laws" from Good Morning America's parenting contributor Ann Pleshette Murphy: Thou Shalt Teach Compassion.

"It's never too early to begin to teach kids how to treat one another with respect," said Clark. "And I expect that from my kids, and they know that."

Forced to Eat Sand

Ten-year-old Timothy Summers, a fifth-grader at McKinley Elementary School in Minneapolis, has suffered abuse in school since kindergarten.

"A lot of people have bully stories, but I don't think many of them have gone through the things that he's had to go through," said Tim White, Summers' father. "Having Raid sprayed on him, having paint dumped all over him, on a new jacket that he just bought."

Summers described the range of abuses he has tolerated, with a shrug.

"Get beat up, chased out of people's yards, forced to eat sand, glass thrown at me, punched," he said.

Coping with attention deficit disorder made school enough of a struggle for Timothy, but as the target of relentless bullying, he was pushed almost to the breaking point.

Time for Parents to Act

In an effort to protect Timothy, his family tried three different schools. They began to fear that Timothy would give up, and that his depression would turn to rage. Though they knew their son was not a violent child, Timothy's parents had read too many stories about bullying that led to school shootings or suicides.

"I just didn't want my son to grow up having that thought in his head, that if you grow up and get picked on like that, that the way to deal with it is to go into a school and start shooting," White said.

Watching her son get hurt, Timothy's mother realized that something had to be done.

"When he started making depressive-type statements about wanting to die, and not wanting to live anymore, it was just time to act, and do something," said Kelly Summers.