William Shatner Shows the Way for Name Ridicule

How to Handle Bullying

Take our How Well Do You Understand Bullying?

Find a therapist to support kids or teens

The Super Bowl commercial starring William Shatner is a valuable device for promoting resilience.

Many bullied children get upset when their names are made fun of.

William Shatner now embraces the name-insults that would outrage him in his youth.

The commercial is an excellent opportunity to get kids to understand and embrace humor towards themselves.

One of the main attractions of the Super Bowl is the funny commercials. William Shatner, of Star Trek fame, is now 94 years old and starred in a hilarious Kellogg’s Raisin Bran commercial that has made the news. While the purpose of the commercial was to bring relief from constipation, it deserves recognition and applause for its unintended benefit for victims of bullying.

One of the most common symptoms of bullying is having one’s name ridiculed. A large percentage of bullied children who come to me for help suffer from this. Many news stories have appeared about kids facing name-ridicule, and I have written articles in this PT venue in response to ones about kids named Trump and Isis.

As a kid, William Shatner was terrified of being called Will Shat. In an interview with him about the commercial, Entertainment Weekly informs us:

Shatner says that he had "tremendous" apprehensions about leaning into his name's nastier side. "I haven't lost those apprehensions…I mean, I used to get into fights when I was a kid in the locker room. They'd kid me about that. I'd say, 'Don't call me that!' and I'd fight them. It was a sore spot as a child. And then adults stopped doing it. But it lurks, and for them [the Kellogg commercial creative crew] to find it was, in itself, a kind of discovery."

Shatner says that he had "tremendous" apprehensions about leaning into his name's nastier side.

"I haven't lost those apprehensions…I mean, I used to get into fights when I was a kid in the locker room. They'd kid me about that. I'd........

© Psychology Today