We really can stop bullying. It isn’t something that has to be part of childhood. According to worldwide research, 50 percent reductions in rates of bullying are possible. Parents can really help to reduce bullying. The first step is to identify unacceptable ways your own child is acting.
These are some of the different kinds of bullying:
• Physical aggression — This includes hitting, kicking, pushing, choking, and punching.
• Verbal aggression — This includes threatening, taunting, teasing, starting rumors, and hate speech.
• Excluding others — This doesn’t mean that a student should have to be friends with every other student. It does mean that children should not be allowed to systematically exclude others. “No one should play with Mary!” or “No one wants to play with him,” or “Don’t be her friend!” are ways people exclude others.
Bullying is a kind of sexual harassment which is even like spousal abuse in the ways they are similar:
• It is done by a person with more power or social support to someone with less power and less social support.
• It many times includes the abuser blaming the target for the abuse.
• It often leads to the target blaming him ore herself for the abuse.
• In most bullying situations, the target cannot stop the bullying by his or her own actions.
You certainly do not want to model bullying for your child so be sure to deal with abuse when it is in your own home. Your child is well aware of what is happening in her own home. She is learning about what is acceptable every day.
You want to be able to talk with your child about the problem and explain how the bully feels and how the bullied feels. You don’t have to have a child being bullied to talk about the issue.
Your 9-year-old may not always tell you when she is ridiculed or made fun of because she might be embarrassed or because she feels that you will not be able to help. This is heartbreaking, but just as heartbreaking is when you see or hear of your child being the one doing the teasing or bullying.
Simple demands, “Don’t say that anymore” or “That’s not nice” do not address the problem. Increase her sensitivity to the other child’s feelings by saying, “Imagine how you would feel if you tripped and fell and somebody said, ‘What a klutz’? Or, ‘Did you see the look on Karen’s face when you called her duck-face? I wonder how she felt?’”
Teaching compassion and kindness is easier for her to understand when you are gentle and kind in correcting her. Chances are, she probably already felt bad after she said those things anyway at least you hope she did.
Any kind of bullying hurts. Help your child learn about the impact of bullying versus the ways to be compassionate and kind.
Cynthia Martin is the founder of the First Teacher program and former executive director of Parenting Matters Foundation, which published newsletters for parents, caregivers and grandparents.
