What Can a Parent Do About Bullying?
PLUK Newsletter, Parents Let’s Unite for Kids, Dec 1999/Jan 2000
Bullying is a significant and pervasive problem for children in school. For many youngsters, fear is part of the everyday life of being a student.
How big is the problem?
One in 10 students report being regularly harassed or attacked by bullies.
Forty percent of bullied students in primary grades and 56% of bullied students in secondary grades reported that teachers tried to stop to bullying only “once in awhile” or “almost never.”
Eighty percent of 8th through 12th graders reported being bullied at some point.
Ninety percent of 4th through 8th graders reported being bullied at some point.
Twenty percent of 4th through 8th graders reported academic difficulties resulting from peer abuse.
(Excerpted from the Family Action Guide for Preventing Youth Violence, Safe Schools and Communities Coalition.)
In order to avoid teasing, harassment or even physical attack, students may avoid certain parts of the school building, skip school, feign illness or actually become sick because of the pressure. This fear may be felt not only by the targeted children but also by other classmates and adults who are exposed to this tense environment.
To lessen the incidence of bullying, adults must take responsibility for setting standards and enforcing norms that do not tolerate bullying behavior. Not only does the targeted child need help, but so does the bully.
Children who are bullies
often have the following behavioral difficulties:Using self-control
Cooperating
Problem solving
Helping others
Sharing
Making good decisions
Bullies usually have not internalized social “rules” for behavior, such as how to have positive interactions and solve problems. This lack of an internal set of rules about appropriate social behaviors is problematic, but becomes magnified when coupled with lack of self-control. Bullies tend to be impulsive. They react immediately and often seem out of control in problematic situations. A classic behavior of bullies is their inability to take ownership of or responsibility for their problems. They usually blame others or act as though they had absolutely no control over their actions, problems, or situations.
Children who have been identified as being bullies need the following kinds of instruction:
Social entry behaviors: using body language, starting a conversation, joining into a game or group, and noticing the feelings of others.
Maintaining social interactions: keeping a conversation going, playing cooperatively, and expressing feelings.
Solving problems: dealing with teasing, dealing with losing, dealing with being left out, using self-control, and accepting “no.”
The most effective methods for teaching these social skills include modeling, coaching, self-management, cognitive strategies, and positive reinforcement.
Children who are targeted by bullies must be protected and made to feel safe. In some cases, targeted children exhibit some social problems of their own which made them feel easily victimized. But no child should be made to feel that it is his or her fault that someone attacks them and makes going to school a frightening experience.
Here are some general
suggestions for children who experience teasing or bullying:Stop, take a deep breath, and count to five.
Decide what the problem is and how you feel about it.
Think about your choices and their consequences.
Ignore the teasing.
Walk away.
Say something good about yourself to yourself or to the other person.
Say how you feel about the teasing in a friendly way.
Decide on your best choice.
Do it.
If you are not successful in getting a bully to stop, tell a trusted adult.
When a child reports bullying to an adult, these reports must be taken seriously. The bully needs to be located and given an opportunity to talk about his or her role in making others feel fearful. If the report of bullying is an accurate one, the bully needs to be engaged in a program to assist him or her with learning better ways to interact.
During the time when a bully is being trained in social skills, the adults in the school environment need to be very vigilant about the welfare of the children who have been “victimized” in the past by the bully. It is not unusual for a victim child who reports bullying to be the subject of retaliation at school or on the way to school or the way home. In severe cases of bullying, the bully may need psychological intervention by mental health professionals.
Parents Let’s Unite For Kids
Phone: (406) 255-0540
Email: plukinfo@pluk.org
Web: www.pluk.org