Kids and Bullying
It’s never okay to bully someone. Some think that name calling is okay and we should just shrug it off. However, I have had clients in their 70’s and 80’s vividly recalling names they were repeatedly called when they were children. These mean, nasty words can stick. When I was a child you could feel safe from the bully when you arrived home from school but that’s not the case today. In today’s world our kids are not only bullied in the playground but they’re bullied 24 hours a day via the internet and mobile phones.
There are four main types of bullying:
1. Verbal bullying - includes name calling, teasing, insults and intimidation
2. Physical bullying - includes pushing, hitting, tripping, pinching, and damaging or taking the victim’s belongings
3. Social bullying - includes spreading rumours, excluding the victim from peer groups, and playing nasty pranks on the victim
4. Cyber-bullying - uses the internet or mobile phones to harass or intimidate the victim. This includes sending nasty or threatening messages/emails, prank calling the victim, sending private messages/photos/emails of the victim to others, being deliberately ignored on social media, or posting mean or nasty comments or pictures on social media
Cyber-bullying is on the rise. A recent survey found that 1 in 10 Australia adolescents reported being cyber-bullied. This same survey found that 1 in 4 students had been bullied by their peers in one form or another.
As a parent I know how awful and powerless it feels to discover your child has been the victim of bullying. You can also feel guilty for not noticing that your child had been bullied earlier rather than finding out after the bullying had become well and truly entrenched.
If you notice your child suddenly becomes unwell on a frequent basis, is increasingly irritable, is reluctant to go to school, their grades have dropped, has changed friendship groups, has nightmares or trouble sleeping, or unexplained cuts and bruises, there’s a chance they may be being bullied. These signs may indicate another concern, so the first thing to do is to talk with your child. They may resist this as they feel embarrassed or uncomfortable but trust your instincts. If they won’t talk with you, talk with their school. If they do talk with you, listen calmly.
Reassure your child they haven’t done anything wrong. Notify their teacher so the school can take action to prevent it from occurring in the future. Discuss ways your child can avoid being bullied such as playing in a different area, staying near the teacher, avoiding being alone. Help your child come up with solutions rather than giving them the answer. This will help with their problem-solving skills and may create a sense of mastery over the situation. Help your child see the consequences for any action they take. For example, confronting a bully and calling them names make things worse, but telling the bully that what they doing is not okay may ease things. If bullying is happening online, contact the website administrators as most of them have anti-harassment policies.
Lastly, lets teach our children not to stand back and watch someone being bullied. Let the bully know that it is not okay to behave that way. When they see someone bullying another they can calmly say “that’s not cool” to the bully and invite the victim to play with them. Bullies often put down others in order to inflate their self-esteem. By taking away their sense of power, you have taken away their incentive to bully that person.
Our main priority should be to help our children feel safe and secure. Keeping a level head when you speak to your child will help reinforce they did the right thing by talking with you. It will also help reassure them they can come to you in the future with other problems.
Helping Your Teen Manage Mean Girls
Adolescence is a time when belonging and approval from one’s peers becomes paramount, as teenagers individuate from the family unit and develop their own identity.
Unfortunately, when there is so much at stake, the temptation to step over others to get to the top can be all too alluring.
Games of power and control are endemic within adolescent peer groups, particularly for females. Males tend to rely on physical strength or humour to determine the pecking order, whereas the hierarchy amongst girls is established through interpersonal interactions and communication. Social exclusion, gossip, the silent treatment, belittling and conditional friendship are all weapons girls may use to reinforce their own sense of inclusion and value.
Too often I hear statements like: “Girls will be girls” and “It’s just a phase.. they’ll grow out of it”. But the truth is, this kind of behaviour extends all throughout the lifespan! Isn’t it better to help your teenagers learn to cope with the nastiness, so they will be equipped to manage it in adulthood? And why should we accept and normalise this behaviour? Can’t we teach our girls to fight against relational aggression, to create a culture of women respecting women and building each other up?
So what can we do to help teenagers navigate the minefield that is the adolescent social milieu? Here are my top tips:
