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 Child Overcome Anxiety

Anxiety is one of the most common presentations we see in children. Other terms
used to describe anxiety are fear, nervousness and worries. Your child may be
scared of the dark or strange noises at night. They may be fearful of storms, spiders,
dogs or heights. They may be shy and feel anxious in social situations. They may be
worried about something bad happening and have a need to check things like the
locks on windows or doors. They may feel embarrassed when performing in front of
people, like delivering a speech or being on stage. Whatever the reason for your
child’s worries, there are several ways you can help them.

1. Help Them Stay Calm

When children are anxious, they may experience a number of physical symptoms.
These can include:
- Rapid heart rate
- Fast or shallow breathing
- Butterflies in the stomach
- nausea
- Feeling hot or sweaty
- blushing
- Feeling shaky
- Dizziness
- headaches
- Needing to go to the toilet
You can help your child by encouraging them to take slow, deep breaths. Counting
to 4 or 5 as they breathe in slowly through their nose and the same again as they
breathe out slowly through their mouths can help them calm down and reduce the
physical symptoms they are experiencing. Your child may need to do this for several
minutes until they begin to feel calm.
A relaxation exercise such as laying down and alternately tensing and relaxing their
muscles whilst imagining feeling relaxed and taking slow, deep breaths can also help
them feel calmer.
“Smiling Mind” is a free mindfulness meditation app that can be used with children to
help them relax and feel calm.

2. Encourage Them to Develop More Helpful Ways of Thinking

People who worry often make two thinking errors:
1. They overestimate the chance of something bad happening, and
2. They believe that if what they are worried about does happen, they will not be
able to cope with it. It will be ‘the end of the world’.

These thinking errors can affect how your child is feeling and what they do.
For example: your child hears a strange noise at night and thinks someone might be
trying to break into the house. They feel scared and may hide under their covers,
shaking, or come into your bedroom.

Thoughts ------->  Feelings -------->  Behaviour

You can assist your child to develop more helpful or realistic ways of thinking by
exploring alternative explanations.

For example: your child hears a strange noise at night. It might be a possum walking
on the roof, the neighbour’s cat or a tree branch brushing against the house on a
windy night. These more helpful thoughts can help your child feel calmer and they
may go back to sleep.

There are often plenty of alternative explanations that are likely to be more realistic.
Helping your child develop more helpful or realistic thoughts can help them stay
calm.

Helping them feel able to cope in certain situations is also important in managing
anxiety. For example, your child may worry about being late to school or making
mistakes in their schoolwork. They might worry about being in trouble with their
teacher. The belief is that they won’t be able to cope if they get in trouble. The reality
is often very different. Their teacher may be very understanding of the reason why
they were late to school and assist them in understanding mistakes made in their
schoolwork. Even if the teacher does comment about your child being late to school
or making a mistake in their schoolwork, it is not ‘the end of the world’ that your child
worries it will be.

3. Help Your Child Face Their Fear

Children who worry often avoid situations that they worry about. This may reduce
their anxiety in the short term, however, it strengthens their worry over the longer
term. Being able to face their fears gives them the opportunity to learn that the
situation isn’t as bad as they worry it will be, and that they can cope with it.

For example: your child may worry so much about giving a speech in class that they
avoid doing so. Encouraging them to experience giving speeches can help them feel
more confident and learn that nothing bad will happen to them. Often they worry that
the other children will laugh at them, the children won’t like their speech, or that they
will forget their words. The reality is often very different. No-one might laugh at them,
the other children might really like their speech and find it interesting, and they might
not forget their words. Even if someone does laugh or snigger, or they do forget
some of their words, it is not ‘the end of the world’. They can and do cope.
It is often helpful for children to learn to face their fears in a gradual way. An example
might be:

Step 1: Deliver the speech to Mum or Dad
Step 2: Deliver the speech to Mum, Dad and siblings
Step 3: Deliver the speech to grandparents
Step 4: Deliver the speech to a friend
Step 5: Deliver the speech to a small group of friends
Step 6: Deliver the speech to the teacher
Step 7: Deliver the speech to the class

The steps may be swapped around, depending on how difficult each step may be.
The idea is to start with the easiest step and build up to the hardest step. It can often
be helpful to repeat each step, until your child no longer feels anxious about doing
that step, and then move up to the next step. This step-by-step approach can be
used to help children face many of their fears. Depending on the steps and the goal
they are working towards, it is often helpful for children to stay in the step long
enough to experience their anxiety reduce, or vary the amount of time they stay in
each step to progressively longer amounts of time.

4. Reduce Attention to Worries

Focussing attention on worries often maintains the worry and can increase anxiety.
Helping children focus their attention on something else can assist in reducing their
anxiety. Imagine their worry is a plant and attention is like water. When we give
water to a plant, it grows and gets bigger. When we don’t water the plant, it shrivels
up and dies. When we give attention to worries, they get bigger. When we don’t give
attention to worries, they get smaller and, in some cases, they can disappear.
Encourage your child to think about happy or relaxing things. They might like to
recall a memory of a time when they felt really happy, like on their birthday or on a
family holiday. Help them recall that time in as much detail as they can by using their senses – What can they see? What can they hear? What can they smell? What can
they touch? What can they taste? This can help them focus their attention away from
their worries.

Doing an activity they enjoy can also take their attention away from their worries.
They might like to read a book, draw a picture, play their favourite game, jump on the
trampoline, or ride their bike. It is important that they think about the activity they are
doing, and not think about their worry whilst they are doing the activity.

5. Reward Your Child

It is often hard for children to overcome their worries and face their fears. Rewarding
examples of brave behaviour and their attempts to manage their worries can often
help with motivating them to try harder. These are some examples of rewards:
- Verbal praise
- using stickers or a point system that they can exchange for a tangible reward
- time spent together doing a fun activity

Children can also say positive words to themselves. For example: ‘That was hard,
but I did it!’ or ‘I did a great job’.