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Who's afraid of the big, bad bully?
Bullies will pick on anyone who crosses their path—big or small, the "in crowd" or the outcasts. Once a bully wears someone down, he uses the victim's insecurities as fuel for more teasing, taunting and belittling. It's important for parents to realize that all children, including their own, are at risk of being bullied and to take the necessary steps to properly "bullyproof" their loved ones.
In Bullyproof Your Child for Life, Joel Haber, Ph.D., gives parents step by step instructions to help ensure that their children won't fall prey to the big, bad bully. In the following excerpt, Haber explains what bullying is, who the bullies are, why kids are bullies, and what to do if your child is the target or the bully.
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Read more...
What is bullying?
Bullying is a repeated and/or chronic pattern of hurtful behavior involving intent to maintain an imbalance of power. What this means is that a bully find satisfaction in harming people whom he considers weaker to build up his own sense of power. It's important to differentiate bullying from fighting, the latter of which is really about an escalation of conflict and is normal. Kids roughhouse and may yell at each other or shove each other without a bullying element to it.
Bullying isn't about working out a conflict, and it isn't between evenly matched opponents. It crosses the line into unequal power dynamics where one person wants to control another. The bully believes the target is weaker in some way, whether that's physical, mental, social, emotional, or a combination. Bullies get satisfaction from harming their targets. If the behavior is left unchecked, it can intensify someone's (the bully's) power at the expense of someone else (the target).
Who are bullies?
Although most kids will "test out" bullying by testing out their power, the majority quickly discover they're not cut out for it. A child proves to be a true bully if he keeps up the role for months or years, loses his empathy with these incidents, or if his initial forays into bullying are exceptionally abusive.
Not that bullies are not typically jealous of the kids they pick on, and they don’t usually have low self-esteem. That's another myth—one that experts believed for decades until psychological tests showed that bullies typically had self-esteem to spare.
When I was growing up, the stereotype of the bully was an overweight, overaggressive, not very intelligent boy who beat up others to make himself feel better by proving his physical strength. There are still some of this type of bully out there, sure, but there's a much more dangerous bully type now.
Today's bullies are often popular, smart, charming to adults, and have many friends, even if their friendships are based on fear. They maintain their social status by making others objects of scorn and ridicule. To most people, they look like leaders. What bullies may not have is empathy, and that may be the most critical element differentiating them from kids with true leadership skills.
The thing that makes it so hard to deal with these types of bullies is that they're often hard to recognize, and hard for bystanders to stand up to. People like them. Teachers are amused by them. Coaches value them. Their social skills enable them to sweet-talk and appear innocent to adults, and their peers are terrified of standing up to them when they witness bullying behaviors because they could easily become the next targets. Whether they admit it or not, nearly all kids want to be popular. They want to have friends on the highest rung of the social ladder. They'll rarely contradict or confront a popular kid who's doing something wrong because that would make them "uncool" and likely to lose social status themselves.
Because of this, the popular bullies learn that they can get away with anything, and their empathy declines. They feel more and more powerful, and feel contempt for the less powerful kids. They're likely to repeat this pattern throughout life in their workplaces, towns, and families—teaching their kids how to climb the social ladder so they can annihilate the "worthless" kids below them, too. That is part of the reason we have to deal with these issues early when they occur, because the longer kids get away with bullying, the less their empathy kicks in to stop these situations.
Why are Kids Bullies?
Bullies will find any excuse to pick on a target. Too tall. Too short. Too fat. Too Skinny. Too smart. Too stupid. Poor. An out-of-fashion haircut. Glasses. Braces. Different religion. Different race. Perceived homosexuality. Poor athletic ability. Flat-chested. Developing breasts early. A stutter. Teacher's pet. Shy. Disabled. Any type of perceived vulnerability will make a child a likelier target.
One factor remains pretty constant, though: The way a child responds to bullying events will determine whether those events repeat and escalate. The child who can laugh it off, walk away, and feel good about him- or herself anyway is not likely to become a long-term target. One the other hand, the likelihood of further attacks increases the more emotional the child becomes in reaction to the bullying. A child who gets very angry, cried, pouts, whines, or runs to a teacher is probably going to be harassed time and again.
That's the scary part of the bullying equation: In normal conflict, kids self-monitor. They can read each other's cues to know when they've crossed the line, and modify their behavior in response. That is, when two kids are pushing each other in the school yard and one kid starts to cry, the other will stop. The cue is received: "I've hurt someone," and acted upon with empathy: "I don't really want to hurt someone, so I'd better stop."
Take that same situation with a bullying dynamic, and the same cue is acted upon in an opposite manner. "I've hurt someone" is translated to: "Cool. I have more power. Let's see if I can really make this kid have a breakdown. This is fun!"
If Your Child is a Target
If you learn that your child is a target, you must create an environment that is nonthreatening and safe for him or her. Accomplish this by remembering these steps:
- Listen to his feelings in a nonjudgmental manner. If you react with a strong emotional outburst, you may shut your child down because he will fear you, like he fears the bully. Make sure that you are in a calm place when you make time to listen, or he may observe that your feelings are overly intense, and shut down.
- Try to gather information about the specifics of the incident(s). Documentation becomes a powerful tool when you have to deal with the school or another parent. Try to note the specific times that incidents occurred, and who was present when the incident happened (adults and children).
- Never blame your child for being bullied. Bullying is a behavior that no one deserves, and if you blame your child, she will feel diminished as a person, similar to how the bully made her feel. Even if you believe your child was provoking this behavior, do not blame her. Do not suggest that she's "too sensitive" or "too emotional," or anything else that implies that you think she's weak. In time, you'll need to help your child manage her own behavior. The way you do this is to problem-solve with her, even if she cannot come up with answers. The critical variable is that if children have exhausted their own resources, they may have to see that involving an adult with more power is the next solution until they can find a way on their own to manage these issues.
- Empower your children by helping them come up with a plan. Ask your children (grades two and beyond, generally) what help you can give them. You can role-play how to stand up to a bully if they feel safe, become a good reporter to a teacher or aide, enlist a friend, or avoid the bully situation. For Children who are younger, you may need to call the school and speak with the teacher, so someone in power can look out for your child.
- Don't bully your child into making a choice he's not ready to make. For example, if you tell your child to stand up straight, look a bully in the eye, and say, "Stop it, this is bullying" before he's ready, you can make him feel less powerful. Your child may feel like you're bullying him. Try to encourage your children, but at a pace that works for them. Remember that not all children can ever make this choice based on their comfort level and temperament. Some children need other peers or adults to help and cannot be direct with a peer they're afraid of.
- Reward your child for speaking with you by praising her. Specific praise like "I'm so proud of you for telling me about this bullying situation, and now you've developed a plan of action" works best because she knows specifically what she did that empowered her, and allows her to be proud of her behavior. Nonspecific praise, such as "Good work," doesn't provide enough clarity for children to understand that certain behavior leads to praise and positive power for them.
If Your Child Is a Bully
It can be very difficult to hear that your child is a bully, and most parents' natural instinct is to deny it. ("My child would never do that.") Try to be aware of your own emotions, and to resist the urge to find someone else to blame or a way to excuse the behavior.
- Denial won't help. If you deny that your child has responsibility for bullying, your ability to change the situation is gone. Accept that the possibility exists that your child has done something to hurt someone else, and address it as thoroughly as possible.
- Take it seriously. Even if they accept that something undesirable may have occurred, many parents try to minimize the issue. Making it seem like no big deal, or that other people are overreacting or being too sensitive, will teach your child that hurting others is not a big deal to you. It can also ass to her scorn, because now she can add "oversensitive" to the list of reasons to bully people.
- Squelch your anger. If you're angry, your child will shut down. Talk to your child in a calm way, at a time when your emotions have settled. Try to understand the specifics of an incident from your child's perspective without raising your voice.
- Keep your child focused on accountability. "I don't want to hear about what the other kid did right now," you might say. "I want to hear about what you did. No matter what you think happened, how did you handle it? Help me understand what you did that caused this kid to feel bad."
- Encourage empathy. Once you've collected information about the incident, it's time to ask your child to turn it around and put herself in the other child's shoes. "When you did that, how did that child feel? How would you feel if someone did that to you?" Ask her to take the position of the other child.
- Brainstorm restitutions. "When you've done something to hurt someone else, you have to show that you're sorry. What can you do to make this child feel like you're sorry, and that you know what you did was wrong? How can you make her feel better?" It's not enough just to talk about it; your child needs to do something positive. This might be writing a letter to the target, calling her, having a meeting in person, and/or standing up for her with others who are picking on her.
- Decrease the amount of aggression in your child's life. If your child is prone to bullying behavior, do what you can to get rid of bad examples. Limit violent television and video games, make sure that you argue with your significant other in private if you need to argue, pay attention to the lyrics of the music he listens to.
- Ask for a peer mentor. Sometimes, bullies are not savvy about how to make friends without using bullying. If you think it would be helpful, ask an authority figure if he can assign a peer mentor or a "big brother/big sister" type of student to help your child figure out better ways to socialize.
Read additional books on social development for children:
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