Tips to Protect Your Child from Being Bullied

 

    To give your children immunity from being bullied, they must develop a strong sense of self and have at least one good friend as well as a circle of friends. While it is never too late to build self-esteem and establish personal rights, children ideally should experience their value and self-worth starting before conception. If you don't value them, they will never value themselves.  I said before conception because if you are smoking and drinking while pregnant, knowing the harmful effects it has on your child, you are making a statement that your bad habits and needs are more important than the health and well being of your child.

     It is a silent statement, but children are influenced not just by what is said, but what is not said or done. Actions do speak louder than words.  I am asking you to do some self examination as a parent.  My intention is not to shame you, but rather to make you more aware and motivate you to take responsibility for what you can do to make a difference in your child's life.  Here are a few tips to help your child build her emotional resilience necessary to avoid being victimized.  

Tips to Build Emotional Resilience

1.    Giving your child whatever she wants is not the answer. In fact, other than appropriate gifts, continually giving a child whatever he or she wants, without having to earn it, teaches her entitlement and arrogance rather than self-discipline and a strong work ethic. Teach them, train them and love them, but don't spoil them. 

2.    "Children should be seen and not heard."  How many of you remember that old myth that should be put to rest and buried?  Do you think all of a sudden out of nowhere your child will begin to speak up when for years you made it clear they did not deserve to have a voice?  Heck, I have seen patients who were 88 years old who still had no voice because it was so ingrained that their thoughts and words were not important.  We might get older, but we hang onto all those messages we were taught as a child.  Children do learn what they live.  If you give respect to your child, your child now has a positive role model and will know how to respect others. You can't give what you don't have.

3.    Self-respect will help prevent your child from being bullied and will also reduce the possibility of your child becoming a bully.  The news recently reported that a Mississippi kids' basketball coach has been whipping his team for months because he thought it was good for them. You tell me how whipping a child, for no reason other than that he missed making the basket, will improve his eye-hand coordination or improve his athletic abilities.  If I were whipped, especially when I had done nothing wrong, I would be really angry and might be tempted to take it out on someone else.  It's called "passing it on."  The guy obviously needs a course in human motivation 101. I am also making a point that some teachers and parents are the abusers. These whippings went on for months before anyone reported it. With self-respect and self-esteem, a child is more likely to take the risk and report the abuse. It is a child's best line of self-defense.

4.    Accountability is a good teacher. Allow your child to make choices appropriate for her age to learn natural consequences. Consequences that you impose must be rational, reasonable and fair. There must be equity. You don't ground a child for a month because he forgot his book at school whether it was intentional or an accident. That's overkill.

Parents Must Teach Survival Skills

     While parents need to be protectors, they also need to teach their children social survival skills. Whether your child is a target or a bully, as a parent you must keep your own emotions in check. Too often parents project their own experiences and childhood issues and anxieties onto their children which only exacerbates the problem.

     As parents, do a self-assessment of your style of parenting and what is happening in the home environment. Children often transfer repressed anger and other feelings triggered by situations at home to the school environment. They often find someone younger and smaller at school to unload their frustrations.  Likewise, being bullied and harassed at school may spark some stress that is released on other siblings at home.

    Training children early in life to be empathetic can help to prevent them from turning into bullies. The objective of empathy training is to teach students as young as five years old to understand the feelings of others and to treat people with kindness. While there is little statistical data on the long term impact, early results suggest that those who have gone through the training are less aggressive than those who have not. Age five is too late to start. It starts at birth or before. Prenatal experiences do influence us as well. 

     As a parent, you should not depend on school programs for such training. To prevent your child from becoming a bully, teach and demonstrate compassion by treating others with respect and dignity. Here are a few suggestions to build your child's inner strength, resilience and character:

1.    Teach moral independence by making your child accountable and responsible for the consequences of her actions.

2.    Provide your child with opportunities to exercise good decision making so that she will think and act independently, be confident of her judgments and not be manipulated by others

3.    Develop your child's ability to reason, evaluate situations and ask questions to better assess what actions are appropriate and the right thing to do.

     Prevention is the most economical and effective way to reverse any problem and thus I encourage you to check out my empowering character building program for children at www.wingsforwishes.com. Next to a parent's love, it is the best investment you can make in a child.  Why would you leave your child's health, happiness and success to chance?

  If Your Child Is a Target:

     Children will not open up to you unless it feels safe for them to do so.  If you overreact and go stomping into your child's school, that may be the first and last time your child will have ever confided in you. Think through the repercussions your child will experience due to your rash behavior. Don't take over.  Jointly move forward into a problem solving mode which is a great learning experience for your child. Make sure you get the facts on who, what, why and when events are happening and what actions were taken by your child and by teachers or others present.

     Be prepared.  When questioned, many children will deny or minimize the attacks. They may tell you that they can take it or that it is no big deal if they are the target. Often times they simply don't want to upset their parents so they hide their pain which can be manifested by physical symptoms.

     Be a social coach. Teach your child to be assertive and give specific options to help them deal with challenging encounters. Do some role playing with them so they become well rehearsed with new behavioral responses. Encourage friendships for a strong, social support system which at that age is a lifeboat to a tired swimmer.

Edie Raether, known as the Bully Buster, is an international speaker, parenting coach and bestselling author of seven books including Stop Bullying Now.  A behavioral psychology expert and family therapist, Edie has also been a college professor and

talk show host with ABC. Visit www.stopbullyingwithedie.com. Contact Edie at edie@raether.com or call her at (704) 658-8997.