[MUSIC PLAYING]
ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: Parents have the
same consistent questions.
What can I do to stop bullying, and how can I
prevent it from happening in the first place?
In this discussion, we're going to answer these
questions and give you the tools to effectively deal with
bullying with your children.
Joe, what do I do if my child is being bullied?
JOSEPH L. WRIGHT: Well, Rosemary, the thing that I
think that needs to be stressed is that being
victimized is a scary place for a young child.
The child needs to feel protected.
The child needs to feel safe.
So that reassurance is critically important as a
first step in defusing the concern on the part of the
child that they have someone who is there to protect them,
to keep them safe.
ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: So really pause, listen to your child,
and not be so quick to react in an emotional way, is what
you're saying.
JOSEPH L. WRIGHT: Yes, and to really confer an atmosphere of
safety for the youngster.
MIA DOCES: Another important thing to do is to affirm when
your child has come to you, and affirm that they did the
right thing by coming and telling you, and that you're
really ready to calmly listen to what they are going to tell
you about the situation and to kind of gather some facts and
find out what's really going on, so that you'll be in a
better position to know how to help them and how to deal with
the situation.
ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: But Joe, isn't
bullying a rite of passage?
JOSEPH L. WRIGHT: Well, bullying itself is far from a
normative behavior that we should ignore or not pay
attention to.
And unfortunately, for many adults in this country it is
perceived as a rite of passage.
And that is a wrong way to look at it.
ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: Which is why it's so important for
adults to understand what bullying truly is.
JOSEPH L. WRIGHT: Absolutely.
ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: I often hear parents say that they
don't want their child to be a wimp when
they're being bullied.
Isn't it better if my child is the one to
deliver the first blow?
JOSEPH L. WRIGHT: Absolutely not.
In fact, that approach may put the child at more risk for
being hurt.
And we would never encourage the intentional performance of
aggressive behavior towards another.
In fact, that just feeds into the cycle that we're trying to
prevent in the first place.
ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: Trudy, I know there are a lot of
parents out there who want the answer to this question.
What do I to if my child is bullying another child?
TRUDY LUDWIG: I think the first thing the parent needs
to do is to gather information to find out what happened,
what their child did, and have discussion about what bullying
is so that the child understands that that behavior
is not an OK behavior and bullying is not acceptable in
any circumstances.
And then take that moment as a teachable moment to explain to
the child what they could have done in that situation so that
no one would get hurt the next time.
The other thing is to also take opportunities to teach
your child some empathy and perspective.
Because bullying, the bottom line is, it's a lack of
empathy for their fellow peer.
So you can do that with supplemental tools, such as
wonderful children's stories or storytelling, watching a
show and having discussions with your child in a safe
social setting so that they can learn what it feels like
to be in the shoes of another person.
ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: And I would think role-playing would be
very helpful as well.
TRUDY LUDWIG: Role-playing is crucial.
I highly recommend it.
Role-play, role-play, role-play, to give kids an
opportunity to figure out how to respond to somebody.
Especially when somebody's being mean to us, our tendency
is to put that bully hat on ourselves, which is what I use
as a metaphor for children.
And I think that if we can show kids they don't have to
be mean back, they have a choice, and to role-play how
they can respond to get away from that situation, and then
to report to a grown-up they feel safe with, so they get
protection and the kid that's wearing the
bully hat gets help.
ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: So often we don't give
the help to the bully.
Because there's a reason why the bully is
engaged in these behaviors.
TRUDY LUDWIG: Right.
It's a learned behavior, and it can be unlearned.
The other important thing is to look into education for the
counseling for the child, so that they can have the tools
they need and the skills they need to break
their bullying ways.
ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: Trudy, when children engage in bullying
behavior do you take the child who is bullying another child
and force that child to say, I'm sorry?
TRUDY LUDWIG: I think that it's more damaging to force an
insincere apology than having no apology whatsoever.
I tell parents it's more important for kids to show
they're sorry, not just to say they're sorry.
Oftentimes when kids are forced to say it, they say,
[INSINCERELY]
sorry, or, sorry I got caught.
So what we need to do is to help educate those kids that
if you're truly sorry, you make up for the hurt you
caused others.
And as an adult, you can give young children prompts.
What can you do to make that child feel better?
Draw a picture.
Help to replace or repair a damaged item.
And don't keep doing what you've done.
JAMIE OSTROV: When parents or teachers force children to
apologize, it can often re-victimize the victim.
So I think we want to be mindful of the emotional state
of the victim when apology does happen.
So if the child who was engaging in bullying is ready
to apologize, I think we need to make sure that the victim
is in a state where they're ready to accept that apology,
and where it won't be adding to the further harm that they
might have experienced.
ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: Oh, good point.
Thank you.
TRUDY LUDWIG: Very good.
ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: Catherine, what about
parental denial or shame?
CATHERINE BRADSHAW: It's very common for parents to respond,
when they hear that their child's been involved in
bullying, with some kind of level of concern, or maybe
even be upset about it.
Potentially it could remind them of their own experience
with bullying.
And they bring into that conversation with their child
some of their own baggage or history.
But we really want parents to focus on their child and be
emotionally available to their child in that situation, so
they can listen, they can hear the story the child has to
tell, and be able to respond and coach them with positive
strategies for resolving this situation, rather than
potentially that knee-jerk reaction of telling them to
hit back, as we heard from Joe before, what we
want to really avoid.
ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: So it's not about them.
It's about the child.
CATHERINE BRADSHAW: Yeah, it's really staying very focused on
the child and coaching them through with some positive
strategies.
For the adult, that might very well include calling someone
if they're in a school setting or if they're in a day care
setting, reaching out to another
adult within that context.
Sometimes there are also opportunities that parents can
reach out to other groups to try to prevent this issue from
happening in the future.
ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: What is the message to parents, though?
Often schools will say, don't call another parent.
You should call us first.
Any advice to parents about that?
CATHERINE BRADSHAW: Yeah, we always recommend that it's
good to have a third party involved in that conversation.
Sometimes a parent, even feeling very cool-headed,
could pick up the phone and call and say, oh, I think your
kid's bullying my kid.
And that can really elicit that denial or that negative
emotion that we were just talking about.
So putting somebody on the defensive, even if you have a
friendly relationship with them, that can also create a
little bit of a back-and-forth and a "he said, she said."
ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: I'd like to take a moment now and switch
gears, and move from intervention methods to
methods of prevention.
We know it's so important to start early.
So Mia, what are the strategies that you can
instill to foster these skills to prevent bullying from
happening in the first place?
MIA DOCES: Sure.
Well, we know that less bullying happens in
environments where there are very clear expectations of
children's behavior, where there are policies in place
and procedures in place for if bullying does happen, how the
adults and children are going to respond to those
situations.
And we know that less bullying happens in environments where
the adults place a priority on the relationships between the
adult and children, that they have very caring and
egalitarian relationships.
And we also know that children can be taught specific
pro-social skills and bullying prevention strategies.
ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: Could you elaborate more on that?
What are these skills, especially
for preschool children?
Because we do want to plant these seeds and start early.
MIA DOCES: Absolutely.
We can really build social-emotional competency in
very young children, starting with things like helping to
build their empathy.
Trudy had mentioned before about the
importance of empathy.
And we really want to get children to start, at a very
basic level, understanding their own emotions and being
able to talk about them, giving some language to them.
And then we can help them understand that, oh, other
people have those emotions too, and that when bad things
happen to us and we feel badly, that's how other people
feel when bad things happen to them.
So we get them to understand a little bit
about perspective taking.
ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: And that's the fundamental learning in
terms of building empathy, correct?
MIA DOCES: Yes, that's some of the underlying building blocks
to learning empathy, indeed.
And we also can teach them friendship skills.
We can teach them very specific skills about how to
join into groups, or how to notice that you should include
another child in your play.
We can teach them skills about sharing and trading and taking
turns, really drilling down to those very specific skills.
And I think we can also teach children about tolerance and
respect, that if people are different, that's OK.
ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: Jamie, what advice can you give parents in
terms of addressing bullying and how they could help their
children develop healthy friendships and make healthy
friendship choices?
JAMIE OSTROV: Regarding friendship, we do know that
children that are engaged in bullying, and in particular
those that are victims of bullying, and we know that
bullies can become victims, those children have difficulty
making and keeping friends.
And so parents can help to scaffold or support the
formation of those meaningful friendships and the promotion
of pro-social or sharing kinds of behaviors.
ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: And also to help parents and teachers
teach their children about what is a good friend.
JAMIE OSTROV: Absolutely.
High-quality friendships are really important for
children's development.
And there's a difference between high-quality
friendships and those that are poor-quality.
And often poor-quality friendships have high levels
of aggressive behavior, and perhaps even some bullying
taking place.
So that's an important message.
ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: OK, thank you.
[MUSIC PLAYING]