Hello, my name is Dr. Ashley Legate. I'm a child psychologist
working at the Child and Youth Mental Health Program at McMaster Children's Hospital.
Today I'm looking to talk to caregivers about bullying. One of the things we know that happens
when youth experience bullying, either online or at school, is that they often feel very scared.
They might have worries that they won't have any friends. They might feel really hopeless about how
to manage this situation and what to do. They may even not want to go to school any longer.
When this happens, caregivers often report that they themselves start to feel frustrated or
afraid for their youth. They often feel hopeless that they don't have the skills to manage the
problem and be able to keep their child safe. It's important for parents to be able to acknowledge
these emotions before moving into problem solving and doing other things. So today, I'll talk about
three main steps for parents to follow when they are encountering a bullying concern at school
or online. First is to become aware of their own emotions. So acknowledging that maybe
you might feel frustration towards the peer who's bullying your child. You might even feel
frustration towards that peers parents or the staff school staff's administrative response to
your child. Step two would be then to attend to your child's own emotions. So your child may be
needing to feel extra safe at home. They may need time and space to be able to talk freely about
what they're going through and their emotions related to that without any problem solving yet.
Then the third step would be to move into problem solving. This could look like
looking up the policies and procedures in place for bullying at your child's
school or school board. It could also look like providing your child some specific
direction of which adults to go to and how to get to them when they're feeling unsafe.
Or providing your child some social skills to be able to respond in a healthy, effective way
to feeling unsafe and experiencing the conflict. One thing that we know is not helpful for problem
solving in these kinds of situations is going to the peer who's bullying directly, as a caregiver,
or going to that peer's parents. That often doesn't turn out the way parents wanted to.
Then we have the experience of the parent who maybe has a child who is also
bullying other people. Those youth and those caregivers deserve support and help as well
and in some ways the steps are very similar of what will be helpful. So step one would be
for the parent or caregiver to acknowledge their own emotions in that situation.
So parents may feel shame or embarrassment that their child is engaging in this behavior.
Or they may even feel frustrated or angry that other people are labeling their child
as a bully - which is super frustrating. Step two would be then to attend to the youth's emotions.
Noticing that maybe they're feeling sad or angry or that they're trying to find
a way to get what they want or resolve the conflict. Just listening without providing
any problem solving at the beginning. Then step three is when we move into problem solving.
And again, very helpful to engage with the school and see what their policies and procedures are,
who the contact people are for bullying incidents at school and who's there to support your child.
It might also involve teaching your child some ways to manage their intense emotions
or providing some social skills to be able to manage conflict. I want to highlight that
these skill three skills alone probably may feel like they're not enough. You might need to
look up some community or school resources in addition to looking up some resources online.
Looking up this information can really help you as a caregiver have confidence in being able to
manage which will translate to your youth having confidence as well. So before we end today, I want
you to remember the three steps, notice your own emotion, attend to your youth's emotion and then
lastly waiting a little bit of time to be able to problem-solve with your youth in the school.
Thank you.