Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach parenting all over the world. In fact,
I've been teaching people the skills and principles of self-government for the last
20-plus years. Recently, a parent said to me, "Nicholeen, how do I stop my kid from bullying?".
So I'm making this video for that mom and for you if that's something you're concerned about.
I'm gonna share with you five things that you can do to stop your child from bullying and some of
them might surprise you. So, what could surprise you about stopping someone from bullying? Well,
here's a very surprising fact, your bond to your child actually makes a huge difference on
whether they are going to bully somebody else or not. That's right, if you want your child to not
be a bully then you've got to have a good strong attachment to them at home. In fact,
another tip is you can't bully the children at home. Which means, you
need to not be manipulating. What does bullying look like from a parent? It looks like hitting,
yelling, pointing, giving them an attitude problem in the hand, maybe making fun of them in front of
other people. These are all things that parents do to actually bully and belittle their children.
Really it's just the parent's emotions that are coming out all the time. Because they're
frustrated, they don't know how to handle the child's maybe a little bit more extreme behaviors
and so they end up bullying the child. Maybe they don't even want to. Now maybe you're saying,
"Well, actually yeah. I do kind of want them to be afraid of me. So I am bullying them",
well then it shouldn't be any surprise that the child is bullying other people.
They see that as a sign of strength and what they're working toward. In fact,
we always teach our children how they should behave socially. So,
the way that you behave socially in the home and with them will always be
how they behave socially with other people. So, if there's a lot of competition or contention
happening in the home then that's gonna spread out to the world around us. So tips one and two are
that you need to make sure you develop a good strong bond a healthy connection with
your children. Make sure that you're talking to them enough you're developing a good relationship
with them. One key thing that you can do to bond with your children more is to make sure that you
carve out more family time. They should have more time with family than they do with digital devices
or with friends and when I say time with family, I don't just mean in the same house.
But you need to be talking about things together, doing things together, sharing ideas of the world,
learning things that will bring them closer to good behavior. These things often involve morals,
values, beliefs, virtues, things like that. That can help them rein themselves in and
then number two is that you need to make sure that you've got your own bullying in check.
That you're not doing it at home either. That you're not manipulating the children.
If you need help with that then I absolutely can help. There are so many different things on my
site that talk about the parent scripts that you can use to overcome those habits of bullying that
you might have. Tip number three is to pre-teach. So, you've got to prepare the child to succeed.
They've got a behavior that's getting in the way. You need to give them a new skill that they can
use to associate with other people. One of those skills they're probably going to need to conquer
bullying is the skill accepting a no answer. So, in the teaching self-government parenting
program. We teach parents how to teach their children four basic skills. The four basic skills
that I teach take care of 99% of all behavior problems. So the skill accepting a no answer
and criticism is the skill a bully needs because they're constantly crossing over a boundary line.
When a person crosses over a boundary line they are not observing a no answer
that's right in front of them. That line is saying, "Nope, you don't go over this line",
and that's the line of being mean to somebody else, hurting somebody else, or saying something
that would be belittling or unkind, that is a no answer. So, how do you accept a no answer?
You look at the person, keep a calm face voice and body, say okay or ask to disagree appropriately,
and then drop the subject. Now maybe that person's not giving you a no but it's the situation.
You have a thought in your head about saying something mean to somebody. Because maybe your
bully is just really smart. Sometimes the bullies are really smart people and that's why they come
up with these mean things to do. So, they get a thought in their head and that's the situation
or the person and then they look at it, and keep a calm face voice and body, and they say, "I'm not
saying that. Nope, that thought is not good", so basically they do a disagree appropriately
with that situation in their head and then they drop the subject so they don't think about it
anymore. Maybe even you teach them that they have to walk away so that they don't accidentally
bully the other person. In fact, it could be a really good idea to teach them to report to you
after they have gone through that skill set in an actual potentially bully situation. So that
you can praise them for when things go right. Now sometimes your bullies are kind of manipulative so
be on the watch for them making up that they did use it when actually they're still doing their
bullying. This means that you've got to keep them within sight. Have somebody watching what's going
on so that that bully can be held accountable for using the skills or not. We're going to go on here
in a minute with how to correct the problem when someone is in the act of bullying or they just
bullied. But before we get to that I'd like to invite you to subscribe to this channel. There are
videos just like this that come out every single day and you're not going to want to miss them,
so subscribe now. So part of your pre-teaching means that you're going to be making a plan. So
point four is you've gotta follow through on the plan. This means you've got to actually do that
correction or maybe the praise that you told them that you would do when they decide not to engage
in some of those bullying habits that they have had before. So, how do you correct them? There are
certain steps to correcting a child that are more effective than others. So the way that I teach to
do an effective correction is by describing what happened that went wrong and then describing what
should have happened and why that was a good idea. Then explaining to them what negative
consequences they have earned because they decided to not accept that no answer. Remember that's what
you're going to be correcting them for and then after that you practice doing things the right way
and then they get to go off and do whatever negative consequence it was that they earned.
I'm not going to get into family economies which is
my system for positive and negative consequences. But there are multiple things you can use some of
them are more effective than others and remember when a person is learning self-government.
You want to use the type of negative consequences where it's not just you taking something away
but it's them actually getting the opportunity to accept that consequence. Because if they don't get
the opportunity to accept their consequence then they won't learn self-government. They
will always think that everything that's happening to them is because of you instead
of because of them and really the battle is within their own hearts and their own minds
it shouldn't be between parent and child. Part of a good correction brings me to point number five.
So, point five is to do a full repair. If a child has decided to bully another person
and mistreat someone in a way that makes another person experience some sort of injury or harm.
Then that person needs to fix the situation. This is kind of like a proper repentance if
you're a religious person. You always have to have restitution there's this time where you
make it better. So you go to the person and you repair the breach or the problem that occurred.
If you offended the person you describe exactly what you did. Declare that you know it's wrong.
Explain to the person what you are doing to work on the problem and how in the future
it should not be a problem. This is a humility moment. This is a moment to focus on the truth.
It's so important because when a person expresses that they have a desire to follow through on
doing something that is true that will hold them accountable more than anything else in the future.
They've made a pledge to another person and now they will know that they are a liar if they don't
follow through on what they said. So even though it could feel uncomfortable for a person to go
search another person out to apologize to them or something it is vital. In fact, if you don't
know where that other person lives because maybe it's happening at school or something like that.
Then maybe you need to go to school with your child. Find the person there tell the principal or
the teacher, "Listen, there's some bullying going on that we need to handle and so we need to find
this person and apologize for it and tell them that we are not going to be doing this anymore."
So, whatever you need to do to give that person the opportunity to have restitution repair the
breach and make things right. Will be absolutely empowering to that person. If you have enjoyed
learning about how to help a child who might be engaged in bullying. I'm pretty sure you're
going to enjoy the free class that I'm offering which is the expectation trap versus the cycle for
success. So, click on the link to that video now and learn how you and your child cannot fall in
to habits and traps that will make you do things that you didn't want to do in the first place.