How to empower bully victims?

[TranscendentalMom]

I have a friend who seems almost obsessed about bullying concerns. I think she was bullied as a child and deeply fears this for her daughter. So when another kid says something to her kid such as "i don't want to play with you" (which in my opinion is just normal kid stuff they go thru) she gets really obsessed and calls this bullying. I'm worried this stuff is going to filter down to her kid as she already seems to have her firmly in a victim role.

I was trying to explain to her my stance on bullying is that the best thing you can do is empower your own child to stand up for themselves and not be victims of it. I remember reading an article in Brain Child that validated this point - does anyone remember? I remember it saying that parental interventions actually increased the bullying and the most effective thing was that when a kid stood up for themselves the bullying stopped.

[jdedmom]

I get upset when other kids are mean or rude to my kids. My mom has told me that I project my own issues of insecurity and being bullied from my childhood. I have to constantly be aware that it affects emotionally. I work hard not to get caught up in it but I'm still a work-in-progress.

We have been doing a lot of role play and have great discussions about how to handle tough situations. This empowers my children and helps me focus on that instead of the kids that are mean or bullies.

[TranscendentalMom]

I'm answering my own post here - I found this article that was helpful...

http://www.trans4mind.com/counterpoint/lakewood.shtml

[chfriend]

The Bully, the Bullied and the Bystander...covers it all.....

[LaLaLaLa]

Coaching

Nobody wants to think about her kid being hurt, of course. How awful, to have a small child crying because he or she has been bullied! But I don't know a single person who hasn't had mean things said to him or her at some point. It's part of life, part of interacting with other people, and kids need to learn how to deal with it.

How to teach them to deal, I think, depends on temperament. As a child, I was very quiet and shy. I tended to walk away from conflict, to ignore it and fade into the background. My brother, on the other hand, met bullying with sarcasm and sharp wit.

In our family, we are currently deep into coaching my DD, who turns four this summer. She will be starting preschool in the fall, an idea that delights her, as she is aggressively friendly and looking forward to meeting new kids and teachers.

However, my DD has a large birthmark (a giant nevus) surrounding her eye and creeping across her cheek, forehead, and nose. It looks like the worst black eye you've ever seen. Since she was born and we've been out and about, someone has asked about it (not often politely) every. single. day. DH and I are already cringing at the thought of sending her among kids who may or may not have been taught to treat others with sensitivity.

So I think a degree of concern and coaching are good, but at some point you have to give your kids the impression that they are strong and they can handle what others throw at them, and that having someone not like them or say something mean to them isn't the end of the world. Self-esteem is built at home and is your best defense against bullying and meanness. Train your kids how to be strong, instead of lamenting the fact that they are so helpless.

[LynnS6]

Give her a copy of the book: The Bully, The Bullied and the Bystander by Colorosso (sp???)

[Tigerchild]

I can understand your friend's gut instincts. I was severely bullied (including getting physically attacked, having my things thrown into the toilet, crank calls, ect.) up until about 6th grade....so I too have a very kick in the stomach reaction when I see exclusion happening to my child.

The things I've done is to try and reframe it as "So and so isn't feeling friendly right now." and call the behavior when it happens at home, and honestly, to plan on enrolling the kids in defensive martial arts courses when they're old enough. The school program that all 3 will be enrolled in eventually has a very small, close knit community and all parents are expected to contribute significant volunteer hours in the classroom. I like that because I will be able to see the dynamics, and can help my kids cope if there's personality conflicts. The self-defense aspect is important to me, because most of the time bullies when violent are pretty sloppy (why they tend to pick on the 'weak' kids), so I want my kids to at least know how to deflect an attack even if they choose not to use that knowledge.

I also know that I was never bullied again after I returned the punch I was given. While I will not be one of those parents who says "if they hit you, give it right back to them" (pragmatically, it's going to be the last hitter that gets 'caught' and punished, that was certainly true in my case), I think there is power in knowing how to duck and weave and knowing that you could strike back but that you choose not to.

And I have learned to slow down and not jump to conclusions about other kids. I guess I've absorbed my own "X just isn't feeling friendly right now, that's his/her choice." lessons. There are very few kids who NEVER are exclusionary. But I do enforce different rules at our house, and explain why I don't like that kind of thing.

I also have a plan in place if I am ever confronted with my child engaging in bullying behavior. My first instinct would be that there would be hell to pay for any child of mine daring to harass or attack an innocent child--but I wouldn't want to contribute to the cycle of dominance. But I do have a solid plan in place, and that makes the little bullied child inside me feel a lot safer. I think a lot of formerly bullied people have that same fear but really don't want to deal with it, once I dealt with it I feel that it's made me relax a lot more and not have quite the trigger finger on either side.

[daisymama12]

To the OP: I disagree that adult/parental intervention makes bullying worse. Barbara Coloroso' (The Bully, the Bullied and the Bystander ) suggests the opposite is true. A great majority of bullying ends with one adult intervention. Intervening is how we communicate what is acceptable and not acceptable behavior in our society. Leaving kids to their own devices feeds bullying.

That said, it is unhealthy to think of your child as a victim, and i think it's of great importance to practice and coach kids on how to deal with aggressive kids.

I wasn't bullied as a child, but I react very strongly to my older ds (7 yrs old) being left out, "dominated" by kids with more assertive personalities, and such. I know this is something *I* need to work on.
We are attending a workshop this weekend called KidPower, a self-defense workshop that includes dealing with bullies. I'm hoping my introverted ds gets a lot out of it.

[wannabemoms]

I WISH my parents had intervened when I was being bullied as a child. They knew how bad things were, I even begged them to let me change schools, and they did nothing. Until the bullying started, I was a very confident, self-assured and friendly kid. Sometimes that's not enough, IMO, and adults need to step in and set boundaries. The bullying started when I was 9 at school, and damaged my confidence and trust in others (especially in the adults who were supposed to protect me) badly enough that I went from being socially isolated by others to deliberately isolating myself in my teens as a protective mechanism. I did not even start to recover until I was almost 20, and I still feel the effects today, at almost 29.
If I ever caught wind of a child of mine being bullied (not normal kid-interaction-stuff, but real bullying where a child feels unsafe or isolated in the long term), my only decision would be whether to speak with the teachers/principal or the bully's parents first, and it would be done very quickly. I would not hesitate to move a child to a new school if it was warranted. No child deserves to feel as badly as I did.