Bullying Hurts: Parents Play an Essential Role in Dealing With Bullying Behaviors

When your happy, well-adjusted 5th grader sends you a text messages from school saying, “Please come and get me. Everyone hates me. My life is ruined,” you know there is a problem.

Upon receiving these texts from my son a few weeks ago, my mind immediately raced back to my daughter’s 5^th grade year when she first experienced bullying behavior by her peers. I explored the subject of bullying amongst girls and wrote an article in 2007 for Minnesota Parent Magazine entitled “Girl Swirl.” Six years later, and even after experiencing some relational aggression with my older son’s peers, I am still blown away by how incredibly mean kids can be to one another. Kids desperately want to feel included, popular and important and will go to great lengths to secure their spot in a group.  When a group decides to pick on someone because he is a threat, isn’t following the leaders of the group, or the group simply wants to get their kicks or exercise power by putting someone else down, most kids will choose to go along with the group, rather than stand up to the group leaders. These kids are well aware that any one of them could easily become the next victim.

Recently, I got a call from the middle school dean who informed me that my son was punched in the stomach twice during a football game scuffle that occurred during recess. My son later informed me that this was the second time that he had been punched by the same boy. The first time happened during gym class when my son was sticking up for another boy whom the aggressor was teasing, and the aggressor punched my son twice in the face.  This incident, however, was not reported, by my son nor the gym teacher. The boy who punched him was sent home after the second incident, which caused an uproar amongst a group of boys, many of whom were my son’s friends (or at least he thought they were). Since this incident, my son has been blamed for the boy being sent home and subsequently has been teased, excluded, and targeted as the guy to “hit” during touch football games, which often turn into tackle (which was against the rules but went unnoticed by the recess monitors).  He has heard boys repeatedly talking behind his back and knows there have been disparaging texts being sent about him. Friends who he thought were his friends have changed their minds about him and have decided that he no longer requires even a “hello.”

The school is aware that he is being targeted, and I made some calls to some of the moms of the boys who are involved, with whom I am friendly. But not much has changed. My son, for the last few weeks of school, has felt much like an outcast when he walked into school. Thankfully, the school year is now over and my son does have some loyal and kind friends who were/are not afraid to stand with my son during this difficult time, even at the risk of falling victim themselves.

My hope is that over the summer, the boys will have a chance to cool off, forgive and forget, and that my son’s fear of starting 6^th grade as a target of hate will not be realized. As my heart aches for my son having to experience these feelings, I find myself wondering, do all kids get a touch of this at some point during their adolescent years? Does anyone get through these years unscathed?  And what is our role as parents to help our kids deal with these difficult issues surrounding friendship, group dynamics and social hierarchy…and bullying.

My son is not perfect. I am sure he is guilty of saying something mean to someone. I know he has changed his mind about certain friends and decided to create some distance.  But to my knowledge, he would not go out of his way to deliberately hurt or exclude someone.

Actually, I take that back. He did try to exclude a friend/turned non-friend once, and I knew that as a parent I most definitely needed to take an active role to help guide him through some of his choices and refuse to allow him to act this way. A few months ago, when my son asked me if he could have a big group of friends over on a Friday after school, I was happy to comply. When I asked him whom he was inviting, I realized that there was a good friend of his who was not on the list. “I don’t like him anymore,” he responded when I inquired about him. “Ok, he doesn’t have to be your best friend but you are not going to exclude him from this gathering. It will be very hurtful to him and I am not going to let you do that,” I told him calmly. “O.k., then I won’t have anyone over,” he said. I told him that I was fine with that.

He did end up having the gathering, and he and the boy he wanted to exclude (but didn’t) reconciled their differences and are now very close friends again. As parents, we have a very important job to do when it comes to dealing with our children and bullying. We need to play an active roll in helping them manage their behaviors and their relationships, without trying to micromanage their every move. Their friendships will indeed ebb and flow, and feelings will undoubtedly be hurt sometimes, but it is essential that we as parents are aware that bullying is different than the having a falling out with a friend or changing friend groups.

Here are some important points to consider when dealing with your child and issues around bullying:

• If you get a call from your child's school or another parent who says that your child is acting overly aggressive toward a peer or peers, or if you see signs of this kind of behavior in your child, take it seriously. It is not a joke or a game or “just kids being kids.”
• If your child denies any wrongdoing, continue to have conversations with your child about your expectations of him, and be very clear that you expect him to be inclusive and to treat others with kindness, respect and compassion, and that it is not okay for him to do or say hurtful things to anyone, or to participate in any sort of “ganging up” behavior.
• Be a good role model and make sure that your own children are treating each other respectfully in your home.
• Check your child’s phone and social media outlets for evidence of bullying behavior. If you find that your child has been engaging in cyber bullying, give them appropriate consequences like taking their phone or computer away, and encourage and empower them to stop the bullying cycle amongst their peers.
• Explain to your children that bullying is serious, will not be tolerated and there will be consequences for this type of behavior. Make sure that they understand the kinds of effects that bullying can have on kids like the fact that “at least half of suicides among young people are related to bullying.” (http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/bullying-and-suicide.html)
• If your child is being bullied, monitor him closely and watch for signs of depression or even suicidal behaviors.
• Advocate for and empower your child and teach him how to advocate for himself. Contact the school and other parents, and make them aware of what your child is experiencing. Allow the “mamma bear” to arise in you, and do what you need to do to try and make sure your child will be safe.
• Encourage your child to reach out to kids who are consistently kind. Even when you are beyond the stage when you can arrange play dates for your child, it is still okay to contact a parent of a child whom you feel would be a positive, supportive friend to your child and arrange for the kids to do an activity or a camp together.
• If you do these things and still feel that your child is not safe in his school environment, it may be necessary to make a change.  Even when tormentors are threatened and disciplined by authority, there are so many cases wherein individuals or groups of kids will continue to find a way to make other kids’ lives miserable.

It is extremely painful to watch your child endure tormenting and exclusion by their peers, and it is also uncomfortable to know that your child is a tormentor (although, unfortunately these behaviors are often ignored or denied by parents). And it is very difficult as a parent to know what your role is in managing these issues. But whether you are the parent of a victim, an aggressor or quite possibly both, make sure your are dealing with these issues head on and that you working with your child to help him develop the tools he needs to constructively manage his relationships throughout his formative years.

There is No Good Way of Explaining Hate to Your Children

My husband and I were both born and raised Jewish. We both identify strongly with our Jewish faith. Our children attend/ed Hebrew and religious school and all four will be Bar/Bat Mitzvahed (two down, two to go). Yet, for many reasons, the most prominent being that we had family members attending, we made the choice to send our children to an Episcopalian school. A school that explains in its mission statement: “Our goal as an Episcopal school is to nurture the spiritual development of each person and to welcome everyone to our community.” And for the most part, we have all found this to be true.

I truly believe that the anti-semitism which two of my children experienced at school has nothing to do with the school they attend. Anti-semitism can happen anywhere. I remember the shock I felt when my dad told me that he was called a “dirty Jew” in high school. I had not experienced anything like this until I was in the work force, attending a trade show for a public relations client. I was working my client’s booth with a salesperson, who during a conversation about sales, casually said, “Yeah, you do have to be really aware of those people who will try to Jew you down.” I stood there in silence, feeling like I had just gotten kicked in the chest and had the wind knocked out of me, and took a moment to think about how I would respond. I thought about saying nothing and just letting it blow over, but then I felt a very strong force pushing me to speak. “What do you mean by that," I asked. "I am Jewish.” The look on this man's face was one of shame and regret, and he quickly engaged in some frantic back-pedaling while I just stood, stared and let him attempt to squirm his way out of this very uncomfortable situation.

It is hard to explain to kids how to handle such ignorance. Like when my daughter, several years ago, came home in tears and told me how a boy had approached her at school around this time of year and announced, “Hey, it’s Hitler’s birthday today!” How do you explain to your child why someone would say something like this, let alone be connected to this type of information or feel the need to share it with anyone, especially someone Jewish? Or when she sat down at a lunch table next to a group of kids who started chanting, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” making sure that she could hear. How do you explain the “why” to my son who, during the Holocaust unit in his history class, was targeted by a boy who made horrendous remarks to him including, “Why don’t you go put yourself in an oven?” There is no explanation for why people hate for the sake of hating, or discriminate for the sake of discriminating. Did they learn this at home? From the media? We won’t know. I am sure they wouldn’t tell. But hate is out there. It bubbles under the surface, and unfortunately sometimes children are the victims as well as the perpetrators.

As parents, all we can do is to teach our kids tolerance, kindness and respect, but also give them the tools to stand up for themselves and for others if they experience or witness such injustices. I grew up in a home where all were welcome. Any person, of any color or any religion were welcome at our Passover seders, Hanukah dinners, or just to visit. My kids attend a school, where, all children are welcome, and the school does make it a priority to assure that every student actually feels this way. However, unfortunately, very unfortunately, for reasons that I still don’t comprehend or have the ability to explain to my children, anti-semitism, bigotry, racism and just plain hate will surface and distribute its poison, even in environments where tolerance is taught.

We talked about the tragedy in Boston at the dinner table tonight and how sad we all felt that a child and two others died, and that so many others were injured. I thought that maybe my younger children would ask, “Why?” But they didn’t. Maybe they already understand that there is no real answer to why people hate and why people hurt others. There simply is no justifiable explanation.