Many of my articles are based on personal experience or wonderings. This article is no exception.
The Voice of Experience
This article on bullying is different in two specific ways. First of all, it’s written from the vantage point of a parent who has a child that has been bullied pretty much all his life and another child who is just starting kindergarten, but has already earned the reputation as a bully (since starting day care).
The one son is mildly autistic which offers just enough bullying fodder to make life even more difficult for him.
The other son is being assessed for a learning disability which explains why it has always been difficult for him to understand how his behavior hurts other children, and for him to control his actions and words.
The only consolation is that he doesn’t do any of these behaviors with the intention of being mean or hurting someone else. Perhaps being consistent will eventually teach him self-regulation, but until then, the reality remains.
What You May Not Know About the Parents of a Bully
Secondly, this article is not about helping bullied kids deal with the bully. It is about helping victims’ parents recognize the parental reality that parents of a bully are going through — in a way that only another parent could possibly understand.
From the moment my child with the perfectly angelic face was placed in my arms, I never dreamed, in all the dreams I had for him, that he would be a bully. I don’t think any mom does.
That’s the other side of this issue. While I’m sure we can all come up with examples of parents who deny their child does anything wrong, there are a whole bunch of other parents that really do care and wish they could make things different and really don’t know what to do to make things different.
I had the privilege of meeting one of those parents when my older son was a victim of bullying last year. I went into a parent/ teacher/ student conference (which I initiated) to try to reconcile the situation expecting a gruff, rough-and-tumble, devil-may-care bully and accompanying parent.
However, the people who entered that room were nothing like that.
Once the heat of the initial incident had died down, the bully was extremely distraught over what he had done. I recognized that the dad who accompanied him to the meeting also faced the challenge of dealing with a teenage boy with a learning disability, very similar to my son’s, on top of the typical teenage boy testosterone issues.
What impressed me about this dad was that he wasn’t in denial about what happened, and fully recognized what happened, and surprisingly tried to help the reconciliation process that I had initiated.
I learned that he and I, as parents, had a lot more in common. It was somewhat of a comfort to know, actually, that I wasn’t the only one dealing with this kind of thing – that this dad was too (and I got the feeling he felt the same way). I also learned that parents of bullies hurt too.
In the case of my younger son – the bully – whether my son is intentional or not in his hurtful actions, I can’t deny the effect these actions and behaviors have on other children. My heart aches for those children whom my child hurts.
I can imagine a child from my son’s kindergarten class going home to their mom and dad and telling them about how this kid at school threw a toy at them or mispronounces their name on purpose.
My heartache over this is pretty much as strong as that for my son when I see that his actions result in the reality that no one wants to play with him.
While measures are being taken to assess what the learning disability actually is and to get some behavioral modification strategies in place, the question remains, what can we as parents do for our child the bully now?
Parenting the Bully
1) Pull our heads out of the sand
When your child is hurting another child, whether intentionally malicious or not, recognize that the pain the bullied child feels is real and that your child is the source of that pain.
As long as you continue to deny that your child’s behavior is the source of that pain, the other children in his class or with whom he comes in contact will continue to be hurt.
2) Get help
The advantage of recognizing your child’s behavior – again, whether intentional or not – is that you and the teachers and caregivers involved can start looking at disciplinary and behavioral modification methods to curb the destructive behavior.
These need to be consistent if you’re to have any chance of dealing effectively with the behavior. Hopefully, this also includes teaching the other children how to deal with the individual bully.
There’s a difference between behavior that’s fuelled by maliciousness and one that’s fuelled by a learning disability. Teaching children the difference can help them recognize learning-disability-fuelled behavior (where the mean behavior is usually not personal or intentionally hurtful) and still foster relationships and friendships.
3) Be compassionate
Acknowledge the pain when the bullied child has the courage to tell you (this happened to me just this week). This is not about picking sides against your child. This is about making it safe for the other child to come forward with their feelings.
In this case, it’s not just the teachers or the principal telling you about your child’s behavior. You’re getting it directly from the child that’s been or is being hurt.
Think about how intimidating it is for a teacher or principal to get up the courage to tell you about your child’s behavior. Think how much more intimidating it must be for a child to tell you.
Regardless of on which side of this equation you fall, a child should never feel like they can’t come forward with their feelings. It also gives you the chance to try to reconcile that relationship.
4) Parental Self-examination
As with many of these tough issues, there needs to be some self-examination about anything going on at home – whether within your control or not – that could be changed or that could be acting as a catalyst for your child’s behavior. Children process family situations and circumstances – even the simplest things – much differently than adults do.
It’s been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
Changing the way you’ve always done something, or the way society or your parents always did things is very difficult. But if we ever expect to make a positive change in our children, we can’t continue to fall back on the old ways, and need to try new ways until we find something or a combination of some things that work.
Bullying isn’t just a one-sided issue. It is a two-sided issue – the bully and person being bullied – with many different facets on each side.
For some families, the solution is very simple. For others, it’s not. We can’t hope to make a difference in the anti-bullying issue by only addressing one side – where most media coverage lands.
I think we also need to make room for understanding toward those parents who are parents of a bully. As in the case of the parent of the student that was bullying my son, we are really more alike than we think.
Parenting is one of the most difficult jobs on the planet. As I said before, very few parents look down at their baby and decide, “I’m going to teach him how to be a bully.”
Part of the anti-bullying campaign has to be empowering parents of bullies with ways to help modify their child’s behavior and to encourage them to acknowledge that their child is doing these things so they can be helped.
There is stigma assigned to parents of children with bullying tendencies that can make a parent feel even more powerless than they already do.
In many cases, the bully’s parents may have the same values and parenting philosophies as the victim’s parents, but for whatever reason, the one child became the bully. The reality of learning disabilities adds a whole other dimension as well.
The only way to really, truly conquer this problem is for both sides to understand and recognize both sides of this issue – which, admittedly, are far too complex to try to fully describe and “solve” in this article - and for work to focus on addressing all aspects.
I’ve included some resources below particularly geared to those parents who are faced with the extremely discouraging reality that their child is a bully.
Sources:
1) First steps to stop bullying: Adults helping children aged 4 to 11. Public Safety Canada. Web. Jan 30, 2013.
http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/res/cp/bully_4211-eng.aspx
2) Bullying in Kindergarten. Alsaker, Francoise. Education.com. Web. Jan 30, 2013.
http://www.education.com/reference/article/kindergarten-bullying
3) Not My Kid: What to do if Your Child is a Bully. Pertler, Jill. Education.com. Web. Jan 30, 2013.
http://www.education.com/magazine/article/what-to-do-if-your-child-is-a-bully
4) If Your Child is the Bully. Beck, Evelyn. SchoolFamily.com. Web. Jan 30, 2013.
http://www.schoolfamily.com/school-family-articles/article/819-if-your-child-is-the-bully
Reviewed January 30, 2013
by Michele Blacksberg RN
Edited by Jody Smith