@Vgal #215797
I suppose [reaching out to the parent of a bully] might help, though sometimes it would lead nowhere as the parent would not say anything of substance, or that parent is (part of) the problem in the first place.
Indeed, they might be. No two bullying dynamics will be exactly alike, especially once you factor in the bully's parents' relationship with the situation. But if this approach helps even a tenth of bullying victims, then I'd say it was worth it.
There is the risk of it doing more harm than good - parents may retaliate or encourage their kids to retaliate - but that's something to factor in.
I don’t know if this would be of any help when you’re dealing with elementary or middle-school kids. You’d really have to make it simple so that they can properly understand what you’re telling them and not lose interest.
Most or all of them are.
- Stamp collecting: When someone does a small thing that upsets us, like letting a door shut rather than wait for us, or leaving a dirty cup on the table instead of taking it to the sink, we often don't respond, but we don't quite forget it either. Each of these is like a stamp worth a penny/cent/[insert whatever the smallest value coin is in your currency]. When we've got enough of them, they're worth quite a lot of money (or anger), so we cash them all in, in one go. Usually we'll do that against one person who may not have created all of those stamps. Bullies can do it to us, and we may let all our anger out at one bully when there are several, so our retaliation can look like 'too much'.
- Drama Triangle: you already know this one, but it's a great way of recognising everyone's roles in a bullying dynamic and opening up questions about why a given person feels a need for a Victim or a Rescuer. Understanding the abuse cycle (an abuser's tendency to go anticlockwise around the D.T. over and over again. It works for tired people who are being irritable at you when you don't deserve it, too) can also be helpful for understanding why some people are friends sometimes, and bullies at others.
- Poison Parrot: Imagine I give you a parrot as a pet. You take it home and discover that its been trained to say horrible things, like: "you're stupid", "you're annoying", and "everybody hates you". What would you do with it? (See what the kid answers; there are a few ways to deal with this hypothetical parrot, and their response is always interesting! Do they put a cloth over the parrot's cage so it can't see you so it can't be talking about you? Do they get rid of it?) Then tell them: we all have a chatty bit in our heads, like a parrot that's constantly talking to us, but a) everyone's parrot says different things. Some parrots are friendly and encouraging and say things like, "everyone likes you", some are critical and tell us things like, "you're a failure"; and b) the parrot doesn't understand what it's saying. It just repeats the same thing over and over again. Most of us have a bad habit of listening to our parrot. If you had a parrot like that, why not retrain it to say kind things?
- Racket feelings: we're all raised to believe that some feelings are more acceptable than others. For example, some people are taught that being sad is okay. Some are taught it isn't. When someone who's learned that being sad isn't okay meets someone who learned it is, then they can feel as if they have to stop the other person from being sad, because they were taught that sadness is unacceptable. They might do that by trying to cheer the other person up, or they might try to bully them to 'toughen them up'. Similar dynamics are true for anger, fear, and even joy. This is one to discuss carefully so as not to make a child feel at fault for how they're presenting, but it can be helpful if broached the right way.
- Beach Ball Experiment: This is a similar one to "what would you do with a parrot that says horrible things?" Ask "If you were walking along the beach, minding your own business, and suddenly I'm there and throw a beachball at you, what do you do?" It's a metaphor for, "if I approach you and interact with you in a way you didn't expect and might not want, do you keep doing things my way, or do you take charge of the situation?" Talking about this can help kids to cotton onto the fact that the other person doesn't dictate how the interaction will go. Perhaps you might suggest that if someone threw a beachball at you, you might keep it and say, "I don't want to play beachball with you, but I'm up for volleyball instead. How about we do that?" That's you taking charge.
All in all, these might offer practical suggestions about how to manage our own internal voice, our own assumptions about the world, and how, and how much, we take charge of the way we interact with others. Perhaps they'll help a bullied child turn things around, perhaps not, but a bit of education and perspective-shifting doesn't tend to be harmful.
While respect might help and may even be necessary, don’t expect the problematic kids to reciprocate. They may see your respectfulness as a sign of weakness, a lack of spine which they can use to continue doing what they want.
Perhaps. I think you're right that it's another one of those situations where you may do more harm than good by making yourself vulnerable to them as part of that show of respect. It's more of an invitation for them to do better. Some will accept it and some will not.
And the kids who are being bullied may take that equal respect of yours as just another example of a teacher treating the perpetrator and the victim as equal — and equally to blame.
There's a hint of "one of us has to be not-okay in the eyes of the grown up" to this. Many of us veer into that sort of thinking, and realising that everyone involved is simply a flawed human being who is probably doing their best or just trying to get through life can be hard to do, especially in a bullying situation.
Some may simply not be ready for that. Knowing which children aren't ready for it is useful information too.
There also has to be a very real and tangible prospect of consequences if the problem kids refuse to cooperate and continue harassing others.
Welp, this is why I don't have kids and have no intention of it. I don't have a natural way with kids, and someone who's comfortable with them might say I'm wrong. I may be talking rubbish throughout all this, but it's what I'd try if I found myself in this situation.