Adults and parents – it’s our responsibility to help kids learn how to stop bullying. Stop shifting the blame and get it done. No excuses.
The sad truth is, when a kid reports bullying, most adults don’t have the slightest clue what to do or how to get it to stop. They weren’t taught how to get a bully to stop. So they guess and make assumptions about what might work.
- For some this is to bully the bully back – which is a stupendously bad idea.
- For others it involves telling the kid to stand up for themselves, but not telling them how and then berating the kid for not making the bullying stop. Again, a stupendously bad idea – especially since if the kid knew how to get it to stop – they wouldn’t have asked you for help.
- For still others, their strategy is to tell the teacher or the administrators at the school what is going on and then getting mad when the teacher or principle fails to get the bullying kid to stop – immediately.
Don’t Cling to Failed Strategies!
What all of these failed strategies have in common, besides the fact they don’t get the bullying to stop, is that the adults in question failed their kids by failing to help their kids get the bullying to stop. In the first two – the adult puts the responsibility on the child to deal with something they haven’t been taught how to deal with. In the 3rd, they put the responsibility on other adults – who most likely also don’t know how to make it stop.
Most parents, even the well-meaning actively engaged ones, try to shift the responsibility of getting bullying to stop onto someone else. We need to stop doing that. First, in case you haven’t noticed, none of those strategies actually work.
I realize that you can blame someone else – often your kid – for that failure, but you are the parent. It’s your job to teach your child the social skills they need to learn. One of the most important skills is how to get a bully to stop.
No more excuses.
If you don’t know what actually works to get a bully to stop – learn it. Then start teaching it to your kid. The technique is pretty simple and once you understand the science behind it – you can adapt to it whatever specific situation your child finds themselves in.
This technique is compassionate, ethical, science based and it works. It’s easy to teach once you know what it is you need to be teaching. And you as the parent are in the best position to teach this as you are the one that your child is hopefully confiding in and you are the one who can put additional pressure on the school to help.
So please, take advantage of all the free material on this website. I recommend you start by getting the book and viewing the free lesson – how to talk to your child’s school about bullying so that they will actually listen and help!