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Does your child have the back-to-school jitters? Do you have a little one going off for the first time? Maybe your child can’t wait to get out the door and you are the one having the ‘empty nest’ panic attack?
No matter what the scenario in your home, the end of summer and back-to-school routine can be stressful. Here are a few ideas to help ease the transition for everyone.
As a final consolation, don’t forget that children almost always manage better once you have disappeared around the corner than when you are still within sight. They pull themselves together and can focus on the task at hand rather than concentrate on missing you. The day will be over before you know it!
“My child is being bullied at school. What should I do?”
First of all, know that you’re not alone. Bullying is an all-too-common experience. A lot of parents are dealing with the same frustrating—and painful—experience as you are. Here are some tips on getting through this tough time with your child.
Empathize with your child, but do so from a position of strength. Let him/her know that you understand how awful it feels to be bullied—lower than low. At the same time, let him/her know that you’re not totally freaked out by the situation (something that’s easier said than done if you have a long history of being bullied yourself). Your child needs to feel that you can handle this and that you will be a source of support (as opposed to an emotional marshmallow).
Reassure your child. Let your child know that you take the problem seriously and that s/he has your support. Kids need to know that they no longer have to deal with this problem on their own. Teach your child how to respond to a bully (use humour that doesn’t put down the bully) and how to reduce the odds of being bullied in future (by coming across as a less vulnerable target, because bullies are notorious for picking on kids who come across as physically or emotionally vulnerable).
Arrange to meet with your child’s teacher. The school needs to know what is going on so that school staff can keep their eyes and ears open and be prepared to intervene when they suspect that bullying may be taking place. Your child needs to know where s/he can go and who s/he can talk to if s/he is being bullied physically (pushing, hitting), emotionally (name-calling, spreading of rumors), or socially (by being shunned by the group). You might also want to inquire about the types of anti-bullying programs offered by the school. Kids need to learn how to prevent incidents of bullying (by dealing with the underlying issues that can otherwise result in bullying) and how to defuse bullying situations when they first occur—by refusing to give the bully an audience.
Compare notes with other parents at your child’s school. Find out if any of their kids have had problems with bullying. Talk about ways to work together to deal with bullying at school, on the school bus, and online so that you can curb bullying together.
Find someone you can talk to about how you’re feeling. It’s painful to watch your child being bullied. You need an outlet for your feelings so that you can be strong for your child.
Keep strong and remember, you are not alone.
We just experienced Bullying Awareness Week last week, and while I applaud the attention being paid to bullying prevention, I sure wish it was a not confined to one week or one simple school assembly saying “bullying is wrong”. That ain’t gonna cut the mustard.
To fully appreciate the complexity of the social conditions that contribute to bullying, and to tackle it head on, we have to make huge changes as a society—not only on the individual and family levels, but also at the school and community levels. In fact, all our social institutions and all our human relationships must shift their thinking to loving kindness and compassion in a new way. I recommend people check out the awesome work being done by Raffi at childhonouring.org [http://childhonouring.org/] to learn more about how to make systemic changes to humanity that will create lasting change.
I know that may leave you feeling a bit lost at what to do in the moment when your child arrives home with tear-stained eyes, so here are some immediate tips for those who must make a swift plan of action right now.
When You Learn Your Child is Being Bullied
Anti-Bullying Tactics You Can Teach Your Child
Hopefully, this will nip the attacks in the bud. It’s not the only solution, and if things continue, or worsen quickly, there are more levels of intervention to try. Bullying is so prevalent that every child should at least know these protective tactics so they feel armed to deal with problems should they arise.
Now parents—join your Parent Council and bring your own commitment to making all schools a loving, safe, inclusive environment. It’s a child’s right (both the bully and the bullied) to feel safe and loved everywhere they go.
On what research did you you base your comment “we know this doesn’t help” for countering bullying with retaliation? The bullying will continue until someone bigger and stronger deservedly kicks the bullies’ asses. The schools are not doing a good enough job of solving the problem and many actually discourage parents from approaching other parents to try and resolve the issue. Which is why my kids will learn karate and self defense.
I agree with many points in this article but I still struggle with the “don’t stand up to the bully” theory. Some recent events in my son’s school seem to indicate that silence or “ignor-ance” of a problem can simply allow the situation to continue and increase the # of “victims”. Vs saying something out loud in strong enough language and forcefully enough to the offender which might also be effective in the right circumstances.
Our children experience enormous pressures to be online all the time. They are starting as young as 2 years-old on the iPhone and evolving to the 8 to18 year-old spending more than 7½ hours per day in digital activity of one form or another, and that doesn’t include cell phone use.
Some schools require children as young as 10 to have a Think Pad and to maintain a regular blog. They bring their schoolwork home on a digital stick and use the Internet for assigned research. Teens meets with their classmates via Skype to complete school projects because it’s more convenient than getting together face-to-face. To stay connected with their friends, our children keep their noses to the screens while texting and Facebooking. They entertain themselves online with video games, TV shows and YouTube videos. And we parents are putting the pressure on them, too. We ask our children to stay in touch with us digitally, and encourage them to distract themselves online when we want time to ourselves.
While accepting that our children’s lives will require a certain amount of screen time, we can be important advocates for off-screen activities to counter the weaknesses of a digital life. Already doctors are seeing young people showing the physical fallout from years of computer use—neck and back problems, carpal tunnel syndrome, diminished hearing, effects of inadequate sleep. Drama teachers are finding that today’s students are so dependent on texting they have trouble expressing themselves when they’re asked to communicate face-to-face.
To counter the sedentary, sometimes solitary screen-based lifestyle, our teens need social, physical and tactile experiences: making music or art, dancing or drama, sports, volunteering, time in nature. If your child is resisting reduced screen time, ask him or her to propose a solution that takes into account your concerns. If she argues that she needs to be online all the time because her career will be dependent on her cyber skills, you can counter with the example of Pierce Vallieres. He’s the 14 year-old who created a Rubik’s Cube app for Apple that is generating worldwide sales. Doubtless Pierce spent hours online fine-tuning his creation, but, according to media reports, he still manages to find time to play baseball, hockey and guitar, and is learning to fly an airplane.
You’ll be strengthened in your resolve by the position of many Silicon Valley computer geeks who are sending their children to schools like Waldorf that don’t use computers. According to a recent article in The New York Times, these parents are aware that their children will need computer time to compete in the modern world but say “What’s the rush, given how easy it is to pick up those skills.”
At Waldorf Academy here in Toronto we are not against technology per se. It has been one of the most important benefactors of human culture and development. However, we do not think it benefits the children in the classroom until middle school. Our alumni are attaining degrees in every subject and are grateful for that very brief moment in their lives when they weren’t ruled by technology but were encouraged to imagine and foster their own creativity.
I agree completely with this article as we have already encountered this techno problem with our five year old grandson who goes completely into a hysterical fit every time he plays with any of the online learning games, Wii, Dsi or any other gadgets out there. His parents and I are diligent about time slots for these activities but he gets so upset at the end that we take the privileges away more and more it seems. What to do next is frustrating for all of us.
You don’t have to be Kate Gosselin, an unemployed reality television star and single mom with a brood of eight kids, to be stressed about the costs of paying for your kids’ post-secondary education. Most parents are concerned (and confused) about how to set aside money in a Registered Education Savings Plan. Enter Golden Girl Finance expert Rhonda Sherwood, a Wealth Advisor at ScotiaMcLeod in Vancouver, to help sort through the RESP rulebook and provide savvy ‘school-savings’ tips to get started!
Rhonda advises that RESPs are pretty standard, since they are such highly regulated plans. Therefore, you won’t gain much from shopping around. Choose an institution where you have a relationship, bring in a budget of what you can spend and ask an advisor to help you to choose investments. Hopefully, your prodigy will go on to make you proud!
Comments
Hi Angela -
I just discovered your comment today. My apologies for being so slow in responding.
In a perfect world, the onus would be on the bully and his parents to resolve the problem. Unfortunately, we are living in an anything-but-perfect world. That leaves the child being bullied and his parents to flag the problem for school officials the majority of the time.
It can be frustrating and exhausting to deal with bullying problems. I hope you can find other parent-allies at the school. That is the best way to make positive change: to rally other like-minded people to your cause. Good luck.
Great points! We are just going through this for the first time.
My youngest daughter told me last week that she has been teased since the beginning of the school year by two older boys that live on our street and attend the same middle school. This is my daughter’s first year in middle school. The issue ... the way that she looks. She needs braces badly but because she has not lost very many baby teeth we have been advised for the past two years to wait until she has her permanent teeth. Because my daughter has been so upset and trying to deal with this on her own (she didn’t want us to say anything because we know one of the families’ parents) - we had braces put on her front four teeth this morning - we were lucky there was a cancellation and they were able to get her started immediately after her consultation. She went to school so happy after her appointment today ... I’m just hoping that the boys don’t find another reason to tease my daughter on the way home tonight or we will be back at square one again!