October is National Bullying Prevention Month. More than one out of every five (20.8%) students report being bullied, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 2016.
Gene Liebler, LCSW, the Executive Director of Behavioral Health at La Rabida Children’s Hospital, answered some of our questions about what we can do to stop bullying. The good news is that he says whether it’s protecting our kids who are being bullied, teaching our kids how to be upstanders, reaching out to schools, or what we adults do in our own behaviors, there’s much we can do to take a stand and make our world kinder.
Between Us Parents (BUP): Sometimes, kids are just mean. How do you differentiate between rude/mean behavior and bullying?
Gene Liebler, LCSW (GL): The honest answer to this is that it isn’t always clear when all you see is a single incident of a child’s behavior. Everyone has bad days, kids included.
What you’re looking to identify is a pattern of behavior, rather than a single incident, and behavior that produces some kind of gain for the child doing the bullying. For instance, if a child yells, “shut up!” at a peer, that would certainly be mean behavior in most circumstances, but for no personal gain.
However, if a child teases another child’s clothing or hair, in front of others who then also laugh, hurting the other child’s feelings, the child doing the teasing is increasing their social ranking, thereby receiving a social reinforcement for the behavior. This is more indicative of bullying. You want to look for a pattern. Isolated incidents of mean behavior deserve our attention, but don’t really reflect the concern that bullying is occurring.
BUP: What are the most important elements of the conversation that parents need to make sure they cover with their kids?
GL: As a part of parenting a school age child, making sure you are asking about how they are doing in school with other kids, asking if they feel other kids are being mean to them, and if you get a response that worries you to be sure to dig into that question. If you’re concerned that your child is being bullied have a conversation about what’s going on, and help your child think through how to respond to the problem. If your child is being bullied, it’s critical to have a conversation with your school; most schools have policies that prohibit students from being bullied, but it’s also important to note that most bullying occurs outside of the direct observation of school staff. Your contact with the school may represent the first time the school becomes aware there is a problem.
A lot of the conversation in this area focuses on two types of kids, the bully and the victim, but there is a 3rd type of kid, which is the observer. This is the child who isn’t being bullied, but who witnesses it. Having conversations with your child about how what to do if they see bullying is also important to fostering healthy, safe school place cultures. The observer can either become part of the bullying by reinforcing the bully, a bystander by doing nothing, or an advocate by either supporting the victim or challenging the bully. This is an incredibly difficult position for kids and to have a chance to discuss what to do when they see bullying with a parent is extremely helpful for their social and moral development.
Further, as children move through adolescence, their increasing independence and cognitive development require parents to aid them in independent critical thinking more than simply following directions. Conversations about what’s right and wrong, self-worth, friendship and values can be important protective factors.
BUP: The conversation about bullying has been going for a while now. Is it possible to stop it entirely? And if so, what will that take?
GL: It’s hard to find a culture where this kind of behavior doesn’t exist. Empathy, the ability to understand and critically consider what other people think and feel, is essential. We are experiencing increasing divisiveness in the world of adults; the people who children look to as role models of behavior are frequently displaying less and less empathy. It’s discouraging.
One of the most important things we can do as adults is to demonstrate empathy and compassion in our lives. The bully who learns empathy will stop bullying, the observer who learns empathy and understands how to use that empathy to disrupt the bullying will promote healthy, safe environments. Our children will learn empathy from us, or if we don’t model it, they won’t.
This problem has just as much to do with adults’ behaviors as it does with children’s, and that’s just as true of the solution to it.
The fact is bullying doesn’t end at age 18, or 21, or any age, it just gets a variety of different names, such as assault and battery, harassment, discrimination, stalking, theft, or bigotry. It’s not hard to understand how adults get in trouble with the law, when so much of the behavior that gets and adult in trouble with the law is completely ignored, or seen and dismissed, while they are growing up as children. The answer isn’t to criminalize childhood behavior, it’s to prioritize developing environments where children learn to value and support one another.
BUP: How hopeful are you that we as a society can effectively tackle the problem of bullying?
GL: It’s hard to know at this moment in time.
As adults we need to fully accept our responsibility as role models and teachers—and any adult who has anything more than brief interactions with a child is one of their teachers.
Adults who fail to demonstrate compassion and empathy receive a tremendous amount of attention in the media, which at times is unavoidable. When the amount of time dedicated to adults behaving badly disproportionately outweighs the time dedicated to adults demonstrating compassion and empathy, it becomes doubly important that the rest of us do so in our homes and communities if we are to hope to improve the health and safety of our schools, summer camps, social media platforms and other environments where children socialize.
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