Your children face challenges that you never had to deal with growing up. A recent tale of cyber bullying involved Audrie Pott, a 15 year old California teenage who committed suicide after pictures of her rape circulated around social networks when her rapists uploaded them. While not all cyber bullying is taken to this kind of extreme,…
Making the Distinction Between Self-Esteem and Selfish Esteem
This issue is well articulated by Jon Siebels, the Guitarist of Eve 6, in his blog on the Huffington Post, “School Bullying: To End It, We Must Change Our Culture”. “When I think of bullies,” Siegel writes, “the first thing that comes to my mind is that a bully is someone who is overcompensating for…
Start “Bully Talks” With Your Kids About Daily Life and Feelings With Questions Like These:
What was one good thing that happened today? Any bad things? What is lunchtime like at your school? Who do you sit with? What do you talk about? If applicable, what is it like to ride the school bus? When it comes time for some direct talk about bullies, you might want to consider the…
Leave Nothing Unsaid with Your Child: Have Regular “Bully Talks”
One of the first things we should observe is our children’s relationship with their friends. If you don’t see any interaction with classmates or neighborhood kids, this could be an open message that your child is struggling socially. If your child does have frequent interaction with friends, part of your discussion with him or her…
What Bullying and Gangs Have in Common
[one_half] BULLIES Want recognition Love “the show” Don’t mind hurting others Like strength in numbers* Seek dominance Disrespect authority Want to be admired Often pay a heavy price…
The U.S. is Finally Fighting the Cyberbullying Disease
The faceless, sometimes even nameless, threat of cyberbullying is a modern inception that has grown exponentially withthe popularity of social networks. As these new threats arise, new policies are needed to combat them, and many of these policies have come in the form of laws intended to slow down the wave of cyberbullying. Laws,…
Between Meanness and Bullying
Both meanness and bullying can involve an imbalance of power between the bully and victim with that imbalance including both social class and physical differences. But meanness has a subjective component and what one person perceives as mean or even cruel behavior may be more the result of underdeveloped social skills and unintentional slights on…
At What Age Does Bullying Become a Danger to Kids?
While bullying can occur even in the pre-school period of a child’s life, it often reaches its peak when most boys are at puberty and trying to impress the girls who have reached that point an average of two years earlier. While some studies show that the direct physical assault aspect of bullying peaks in…
Understand All Five Traditional Forms of Bullying
Isolation Many of us can remember not being invited to a party or social function. We may also remember days when we were not picked for the kickball team or maybe sat alone at the lunch table. Part of this behavior may be due to the normal developmental insensitivity that many children exhibit toward their…
Two More Myths to Dispel About Bullying
MYTH: Cyberbullying is just mean kids acting out in social media. That may be true, but this new media is incredibly powerful and broad in scope. The choice by some adults to minimize their own exposure to social media has served to increase the potential for younger people to be victimized through social networking. While…