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BULLYING
What is bullying
It is generally understood that two main areas of bullying behaviour exist. Physical and non-physical.
Physical bullying can be thought of as anything which requires some kind of physical contact or action. Typically, we think of this kind of bullying as:-
Punching, kicking, hitting, slapping, hair pulling, poking, pushing, shoving and spitting. However, it should also includes extortion, theft and damage to children's clothing and belongings.
non-physical bullying tends to be thought of almost exclusively as being verbally inflicted, such as:-
Threatening violence, name-calling, teasing, beginning rumours, spreading lies and instigating whispering campaigns. However, it should also include consistently failing to respond to or acknowledge a child, continually speaking over a child and general exclusion.
The affect on your family
As adults we all recognise the kind of behaviours defined as bullying. If not in ourselves then in others. Yet many of us are extremely slow to recognise or unwilling to believe that this type of behaviour is present in children. This simply serves to illustrate just how out of touch we can be with the world that children occupy and also how distasteful we find the idea that children can be cruel and uncaring. Children can be frighteningly cruel and extremely cold hearted in the way they behave towards to each other.
The subject of family dynamics is a complex one, in part because the members of that family are forever changing, growing and developing. In short, if you take a thousand different variables and apply them to a handful of people the possible compilations are incalculable. However, no matter how complex the family, when a child becomes a victim of bullying, so to do the family.
What parent seeing their child suffer does not suffer also, on seeing fear reduce their child to uncontrollable sobbing does not become afraid themselves for that child's safety. What parent knowing their child is unhappy is not made unhappy themselves simply by that knowledge and when they beg you not to send them to school and then tell you they hate you for forcing them to go, don't you then begin to hate yourself for making them.
How then does bullying affect a child's parents? It can affect them quite dramatically. Parents are often finely in tune with their children's feelings and can find themselves feeling the same type of immense anger and murderous hatred towards the individuals who are carrying out the bullying as their child. For children to have these kind of feelings and to do nothing or little about them is quite normal. However, the reverse is true of adults.
What do we advise
As is becoming the norm we advise you not to take one of the generally recommend conventional courses of action. Therefore, do not allow children to come to terms with and resolve bullying problems for themselves and do not expect the school to resolve the bullying for them.
In our opinion neither of these two suggested solution will really work in the long term, if at all.
The first option is in our opinion is the most unrealistic, if a child could resolve its own bullying problem, then it would do so and no one would be the wiser. However, when children can not cope, become stressed, and unhappy because of bullying, then ultimately others have to become involved. If a child does eventually open up and tell an adult then the last thing the child needs to be told at that stage is that they are expected to resolve their own problems.
Getting the school to resolve the bullying problem doesn't fair mush better as a possible solution. Schools can only act on bullying that occurs on school premises and schools are seldom keen to grasp the bull by the horns if the bullying involves specific groups of children, such as SEN children. Some schools seem to almost expect SEN children to be bullied.
The kind of advice you can expect from most schools will generally be so obvious or so impractical that you may find yourself wandering if those advising you are serious. For example, 'tell your child to avoid the people who are bullying them' Most children would have work that one out for themselves. Another common suggestion is 'tell your child to pretend they don't care' or 'tell your child to run and find a teacher to tell if he is bullied'
So what do we advise? We advise you to follow a step by step approach to the problem and to find the solution that best fits your child's circumstances.
Step1) Find out why your child is being bullied, by who, where and when.
On almost every occasion the trigger to instigate bullying of dyslexic children is the schools decision to send a child to special needs classes.
Step2) Build self-esteem.
If your child is attending special needs classes then their self-esteem may plummet and they may become stigmatised. Until you address this problem they will be susceptible to bullying.
Step3) Remove the cause of the problem.
In the short term it may be best to isolate your child from the problem in what ever way you feel is most appropriate.
Step4) Create a positive environment.
Try to create a positive environment at home by declaring it a blame free zone. Do not repeat negative remarks that teachers may have made about your child.
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