What can parents do when their child/teen is being bullied or cyberbullied?

I was reading a copy of Psychology Today and this article caught my eye,

“What Parents Can Do About Cyberbullying”

I highly recommend you read this article. (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/passive-aggressive-diaries/201204/what-parents-can-do-about-cyberbullying)

I think the author is “right on” in all her points; however, the article was not at all what I thought it would be about.  Parents of bullying victims often contact me, desperate for advice on how to help their bullied child.  Parents tell me there is not a ton of information out there to guide parents on what to do when their child is the victim of bullying/cyberbullying.  Parents find that much of the published information on this subject is written by adults with some great ideas and things that should work “in theory” but is not realistic in the life of a teen.

I was recently contracted to speak with a large school community in Virginia and asked to address these very issues.  It is hard to give an exact plan to follow; there are so many factors that play into each bullying situation.  I am around teens and cyberbullying every day.  I have a lot of experience working with victims, bullies, parents and school administrators.  Based on my personal dealings, here are some guidelines that will help:

• Before anything else, get proof! Take a screen shot or photograph of the cyberbullying.  Every time it happens, whether it is on your teens account or someone else’s account, record it and save it in a file.  Proof of the exact behaviors, frequency and intensity is important.
• Stop and think before you react!  Your actions and reactions will play heavily on the outcome of this situation and future situations.

1. We can’t control what       other people say and do.  We can,       however, control how we act or react.

1. Keep in mind that it is impossible to stop a cyberbully.  There are many forms and places that a cyberbully can take out their aggression on your teen.  Many times cyberbullying is anonymous so it is hard to prove.  Some states are more forward thinking than others when giving consequences to cyberbullies.

The end goal is to stop the cyberbullying from happening.  Many of the actions you decide to take will affect the outcome of this conflict.

 

• Some school administrators may tell you that there is nothing they can do.  I have heard administrators say, “I can not watch all students, all the time.”  Do not accept this response.  Every child has a right to feel safe at school.
• If you can’t seem to get protection for your child at school, make sure you file a police report ever time the bullying/cyberbullying happens.  They may not charge the bully but at least you have a record of the abuse.
• Desperate measures call for desperate action.  You may have to remove your child from that class, school bus or school.

 

 

What NOT to do:

 

 

do not fight back on-line – the cyberbully is looking for a reaction.  A reaction feeds the fire and will only make the cyberbullying worse.

• When dealing with the bully – do not name call, threaten or act mean, negative or hurtful.  If you react by taking part in these actions you are now the bully/cyberbully.
• Do not storm into the principal’s office and demand the bully to be punished.  Remember two things:
  • Everyone is innocent until proven guilty.
  • There are always two sides to every story.

The job of the school is to remain neutral and solve the problem.

• Do not put the school administration on the defensive – be careful about how you approach the school administration.  Your attitude, tone and actions will affect how this will be handled.  My advice is to approach the situation by asking for help.  Your goal is to prove to them that your child is being hurt and needs protection.  Keep in mind that the school administrator’s job is to protect the reputation of the school.
• Do not immediately contact the parents of the bully – Think how that might affect the whole situation.   I have found that bullies copy the behavior of their parents.  You know the saying, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”  Many parent’s first reaction is to defend their child.  School administrators have told me 100’s of stories how parents have said…”my kid would never do that” before they have even heard what happened!!  Another probable outcome is that it will make the situation worse for your child.  It could feed the fire for the bully and cause the bullying to get worse.
• Do not tell your teen to “ignore it” or “stay away” from the bully.  This does NOT work.  The bully is attracted to weakness.  He will see avoidance as weakness.  If your teen has the guts to come to you for help and you don’t help them, they will lose faith in ever feeling safe!
• Do not tell your child that this is all a part of growing up or that boys will be boys.  Bullying and cyberbullying is abuse and there is nothing “Ok” about it.  Your job is to protect your child.
• Do not tell your child to “toughen up”.  A victim does not have the power to stop the abuser.  In bullying and cyberbullying, it is also typically committed by a group or one bully with a group of silent bystanders.  Bullying is usually not one vs. one.  Teens need your advice, direction and experience.  Walk your child through this until the bullying has stopped or the problem resolved.
• Don’t give up!  Cyberbullying is much worse than the bullying that you and I dealt with before there were cell phones and the internet.  Too many kids believe it would be better to be dead than to live with the pain and humiliation of being the victim of bullying or cyberbullying.

What we CAN do:

• Teach your child about personal boundaries.  We have to show our children how to protect themselves by putting up an invisible wall.  Your child has the “right” to only allow positive, supportive, nice behaviors through that wall.
• Who are their friends?  Are they healthy friendships?  Do those friendships make us feel good?  Teach them examples of what constitutes healthy friendships.  Give examples of actions that happen in unhealthy friendships.
• How do their “friends” treat those that are not in their circle of friends?  Are they nice, positive and supportive of others?  Or do you see them treat others with mean, negative and hurtful behavior?
• Contact each teacher individually.  Ask them for help.  Tell them your child is being victimized and come up with a plan for the teacher to help while your child is in their classroom.  Remember, if your actions put them on the defense, they will be of no help.
• Block the bully on your teen’s cell phone.  If you call the phone company, you can block specific phone numbers from being able to call or send text messages.
• De-Friend the bully.  Most social networks operate by requiring a user to “accept” a friendship in order to allow access to your profile page or to allow them to send messages.  If you remove this function, you remove the opportunity for someone to contact you.
• Your child’s instincts will be to read and reread the posts, looking for updates or to see if others have commented or “liked” what the cyberbullying is doing to them.  Tell them not to look!  (Tyler Clementi, the boy form Rutgers who jumped off the George Washington Bridge is reported to have checked Twitter and the mean comments written about him 42 times before committing suicide.)
• Teach them how to remove themselves from a situation.  It’s OK to get up out of that bus seat and change seats.  It’s OK to walk away from someone who is humiliating them.  Make a plan of how they will handle the situation when it happens.
• Distract your child.  Make plans to do things with your teen on the weekend.  Go to the movies, get manicures or take the dog for a walk.  Ask them to help you with a project.  Volunteer together.
• Help them meet new people and foster healthy friendships.
• Get your teen involved in “adult” chaperoned activities such as scouting, church groups or charity work.

 

When a teen commits suicide, so many times we hear parents say, “I had no idea how much pain my child was in.”  Make it your business to know who is saying what to your child.  It is your job to protect your child!

If you have had experiences that might help others, please share them in the comment section.  This is a great forum to offer support to each other!  I look forward to hearing other experiences!

Jill

 

 

How does your teen feel when he/she looks in the mirror?

How does your teen feel when he/she looks in the mirror? 

 Is this what they see?

If you are not visiting your teen’s FB page, Twitter account and Formspring profile, you may not know what your teen is feeling…

How are you parenting your teen?  What are your strategies?  Where do you get your parenting advice and information?

Studies show that most parents use a parenting style based on either the “likes” or “dislikes” of how they were raised by their own parents.  But there was no internet when our parents were parenting…there was no cyberbullying….

Check out this article (http://montgomery.patch.com/articles/kendall-justice-council-hosts-seminar-on-bullying)

Oswego Police Sergeant Jason Bastin was talking with parents about what he sees.  He says, cyberbullying is an issue our children face every day! “The internet is a good tool, but only if used properly.”  All too often those tools are being misused.  “Cyber bullying is all encompassing,” Bastin said. “It becomes their reality. When someone says something negative about them, it shatters their whole world.”

Look again at the picture of the girl…

·Forty-two percent of kids have been bullied online.

·Thirty-five percent have been threatened.

·Twenty-one percent have received mean or threatening emails.

I was sitting at my son’s lacrosse game on Sunday and I asked the mom sitting next to me if she goes on her teens’ Facebook pages.  She has a daughter in 11^th grade and a son in 8^th grade.  She said, “They are older now, I don’t need to check.”  I think most parents believe their kids would never do something to hurt others. And most kids wouldn’t.  At least intentionally…  So, whose kids are being hurt?? Whose kids are being threatened???

 Who is the 42%??

Jill Brown

The goal of this blog post is to continue to offer parents and educators the opportunity to understand what goes on in the on-line lives of children in this generation. It allows you to consider alternate viewpoints and reflect upon your own approach to raising your child. By no means are my thoughts and reflections the ONLY way to address these concerns.

How well do you know your teen?

How would you answer this question?

 Does your teen talk to you?  Do you think your teens tells you everything?  Is it you that they spend most of their free time with?  If you answered “no” to just one of these questions, keep reading…

 What are the things you know and don’t know about your teen?

 If your teen is anything like my 14 year old son, I have a hard time getting him to tell me anything!!  I mean, I know who his friends are and who he hangs out with after school and on the weekends.(Or do I?)  I know the kids on his soccer and lacrosse team.  But do I know the things he does when he is at friends’ houses?  Do I know what he is doing when he is with the group of 30 teens he hangs out with in town on Friday nights?

 What happens when my son doesn’t know how to handle a situation?  Is it me he comes to for advice or is it his 14 year old friends whom he “bounces” his ideas off of?

 If you want to know more about your teen, follow these points to find out what most anybody can find out about your kid!

 Log on to your teen’s Facebook page.  

**If you don’t have their password, you will be able to find out only “some” of the answers to these questions.  Is that OK with you?

Log on to your Facebook page.

Put your child’s name in the search box.  If you don’t see your child, try searching for one of their friends, then go to that person’s “friend list”.

Don’t have one?   You don’t want one?  I get it but if you want to understand the lives of our teens these days, this is the best place to start!

What have they “liked”? 

Are you surprised?

What have they “disliked”?

Are you OK with these things?

Look through their pictures. 

Where have they been hanging out?  Do you know the people in these pictures?

Are these appropriate pictures?  Are they the kinds of pictures that a college administrator should see?

Look at the comments on each picture.  Are you OK with what their friends are saying?  Are they the kind of comments a college administrator would be impressed with?

Click on their friend list.

Do you have this many friends?  Do you know all these people?  Do you think it makes sense for some of these people to have access to your teens’ Facebook page?

I hope these questions will give you some “conversation starters” to use with your teen this weekend!  Happy Parenting!

–

Jill Brown

The goal of this blog post is to continue to offer parents and educators the opportunity to understand what goes on in the on-line lives of children in this generation. It allows you to consider alternate viewpoints and reflect upon your own approach to raising your child. By no means are my thoughts and reflections the ONLY way to address these concerns.

Is your teen dating? If so, this is a MUST READ!

One of the most often asked questions of me from high school administrators is if I do programs on Teen Dating Violence.  Dating Violence is in many ways very similar to bullying, cyberbullying, harassment and intimidation.  In bullying, we call the players the bully, the victim and the bystander.  In dating violence, the players are similar: 

• one person has power over another
• one person is the recipient of the mean, negative and hurtful behavior
• there are the friends of both parties

A couple of months ago, I was approached by a well known psychologist, Carol M. Pedro,  who works with teens and families.  Carol has many years of experience of working with victims and their families.  Carol and I decided to meet regularly in order to discuss teen issues.  Our goal is to use our combined experiences  to provide a resource for school administrators and parents to help their teens deal with every day teen issues.

Here are the questions I had for Carol:

• How does a teen become a victim of a boyfriend/girlfriend?
• Why does the teen become an abuser?
• What do we teach our teens who suspect their friends are in some kind of trouble?
• How do teach our teens to understand warning signs of an inappropriate relationship and where to turn to for help in the event of a situation like that?

This is what she said:

Teen Dating has always been a concern for parents. The idea of “letting go” of your child to deal with the mature and responsible issues involved in an intimate relationship can be scary.

• We hope our sons will be respectful, kind and courteous to their dates.
• Young girls are expected to respect themselves enough to establish healthy boundaries and be assertive in the decisions they make involving the dating process.

Unfortunately, this is difficult for some teens. Treading these unknown waters can be dangerous due to inexperience, pressure from peers and their own inner struggle for independence from parents.

Dating violence is a reality.  Teenagers can choose better relationships when they are aware of the early warning signs of abuse.

I asked Carol to tell me a real life story.  In my experience, teens relate better to a lesson if they know it’s real.  Most teens tune out the adult if they feel like they are being lectured.  As adults, our goal is for the teen to digest the lesson and apply it to their own lives…to use the lesson as a guide for when they make decisions.  If we want teens to listen to what we have to say, it is in my experience that we must be deliberate in how we communicate with them.

Here’s Lucy’s story.

Lucy is 16 and began dating Mark who is 17, about 3 months ago.  She is sharing her frustration with mom’s interference and setting curfews – insisting on meeting Mark’s parents and not allowing them to be unsupervised in her home.

Lucy and her mother come to me for mediation.  Mom is worried and shares “I just don’t want her to be hurt….I know how some boys can be.”  Lucy is love struck and sees Mark through distorted eyes not picking up on possible signs of potential abuse.

Mom has witnessed verbal abuse by Mark raising his voice and pressuring Lucy to do things she later regrets.  Lucy has been breaking curfew and spending all her free time with him upset that he won’t “let her” see her friends.  In this session, Lucy admits he has threatened to hit her.  Lucy became tearful and shares “I don’t know what to do.”

I ask Mom to give Lucy and me time alone.  Lucy began to tell me more… Mark’s a really cute guy, but he does say mean things.  He tells me I’m fat and no one else will ever want me… I believe him.  I asked what your friends say.  Lucy answers “I am embarrassed to tell them, they are starting to not like him.  Mark picks on them too and hates when I spend time with them.”

Lucy felt alone, scared and unheard.  Never having dated before she had no skills, couldn’t see these behaviors as abusive.  Mom’s anxiety and need to protect her felt judging and non-supportive to Lucy.  I suggested to Lucy’s mother a few things to try:

1)            Balance support, love and discipline.  “Focus on praise and positives as much as possible.”

2)            Restore your sense of authority.  “Say what you mean and mean what you say.”

3)            Remember your child may not know how to ask for help.  “Watch all your children’s cues – not just verbal, words can be misleading.” (i.e. “I’m fine”)

4)            Keep things in the right perspective.  Your child’s health and safety come first.  Accept what is not potentially dangerous or permanent (i.e. hair color, clothes, interests, hobbies).  “Pick your battles.”

Carol M. Pedro is a licensed therapist at Youth and Family Counseling, 233 Prospect Street, Westfield, NJ (908) 233-2042. www. yfcsnj.org.

– Jill

The goal of this blog post is to continue to offer parents and educators the opportunity to understand what goes on in the on-line lives of children in this generation. It allows you to consider alternate viewpoints and reflect upon your own approach to raising your child. By no means are my thoughts and reflections the ONLY way to address these concerns.

When is it OK to stop having cyberbullying conversations with my teen?

So you spoke with your teen last week about cyberbullying….Congratulations!  I am excited that you are using these lessons.  So that’s it, you are good to go.  Check that off your list!

But wait… since that talk, has your teen  been using FB?  I already know the answer…Of course they have!  So FYI… your teen is witnessing cyberbullying on a daily basis.  Do you need to have the “cyberbullying” talk again?

A teacher at a high school was introducing me the other day, and I liked his analogy.  He told his students they were going to take part in my workshop that day, even though many of the students had participated in my workshop the previous year.

You can just see the eyes rolling and the yawning, right?

He said, “the presentation about internet safety and cyberbullying is going to be different every year, because technology changes every year.  The lessons and examples  are different each time you see it…depending on how old you are.  Different ages are exposed to different things.”

He asked the kids, “Do you go to math class every day and know everything there is to know about math?  No, you go to math class everyday because in order to be good at math and get better, you need to study it on a daily basis.”

This teacher is right.

I mean, how many times do you ask your teen to clean their room before it actually gets done?  :)

As your teen sits down to dinner tonight, hand them this Pop Quiz!

Today’s Pop Quiz!

You get in a fight with your friend at school.  You feel she doesn’t understand your point of view.  Should you:

a.       Send her a text explaining your feelings

b.      IM your other friend to tell her about the fight

c.       Go to her Facebook page and tell her your side and why you feel the way you do

d.      Call her and tell her how much you hate being in a fight.  Set a time to get together and talk about it in person.

Discussion questions:

1.       Have you seen someone do something like this?

2.       Tell me about a situation in your life or your friend’s life that started with this reaction to a fight.

3.       What were the results?

4.       What are the possible things positive or negative things that could happen if you were to handle the situation by each of the choices?

5.       Do you have other ideas of how to handle this situation?

6.       Does it make sense to talk to an adult about how to handle this?

7.       Do you think it might make sense to ext her and tell her how much you hate being in a fight.  Set a time to get together and talk about it in person.

– Jill Brown

The goal of this blog post is to continue to offer parents and educators the opportunity to understand what goes on in the on-line lives of children in this generation. It allows you to consider alternate viewpoints and reflect upon your own approach to raising your child. By no means are my thoughts and reflections the ONLY way to address these concerns.

What we CAN do about cyberbullying!

Most parents have heard of the term cyberbullying, but how is it different than the good old fashioned bullying of their own childhood?

Remember the kids who got pushed into a locker?  How about the kid sitting alone in the lunch room?  Maybe it happened to you as a teen.  Remember how mean the girls could be…spreading rumors and making fun of peoples’ clothes and hair?  How about the boys…  wedgies in the locker room and on the bus?

Most adults have a personal story of their own.  What is yours?

Cyberbullying is a whole different ball game.  It’s 24 hours a day and it comes via text message, Facebook and Formspring.  The humiliation can be unbearable.  100’s of people see it and the victim can’t erase it.  People can say what they want online and the victim has no control over it.  Reports about Tyler Clemente, the Rutgers freshman, say he looked at the cyberbullying targeted at him 38 times before jumping off the George Washington Bridge to his death.  If you want to get a feel for cyberbullying look at the “comment section” on any NJ.com article or blog where people can leave anonymous messages.  And those aren’t teens cyberbullying, those are adults!

An international research project led by an Australian Catholic University (ACU) professor has found that the factors leading to incidents of cyber-bullying are different to those which result in traditional bullying.

(http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=30571)

According to Professor Sheryl Hemphill, the main factors leading to episodes of a traditional bully are:

• academic failure
• family conflict
• past bullying

But what about cyberbullying??  What leads someone to cyberbully another??

The project found only one of these is a factor leading to incidents of cyber-bullying….past bullying in the form of relational aggression, commonly known as:

• exclusion  
• spreading rumors.

So what does that mean for MY teen?

Here is what I tell the teens I work with.   We can’t control what other people do.  We can’t stop someone from cyberbullying.  We can’t stop someone from making up lies.  We can’t stop someone from trying to humiliate another.  We can’t reason or resolve a problem with a cyberbully.  A person who chooses to cyberbully finds protection behind the screen or a fake username.  A cyberbully is not interested in telling the truth or finding the truth.

So let’s look at this study… if someone being the target of exclusion or a rumor is a factor leading to cyberbullying, we can do something about that.  We can control our own behavior.  We can control excluding someone or spreading rumors about people.  We can teach our kids to be kind and positive.  We can teach our kids how to apologize when they have done something to hurt someone.  And we can choose not to cyberbully.

–Jill Brown

The goal of this blog post is to continue to offer parents and educators the opportunity to understand what goes on in the on-line lives of children in this generation. It allows you to consider alternate viewpoints and reflect upon your own approach to raising your child. By no means are my thoughts and reflections the ONLY way to address these concerns.

Help, my child came home from school and says she is being bullied!

 

What do I do?

It is a horrible and helpless feeling when your child comes home from school and tells you they are being bullied by a classmate.  Feelings of frustration, anger and helplessness overwhelm us.  I mean, it’s our job to protect our kids, right?  We send them to school and expect them to be safe!

As parents, our immediate reaction is to STOP what is going on, protect our kids and FIX the problem for our child.  So what do we do?  We get in the car and drive as fast as we can down to the principal’s office at the school.  We storm into the school office and demand to speak with the principal!

Is that the right answer?

There are 2 immediate problems with that.  The first is that you put the principal and the school administration on the defensive.  Their immediate reaction will to be to defend their school, teachers and their job.  The second is that you just modeled to your child, the wrong way to handle this problem.

Your reaction is important!

Your reaction to your child sets the tone for their ability to resolve the situation they are in and any future similar situations.  Remember, the end goal is to resolve the problem.
•    Remain calm; ask your child what happened.
•    Acknowledge their feelings of embarrassment, humiliation, sadness or frustration.
•    Be careful about your choice of words.  The word “bully” has become a buzz word somewhat. Many times kids and adults are using the word” bullying” when in actuality it is typical, age appropriate conflict.

Here is my advice:
•        Ask your child a lot of questions.  Try to understand what and why the “bully” did what they did.  Were they hurt, scared or did they feel left out?  Perhaps the “bully” was only thinking of their own needs, rather than thinking of how their actions would make your child feel.
•        Things can be interpreted in many different ways, especially on-line.  Walk your child through the particular “bullying” event or situation, talk about how each person who was present probably felt and how that affected their actions.  By doing this, you will give your child the gift of “understanding” and problem solving.
•        How your child responds matters.  Fighting fire with fire, only escalates the problem.  If we fight back using nasty behavior and words, we are now are doing exactly what we don’t want the bully to do to us.   Teach your child that if she wants to resolve a conflict, she has to use positive, kind words and actions.
•        Most kids (or adults) are not “bad” people, they just  ”behave badly”.  People who behave badly are looking for attention.  Sometimes, your child can get rid of bad feelings with another by responding with kindness and smiles.
•        When someone is our friend or in our group of friends, sometimes we forget the most basic thing: telling them how their words or actions make us feel.  Sometimes all we have to do is tell them to stop.  Have your child practice what they could say.
•        Teach your child how to make a plan of what to do “before” something happens.  For example, if your child is being excluded from the lunch table, have them call a friend the night before and plan to sit with them the next day. Another idea might be to plan to go to lunch study rather than to the cafeteria where they will be subject to those negative feelings.  Empower your child to find a way to avoid a situation that will make them feel bad.
•        We can’t control how other people act.  We can, however, control how we react.  No matter what, there are always going to be mean people.  It is important to empower your child by teaching them how to react or how to “move on” from a situation.
•        Most people don’t like to hear this, but there is a difference between bullying and conflict.   Disagreements or differences of opinion are NOT bullying.  Help your child understand that just because you may not like what someone says, it doesn’t mean they are a bully.

Our job as parents is to “teach” our children how to navigate all types of situations.  When they become adults they are going to find bullies at work, in their neighborhood and in government.  If we don’t take the time to teach our kids how to handle mean, negative and hurtful behavior, how do we expect them to know what do or how to handle a situation when we are not there?

***These suggestions are not going to solve every conflict or bullying situation.  Sometimes you may have to get the school administration, the board of education or even the police involved.

– Jill Brown

The goal of this blog post is to continue to offer parents and educators the opportunity to understand what goes on in the on-line lives of children in this generation. It allows you to consider alternate viewpoints and reflect upon your own approach to raising your child. By no means are my thoughts and reflections the ONLY way to address these concerns.