22 - Nort: Shove Nows —

Wednesday, March 22, 2000

Communication key to hearing kids’ prob

From page 15

learned ac home, and it’s a
pattern that’s hard to
change.

One of the families in our
neighbourhood is going
through a horribic bullying
ordeal. For whatever reason,

.a couple of teens a year
older than their Grade 9 son
have taken a serious dislike
to him.

To express this, they've
egged his family’s home a
couple of times, thrown a
brick at and damaged their
front door, and last week-
end, they threw two bricks

through the plate glass doors
of the family room where his
seven-year- -old sister was
watching television.

Pretty serious stuff, Pd
_say. Hard to imagine what

_ kind of kids would think

‘that kind of behaviour i is

. OK. . :

Then there's the Grade 8
daughter of an associate of
mine who was singled out
for bullying by a group of
girls in her grade. She was
on the “super achievers”
program at one of our local
high schools, a good stu-
dent, fine pianist, and com-
petitive skater.

Perhaps the other kids
saw her as having opportuni-
ties they didn’t, who knows?
They responded by torment-
ing her to the point where
she was so stressed that she
would actually chrow up
before getting out of the car
to go to schoul in the morn-
ing.

She was roughed up by a
gang of girls in the school
parking lot. They left vicious
messages on the family
answering machine threaten-
ing “We're going to get
you,” and “We'll kill you.”

With the help of the

school, the girl’s parents
tried to give her strategies to
cope with the teasing.

“The school was incredi-
bly supportive, * the mother
says, “and the strategies
helped a little, but it was so
hard on all of us that we
decided to move.”

Her mother tells me that
she considers herself lucky to
have had a good enough
relationship with her daugh-
ter so that she knew what
was going on with her.

Unfortunately Nastoh’s
parents weren’t so lucky.
They had no idea he was so
unhappy at schoci.

Larry says that’s no sur-
prise to him. Boys are often
less communicative about
their feelings than girls are,
he says, especially in the
teenage years. They're
embarrassed about needing
help to handle a situation
over which they feel they

have lost control.

Larry stresses the impor-
tance of establishing 2 good
system of communication
with your kids, so that if
thev are being builied,
they'll tell you about it. He
suggests regular family din-
ners, where everyone has a
chance to discuss together
what’s going on in their
lives. And nothing beats a
little one-on-one between a
parent and child.

So what if your Kid i is
being bullied and you're
lucky enough to know about
it?

No matter how much you
want to go to the school
yourself’ and kick the snot
out of the little pukes that
are harassing your baby,
don’t do it. [t’s a rough
urge to fight, but we should
be trying to promote self-
reliance in our kids, which is
pretty hard to do if we're

over involved in their lives.
Besides, most kids I know
are mortified at the prospect
ofa parent muddling in their
social affairs, especially when
there’s trouble.

Uf the bullying has been
geing on a long time, or
there is a power imbalance
(like the bullies are older,
more numerous, or have
greater status at school),
then the situation is proba-
bly serious, and you should
get some help. Chances are,
in our over crowded schools,
teachers and counsellors
won't be aware of the prob-
lem until you tell chem
about it. Once they do
know, they can teach your
child behavioural strategies
to defuse the bullying and
arrange peer counsellors,
which really seems to help.

fn the meantime, encour-
age your kid to try to not let
the teasing get to him or

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her.

No reaction is better than
a big reaction, as an eme-
tional response usually just
escalates the problem. Stress
the importance of having
friends around, as an isolated
kid is more vulnerable. Insist
on parental supervision of
non-classroom time at your
school, which is when most
bullying happens.

And push your school to

implement anti-bullying pro- ~

grams. They may not elimi-
nate the problem, but in
Norway, which leads this
field in research, a nation- ©
wide anti-bullying program
was implemented and the
problem was reduced by
nalf, That’s an impressive
result, if you ask me.’

Hell, if a program like =
that saves just one kid from
torment at the hands of a
bully, it’s worth it.

—~ shannonn@tclus. net