What to do if your child is being bullied at school - ForumDaily
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What to do if your child is being bullied at school

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According to Statistics The 1 National Education Center of 5 students in the United States in 2016 was the victim of bullying. In a brochure addressed to American parents, mothers and fathers of victims of harassment are advised to remain calm, to document everything that happens and keep a child-parent diary. In theory, such a conflict is resolved. But in practice, advice from brochures is not always viable.

Using the examples of stories in which the children of our immigrants ended up, ForumDaily figured out how to act within the law and how to help psychologically if your child is being bullied at school.

“I give children “Russian food” to school, and because of this the children are teased? I give it hot in a thermos, for example, buckwheat. Children love it, ask for it, want it. After all, their health is specific, and with their diagnosis, not all food is possible. So, other children began to bully me from the first day. Like “how can you eat this.” Mine, in the best American traditions, went to complain to the teacher. She said that “I don’t need to know that.” Where should I go to file a complaint? How to proceed? And is it worth interfering? The children (they are 8 years old) have become withdrawn. I know how to create scandals, I want to understand where to write a letter so that the school itself will intervene. Best regards, Maria."

“My name is Anna, the child is 12 years old. She is a quiet girl and doesn't know the language very well yet. Tell me how to get out of a situation if a child at school is being bullied by the same group of children for a long time? Sorry, but the option of not going to this school, moving, talking to your parents is not suitable. I also don’t have English for such conversations. Maybe you can write somewhere? There are names and surnames of children, there is a telephone record - they call my daughter fat and an immigrant and threaten that they will beat her. What can be done legally and is it even legal to have such a recording of other people’s children? Can I go with her to the police? Reader."

In the US, the problem of bullying in schools is recognized at the federal level. On the state portal stopbullying.gov provide links to all legal aspects of harassment and offer 24 hours a day to call: 1-800-273-TALK (8255) for advice.

 

Bullying bullying discord

They can bully psychologically (including both extremes - both a barrage of insults and a boycott), physically (wait in the alley and beat); hide, damage and steal the victim's things. There are a million ways to violate personality boundaries; wake up the average teenager at night and he will immediately name a hundred.

Remember how you were bullied in a Soviet school 30 years ago? Those were golden times. No psychological help for you, no transfer to another school. Come home bruised, in a torn uniform and with about half the contents of your briefcase - dad will tell you that you are a weakling, mom will give you a lecture on the ability to build relationships with people, and both will decide that it is your own fault, and that in another school “surely it will be the same."

In the finals, you will at best sign up for boxing. Having matured, you will train yourself to never remember a school. Nowhere, even to consult a psychoanalyst. And one fine evening, promise yourself never to do this to your child.

Okay, if not, how?

Regardless of the mentality

To begin, I will quote in more detail a brochure, addressed to American parents of American children, looking at which we immediately understand the difference between ours and their mentality. In particular, parents of victims of bullying are advised to remain calm with full understanding of how difficult this is in this situation, to document everything that happens, and to keep a child-parent diary. In addition, do not allow the victim to be retraumatized, even to the point of prohibiting her from being in the same room with the predator (you cannot put them in the same room, even if it is for the supposed “resolution of the conflict peacefully”), to be in close contact with the child, teacher, psychologist, and “other » a parent (this could be the parent of the initiator or participant in the bullying).

Further in the brochure they advise you to trust your child and do everything possible so that he trusts you, in no case underestimate bullying due to the fact that it is “childish” (it can be worse than an adult), constantly show the child that in any situation he is under protection (new legend, sorry, but why not go to school with him every day so that this actually becomes true?).

The escape route, in theory, should be:

  • Under no circumstances should you ignore bullying yourself or convince your child to ignore it - this is, at a minimum, useless, and at a maximum, predators will perceive such ignorance as proof of their strength. A predator is a powerful manipulator; he will tell an adult exactly what he wants to hear. It's just a good thing to consider.
  • Under no circumstances should you tell your child the notorious “it’s your own fault,” since bullying is an inherently destructive phenomenon, and the victim is never to blame for it and never deserved it.
  • Never accept the school’s answer “we can’t do anything about it” - in this case, check how the legislation related to cases of abuse works in your state.
  • Contact the police, insist on punishing the leaders of the harassment and its participants, be a lawyer for your child, do not betray him ...
  • If harassment occurs in social networks, close all accounts, ban anyone who is at least somehow active in this direction, send out the most audacious letters with promises that the information will surely reach their parents ...

All this is correct, clear and smart. All this would probably suit an American parent, and if you can afford all this without the slightest doubt, then I wish you good luck, but there are some mental differences to be understood.

 

Therefore, I propose to isolate 3 from the model of the American thought: the police, full confidence in the child and ... go all the way.

 

Each state has its own rules

Federal programs to combat school sadism have been recognized as ineffective, and for more than 15 for years, individual states, cities, and even individual educational institutions have been testing their own innovative techniques.

For example, in Florida, since 2012, social exclusion has been considered one of the manifestations of school sadism. “Silent violence” consists of ignoring a particular child not only by students, but also by teachers.

In most states, children who are neglected are not officially considered victims of sadism because the crime does not involve aggression. But human rights advocates are pushing to include "social exclusion" among common bullying behaviors.

In Massachusetts, the concept of school harassment from 2010, the phrases and gestures used by the offenders against a particular person. Moreover, these phrases and gestures should not be offensive at all. For example, if the name of the student unintentionally distort or call him by his last name, and the child does not like it, this can be classified as harassment.

In Virginia, California, and New York, the concept of “school sadism” includes any negative statements regarding race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. Additionally, in Virginia, any criticism can be considered intolerant and classified as deliberate bullying.

Step by step

Absolutely any kind of bullying is violent (abuse). The behavior of the parent in the event of baiting the child can and should be step by step.

The first step is to notify the teacher. If immediately after this he does not take any action, you contact the school director. If the reaction you need (sic!) is not received even after this, you write a detailed account of the story in the department of education.

If you don’t want someone to find out what you are saying about your child, call the school on the phone and say: “Hello, I would like to remain anonymous, but I want to report that *** is harassing ***. Could you ask the teachers to monitor this more closely?

As a personal opinion, which may not coincide with the opinion of the editors, your child in this situation, along with his and your psyche, is the most precious thing to you. Taking him under your arm and transferring him to another school is the best option, not only because he is the most bloodless, but also because his classmates have already known the taste of this blood, and if bullying has begun, it will be extremely difficult to stop it by order. Predatory children know how to bully clandestinely, and when they are caught, scolded and picked on, they will learn to disguise themselves, prevent the possibility of audio recording, filming and other evidence, and will take the bullying that has begun into a passive-aggressive direction.

But! We are all living people with our own housing, financial and social problems, and we all understand that the “under the arm and to another school” option, to put it mildly, is not always possible.

By experience: different children may react differently to the likelihood of being transferred to another school. Can, if anything, and do not rejoice.

I still remember the example of a girl, bullied by everyone, whose mother finally transferred her - and the girl took this as a sign that they had given up, had given in to the circumstances, and that she was “not a fighter.” For some, it’s terribly offensive to be “not a fighter.” Therefore, you need to talk to the child and ask his opinion.

At the same time, everyone living in the United States should certainly remember how great the difference is between simple letters to the school administration and the department of education and official letters to the same authorities from lawyers. The latter in any case will look more convincing.

It is quite easy to connect lawyers to this problem. True, here, alas, the financial capabilities of the parents again play a role.

 

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Parent proficiency test

Bullying your child is also your test for lice. How confident are you in yourself and that your child needs help? Are you really ready to go to the end to fully provide it? Evaluate your actions from the point of view of “do no harm”? Delete the phrase “it’s your own fault” from the internal file system, so that the brain won’t find it during a subsequent search?

Now the lyrical digression again smoothly proceeds to the continuation of the guide to action.

If your child is studying in an American school, then most likely it means that:

  1. Teachers are definitely the least interested in bullying. Measures are taken against a teacher who encourages or is indifferent to the bullying of a student taking place in the classroom, up to and including dismissal.
  2. Identified leaders of bullying (the key word is “identified”) are given the fate of a special school; everyone needs to remember this, including their parents.
  3. Harassment based on nationality or culture is prohibited by law. And the law is, among other things, the police. Come in, chat, take a family friend with good English.

In general, to poison a child at school can for a million reasons. I would single out three main ones:

  1. For being who he is. I would even shorten it to “for the fact that he IS.” In the news chronicle, we often see how successfully this trend has taken root in the adult world.
  2. Persecution, built on the distinction of national, cultural or psychological identity.
  3. Spontaneous harassment is harassment without logic, on courage, this harassment is a relative of unmotivated child crime.

It is important that with any of these 3 items, neither the police, nor the education department, nor tough conversations with other parents has been canceled.

Returning to the stories we started with, the first one has a quote from the teacher “I don’t need to know that.” However, it would be great for her to know that if the education department hears these words of hers (preferably, however, in the form of a dictaphone recording, but it is also possible in a free retelling) - then she will soon not need anything at all except unemployment benefits.

For the author of the second letter, a good friend with English and the closest, as they said in our common homeland, “strong point” is warmly recommended.

What do children offer

16-year-old Nathalie Hampton from California created the Sit With Us app. The idea of ​​creating an application came to the girl after Natalie did not find friends or at least companions for joint dinners throughout the entire 7 class. This made her the object of attacks and ridicule from peers, increased her psychological vulnerability.

“Sit with us” helps timid students find a comfortable zone and company to have a snack in the student canteen or cafe during recess, where no one will kick them out and no one will offend them.

How does the application work? It allows the student to assign himself the status of “Ambassador”. The “ambassador” gets the right to send invitations to other students at his table for lunch. Ambassadors can also create an event called an Open Lunch, which signals that the Ambassador table is open to anyone looking for company for lunch.

What do parents offer

“When my son was in 6th grade, a guy in high school got into the habit of throwing lit matches into his backpack,” writes Lori Levy, mother of three and grandmother of eight grandchildren, in an article in Huffingtonpost. “I can’t tell you how scared he was, and I was just furious.” I called the school, naively thinking that someone might try to apprehend the culprit. “This is not our problem,” they answered me. The sidewalk behind the school fence is not their area of ​​responsibility. I accepted this without thinking and simply began to pick up my son from school and did not allow him to go home on his own.

I wonder what I would have done then if I knew what I know now? He was my first child, and I respected government officials too much. Perhaps I should have called the police. At a minimum, it was necessary to come to the school and insist on considering the problem. But in those days, schools made sure that parents felt their children were to blame for being bullied.”

We ourselves make a target out of a child

Psychologist and family therapist Yulia Sinareva has been living in Florida with her children for 7 years and has been consulting a lot with people from various states: “In American schools, bullying of children is much less common than in our childhood. Most teachers and parents understand that abuse in any form is punishable by law.

Therefore, children and adults, in general, are quite tolerant of your differences or poor English. No, this does not cancel a chance meeting with “scumbags,” indifferent teachers or other people’s parents. But this does not mean at all that immigration is the cause of bullying.”

Now let's get back to the psychological reasons why your child was bullied. According to psychologist Yulia Sinareva, we grew up in a country where absolutely any person and for any reason could afford to violate your personal boundaries, call you names, indicate how you should dress or “respond to an elder,” and a boy’s fight (at any age !) was often considered ordinary entertainment. Therefore, for many adults, this has become quite familiar, in general, as a background.

“And – attention – here lies the first psychological trap,” says the psychologist. “We believe so much in the inevitability of bullying and humiliation that we began to expect these situations. And, accordingly, prepare children for the same. It is WE who, deep down in our souls, are afraid that others will inevitably laugh at us (and our children) because we make grammatical mistakes and have an accent. Therefore, we either try not to talk at all (and then we ourselves don’t seem very friendly) or we talk “with boxing gloves,” that is, ready to defend ourselves in advance, which also provokes the hunting instinct and desire to measure strength in human predators.”

That is, looking at you and hearing (feeling) your own wariness, the child comes to school with the same mood - confident in his “inferiority” due to ignorance of the language, and ready to become a target for ridicule and hostility.

But if YOU, as parents, set up him from the very beginning, what is normal in this country, when everyone speaks with different accents, and that he quickly learns to speak English, your fear and alertness will not be passed on to your child.

He will go to school as in a friendly environment, and will pay more attention not to those who ignore him or tease him, but to those who are willing to communicate with him, who help him, to their own advancements and successes.

“It’s even better if you go to the teacher in advance (or even to the children in the class, if we are talking about an elementary school) and say that we arrived not so long ago, and the child is not yet very versed in the language and traditions, so he needs there will be support and help from adults and classmates,” says Yulia Sinareva. “When you acknowledge this up front and out loud, it will at least partially disarm predators and create a support group for your child of potential helpers.”

The psychologist advises: you, as parents, should always remain on the side of the child. He comes home as a safe haven and must feel your sympathy and readiness to stand up for protection. This means that, despite your unwillingness to go into conflict, you should be ready for this.

DO NOT teach your child not to be a weakling and give change - otherwise it is against your child that they can file a complaint about violence.

“Your job is to let your child talk at home, learn to control his emotions (including anger or resentment), and TOGETHER come up with some solutions that you as a family can take. And these decisions will depend on many factors - the circumstances of the quarrel, the age of the children and the laws. And yes, sometimes you may really need professional help from a psychologist or lawyer,” notes Yulia Sinareva.

If a child asks you to intervene or even change school - this means that he has already exhausted his entire arsenal. He does not know what else he can do. He is not rokhla - he is simply scared or has not yet encountered such situations.

To ignore the offender to a certain extent is a good solution. This means not to enter the game as a victim. But - this is only as long as the fist went into action, damage to property or insults. In this case, really need to appeal to adults who are able to rein in the aggressor.

The psychologist advises: “It is very important that your child has children at school with whom he communicates with pleasure. There doesn’t have to be a lot of them, but at least a couple. This will provide him with a sense of comradeship not only at home, but also at school, and will protect his self-esteem from unsolicited generalizations that “no one will ever want to be friends with me.”

What can you do for this as parents? Develop a child’s sociability and skills for successful communication, allow him to visit different children more often and learn how to easily make contact with them. If you really arrived recently and the child feels awkward with English-speaking children - find a Russian-speaking company for him (and do not forbid them to switch to English spontaneously!). Periodically invite classmates who are cute to your child to play at home or at children's parties.

Meet the parents of his friends yourself - and they too will become YOUR support group if something unpleasant happens in the classroom.

“And please remember that the child does not want to see you as a scared or angry kid, but as an adequate and competent adult. Who, even if he doesn’t know everything right now, is able to collect information, find help and provide emotional support,” psychologist Yulia Sinareva reminds ForumDaily readers.

See also:

Personal experience. How to get kids to school in New York

School girl who was not allowed to use the toilet, sued $ 1,25 million

From the first person. How does American parenting differ from ours?

How much does it cost to raise a child in the USA

relations Educational program parenting children in usa american school
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