If you’ve ever been the victim of a bully, you know too well how it feels to humiliated and overpowered. While there is no way to 100% bully-proof anyone, there are important skills we can teach our children to minimize the impact a bully has, to turn them away, and to help our children get out of sticky situations.
Help Your Child Build a Positive Social Network
Connection with caring friends and supportive adults act as a shield of sorts, giving your child strength to overcome the challenge a bully presents. In fact, being socially connected is an important factor in overall happiness. How can you help your child build this network?
Give Your Child the Gift of Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence plays an important role in our relationships, social status, success, and happiness. A child who is comfortable with her emotions and knows how to confidently handle them is less likely to be shaken by the words or actions of a bully. She is better able to move through emotions like anger, sadness, fear, and disappointment. Try these tips to increase your child’s EI.
Teach Your Child to Be Assertive
Bullies prey on victims who are isolated or who they can intimidate. Being assertive means your child can voice how she is feeling and stand up for her rights without being aggressive or passive. Assertive people can calmly state their feelings and needs in a respectful way. Here are some tips:
by Rebecca Eanes on May 2nd, 2017
Rebecca Eanes, is the founder of positive-parents.org and creator of Positive Parenting: Toddlers and Beyond. She is the bestselling author of 3 books. Her newest book,Positive Parenting: An Essential Guide, is more than a parenting book, it's a guide to human connection. She has also written The Newbie's Guide to Positive Parenting, and co-authored the book, Positive Parenting in Action: The How-To Guide to Putting Positive Parenting Principles in Action in Early Childhood. She is the grateful mother to 2 boys
My toddler struggled to buckle the straps on her high chair. “Almost,” she muttered as she tried again and again. “Almost,” I agreed, trying not to hover. When she got it, I exclaimed, “You did it! It was hard, but you kept trying, and you did it. I’m so proud of you.”
The way I praised her effort took a little effort on my part. If I hadn’t known better, I might have just said, “Clever girl!” (Or even “Here, let me help you with that.”) What’s so bad about that?
Stanford researcher Carol Dweck has been studying motivation and perseverance since the 1960s. And she found that children fall into one of two categories:
Those with a fixed mindset, who believe their successes are a result of their innate talent or smarts
Those with a growth mindset, who believe their successes are a result of their hard work
Fixed mindset: ‘If you have to work hard, you don’t have ability.’
Kids with a fixed mindset believe that you are stuck with however much intelligence you’re born with. They would agree with this statement: “If you have to work hard, you don’t have ability. If you have ability, things come naturally to you.” When they fail, these kids feel trapped. They start thinking they must not be as talented or smart as everyone’s been telling them. They avoid challenges, fearful that they won’t look smart.
Growth mindset: ‘The more you challenge yourself, the smarter you become.’
Kids with a growth mindset believe that intelligence can be cultivated: the more learning you do, the smarter you become. These kids understand that even geniuses must work hard. When they suffer a setback, they believe they can improve by putting in more time and effort. They value learning over looking smart. They persevere through difficult tasks.
What creates these beliefs in our kids? The type of praise we give them — even starting at age 1.
In one study, Dweck gathered up fifth graders, randomly divided them in two groups, and had them work on problems from an IQ test. She then praised the first group for their intelligence:
“Wow, that’s a really good score. You must be smart at this.”
She praised the second group for their effort: (The way we do it in martial arts)
“Wow, that’s a really good score. You must have tried really hard.”
She continued to test the kids, including presenting them with a choice between a harder or easier task.
Kids praised for their effort tended to take the challenging task, knowing they could learn more. They were more likely to continue feeling motivated to learn and to retain their confidence as problems got harder.
Kids praised for their intelligence requested the easier task, knowing there was a higher chance of success. They lost their confidence as problems got harder, and they were much more likely to inflate their test scores when recounting them.
Later, Dweck and her colleagues took the study out of the lab and into the home. Every four months for two years, Stanford and University of Chicago researchers visited fifty-three families and recorded them for ninety minutes as they went about their usual routines. The children were 14 months old at the start of the study.
Researchers then calculated how often parents used each type of praise: praising effort; praising character traits; and “other praise” that has a neutral effect, like “Good!” and “Wow!”
They waited five years.
Then the researchers surveyed the children, now 7 to 8 years old, on their attitudes toward challenges and learning. Children with a growth mindset tended to be more interested in challenges. Which kids had a growth mindset? Those who had heard more process praise as toddlers.
I give more examples of ways to praise effort in my book, Zero to Five: Parenting Tips Based on Science.
Can you unfix a fixed mindset?
I got an email from an inner-city high school teacher. “Is it too late to learn algebra, or third-person singular conjugation, or rocket science if you didn’t [develop a growth mindset] when you were 4 years old?” she asked.
Dweck had the same question. So she took middle-schoolers and college students who had fixed mindsets. She found that the students were able to improve their grades when they were taught that the brain is like a muscle: intelligence is not fixed.
It’s not too late — not for your kids, and not for you. Salman Khan of Khan Academy is on a mission to let you know it. He created an inspiring video, based on Dweck’s work, titled “You Can Learn Anything”:
The message: The brain is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. The way you exercise your brain is by embracing challenges, practicing skills, learning new things. As Khan puts it, “the brain grows most by getting questions wrong, not right.”
Which is why, when my toddler was trying to snap her own buckle, I needed to encourage her to take on the challenge by saying, “Almost!” and “Try again” instead of “Here, let me do that for you.”
Sharing is caring, as they say. “If society as a whole begins to embrace the struggle of learning, there is no end to what that could mean for global human potential,” Khan writes. So pass it on!
By Tracy Cutchlow
I read this article and have my own opinion on kids being quitters. As a martial arts teacher and author I have had the opportunity to teach thousands of kids. Unfortunately some quit. However retention for young teens is really good. Martial Arts kids have an advantage because they are built inside and out. On the outside they gain skills, self defense, speed, strength, flexibility and great coordination. Inside is the big advantage. Learning to set and achieve goals, build confidence, self-esteem, ability to block out distractions, perseverance, courage, sportsmanship and commitment.
Many schools also offer Jr. Instructor Training for young teens giving them the opportunity for a great job at 16.
Greg Silva - President of Black Belt Schools International and author of The Silva Solution - Building Black Belts from the Inside Out
At 13, kids generally find themselves with more (and more challenging) school work. Most are also encouraged to start choosing what interests them the most and what they’re best at. There’s no longer time for them to do as much they did in elementary school.
Some of the major social and emotional changes that 13-year-olds experience also predispose them to making decisions such as quitting sports, especially as that environment becomes more competitive. The CDC describes it on its developmental milestones page as a “focus on themselves… going back and forth between high expectations and lack of confidence.” Kids become more focused on — and influenced by — their friends, many of whom are also walking away from organized youth sports.
Any discussion about being 13 also needs to include social media, smartphones and the Internet. According to the Pew Center’s Internet Research Study, most U.S. kids receive their first cellphone or wireless device by the age of 12. Between the ages of 13 and 17, 92 percent of teens report being online every day, and 24 percent are online “almost constantly.” As kids become teenagers, their priorities change. How they socialize, study and spend their time changes with them.
These things collectively represent a perfect storm. There are no easy answers here. The system of youth sports is set up to cater to more elite players as they approach high school, leaving average kids with fewer opportunities. Our culture encourages specialization and achievement, which actively discourages kids from trying new things or just playing for fun. And all of this converges at a time when they’re going through major physical, emotional and social changes as well as facing pressure to pare down their interests and focus on school.
So why do 70 percent of kids quit organized sports at 13 and what can we do about it?
I would argue that most kids leave because we haven’t given them a way to stay. And perhaps more importantly, until we dismantle the parenting culture that emphasizes achievement and success over healthy, happy kids, we don’t stand a chance of solving this problem.
-Julianna W. Miner
Organizing schoolwork would be a breeze for many students if only they followed a few simple tasks on a routine basis. Very often it’s the small details of daily life that slow you down.
The following are some suggestions to maintain good school grades and to be a successful student:
Have a safe, successful and KICK’N school year!