October is National Bullying Prevention Month

In conjunction with October is National Bullying Prevention Month, these are some of the activities we did today:

1. Highlighter hearts. Each child draws a heart shape of their feelings for BEFORE bullying and AFTER bullying using a highlighter.
2. Divide the children into groups. Each group was given a scenario to role play for bullying and asked to discuss what would they do.
3. To encourage positive behavior, the children cast votes for awards such as: Mr/Miss Manners, Friendly Friend, Helping Hands, Sportsmanship and Awesome Attitude

Before bullying and After bullying hearts by the club

Types of bullying

• Physical. Includes hitting, kicking, tripping, punching and pushing or damaging property
• Verbal. Includes name calling, insults, teasing, intimidation, racist remarks or verbal abuse. 
• Social. Sometimes referred to as covert bullying, it is often harder to recognise and can be carried out behind the bullied person's back. Includes lying, spreading rumours, negative facial or physical gestures, menacing or contemptuous looks, playing nasty jokes to embarrass and humiliate, mimicking unkindly, encouraging others to socially exclude someone (social isolation, ostracization), damaging someone else's social reputation or social acceptance

Here's a closer look about bullying differences between boys and girls

Boys tend to be more physically aggressive and impulsive than girls. As a result, those with a tendency toward bullying will attack other people when they show weakness. 

Girls tend to bully other girls indirectly or by using relational aggression. As a result, they resort to verbal assaults, ostracizing, spreading rumors and gossiping – the epitome of mean girl behavior. Moreover, girls disguise their bullying and act in more passive aggressive ways, which makes girl-on-girl bullying much more difficult to spot.

How to prevent or handle bullying?

• Bystanders or friends who witness bullying need to speak out to stop the bully.
• The targeted person can use the Stop, Walk & Tell. Tell the bully to STOP, WALK away from the bully and TELL someone in authority e.g. parents, teachers, counselors about the incident.
• Be a role model for your child
• Give your child positive attention to help build self-esteem
• Discipline. Give correction and consequences such as removing privileges.

Source: https://www.pacer.org/bullying/resources/facts.asp

Source: http://www.lscares.org/bullying.html

Good kids bully. Nice kids bully. Smart kids bully. When parents look away, it does their children — and their children’s classmates — a disservice. - Lev Novak

Why does bullying happen?
Look for reasons for the bullying to help stop the bullying. For example:

• Is your child being bullied? 
• Is your child joining in bullying to avoid being bullied himself? 
• Is your child seeing bullying at home or in other settings, e.g. TV, YouTube, books, games? Sometimes bullying happens because children see others doing it.
• Is your child bullying to feel more important or in control? Some children bully because they have low self-esteem.
• Is your child misunderstanding messages about ‘standing up for herself’? Sometimes positive comments about being aggressive or assertive can encourage children to bully.

What are the risk factors for becoming a bully?

Having Permissive Parents
"When parents do not establish rules for their children or provide adequate supervision, their children often resort to bullying. What's more, permissive parents are less likely to institute consequences or attempt to stop the bullying. If you have a student that seems to have very little parental involvement or supervision, be on alert. The lack of relationship between the child and his parent can create all types of issues, including bullying behavior."

7 ways to stand up to bullying

• Ignore the bully
• Tell the bully to stop
• Make a joke or agree with the bully. Laugh along to demonstrate that they are confident about who they are.
• Avoid bullying hot spots
• Stick with friends
• Report the bullying to an adult

Bullying in Early Childhood
Extracted information from the pdf file:
IF YOU DON’T STOP BULLYING, IT WILL GROW AND SPREAD.
If bullying in the early years is overlooked or not stopped, young children who bully will continue to bully as they get older, and children who are victimized will continue to suffer. In fact, bullying may spread as other children see opportunities to engage in bullying. If left unchecked, patterns of bullying and victimization will persist into adolescence and even adulthood, resulting in abusive teen dating relationships, and eventually domestic violence or other criminal activities.

Young children may make mean faces, say threatening things, grab objects, push others aside, falsely accuse others, or refuse to play with particular children.

Bullying is a form of emotional or physical abuse that has three defining characteristics:

• Deliberate – A bully’s intention is to hurt someone.
• Repeated – A bully often targets the same victim again and again.
• Power imbalanced – A bully chooses victims he or she perceives as vulnerable.

These aggressive and early bullying behaviors develop systematically depending on the response of the target. For example, if a targeted child cries, submits, and yields the toy, the aggressive child is likely to select and target the same child again, and the bullying behaviors will continue.

When other children in the classroom observe a bullying child’s “successful” display of power and dominance over a victimized child, they may join in––dominating the same victim repeatedly or using similar tactics to target and dominate victims of their own.

When bullying occurs in early childhood settings, all the children watching become bystanders to bullying. Bystanders learn about bullying from observing the behaviors of the children who bully and the children who are victims. Often bullying is intentionally displayed in front of others to get
their attention and solicit their support.

How to help

• Assertiveness. Children who are assertive can stand up for themselves and others in fair and respectful ways. They know how to respond to a bully in effective, non-aggressive ways and are less likely to be targeted by bullies in the first place. 
• Problem solving. Children who are problem-solvers know how to analyze and resolve social problems in constructive ways. 

Frenemies

When a bully poses as a friend, these bullies are often called frenemies. Frenemies make life miserable for your kids. As master manipulators, they deceive people into believing they are friends, when really the relationship is just a means to end. Frenemies also can use peer pressure to manipulate others and soon your child is bullying people too. As a result, it is important to identify frenemies early on.

Frenemy by VeryWellFamily

What to do if your child is involved with a frenemy?

• Point out the pattern using gentle questions
• Prepare your child to speak up effectively when needed
• Offer other friendship alternatives
• Talk about values - reflect on the qualities of a good friend