![]() ![]() “It’s not about being big it’s about being clever,” she says. One of the biggest gifts a parent can give their child, O’Malley believes, is the skills to handle tricky people. O’Malley prefers the term “tricky people” to “bullies”, and the truth about tricky people is this: they’re all around, and they’ll continue to be all around, right through your life. “Ask them, did everyone have a friend at playtime today? And if they say someone was left out, ask them did they give that person a smile, or go to ask whether they wanted to play?” “When asking your child about their day, don’t just ask about lessons and what they had for lunch,” says O’Malley. The much better approach is to think from the point of view of other children, and to encourage your child to do likewise. Make sure your child isn’t that child: the idea that your offspring is inherently smarter, better looking and more skilled across the board, is, in fact, a facet of your own dark side – and transmitting it to your child will lead to big problems. What sort of behaviour should I look out for? There’s a certain sort of kid, warns O’Malley, who goes to school with a supercilious presumption that they’re better than the others. One of the biggest gifts a parent can give their child is the skills to handle tricky people What’s much more common is individualistic behaviour by parents that could set their child up to be a bully. ![]() These families are very difficult to help but they’re also quite rare. What if the parents are bullies themselves? Sometimes you come across a family where everyone is a bully: the parents, the older siblings, who bully the younger kids, and the younger kids, who bully others at school. “They’re primed to be told how to behave, and they can learn to be different.” Bullying has become demonised, but children can easily tip into it, and we need to help them out of it.” And the good thing, says O’Malley, is that it’s relatively easy to help a primary-school-age child out of being a bully. Every child, every human being, has their flaws. “If you can nurture a sense of kindness in that child, help them understand how others are feeling, you’ll be combatting their bullying tendencies. “A kid like this has wonderful strengths, but they need to learn empathy,” she says. Similarly, if your child needs power and recognition – and that’s a great cocktail for success in many sectors – it can easily trigger bullying behaviour, and as a parent you need to be aware of that, and active in how you manage it. You know your child better than anyone: what are their emotional needs? Do they need love and belonging, or crave power, status and recognition from others? The first of these could be a passive, gentle child who might be more vulnerable to bullying, or to being recruited by a bully to be one of their supporters. What can parents do? The most important thing, says O’Malley, is to pay attention to your child, so you can work out what their vulnerabilities are. ![]() There’s so much we can do to make a difference.” “Maybe it takes 18 years to civilise ourselves, and that’s where parents come in. ![]() The truth is that every single one of us has our shadow side – and it’s not until we can acknowledge it that we become better people.”īullying behaviour in children, says O’Malley, tends to be very animalistic, with a strong instinct in many kids to join the pack. “I’ve never met anyone who I’ve thought could never be a bully, or anyone who could never be a target. What about the children O’Malley calls “wingmen”, the bully’s supporters, the kids who think the bully is the bee’s knees and want to stay in their favour? What’s happening with the kids watching silently – the bystanders? Who is seeing what’s happening, when it all starts to kick off, and getting out fast? Who’s calling out the injustice? To understand bullying, you have to see the whole picture.īecause, says O’Malley, bullying is about absolutely everyone in the group, room, office or playground even the bystanders – those who do or say nothing when bullying is taking place – because, as the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, not to speak is to speak not to act is to act.Ĭould any kid be a bully – and a target? Yes, says O’Malley. One very big issue, which she returns to time and again in her book and in our conversation, is that bullying is always about more than what’s going on with two people: the bully and the target. What is the power, and where does it come from? With children, says O’Malley, it’s often that they have more social status, or have been led to believe they do. But beneath this simple definition lies a complex, multilayered situation that can be exceptionally tricky to unpack. The key, says Stella O’Malley, author of a ground-breaking new book, Bully-Proof Kids, is that it’s repeated behaviour. What is bullying? It’s a sustained pattern of aggression by a person with more power, targeting someone with less power. ![]()
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