November 5, 2024 • 17 mins
Bullying can have a huge impact on our kids' lives.
Recently, Dr Justin had a conversation with Rachel and Sarah on their podcast The Parenting Couch. Today's snippet from that covers definitions of bullying, how to open up conversations about it, and what steps to take when your child is involved. Find the link to the full conversation in our show notes.
In this episode:
- What is bullying? Verbal, physical, repeated, cyber-bullying
- Having conversations with your kids
- Emotions
- Feeling seen, heard, valued
- Encouraging empathy and "upstanding" behaviour
- What to do when bullying happens
- When to involve other parents
Related Links:
- Stop the Bully: Proven Strategies to Empower Your Child, with Dr Justin Coulson | The Parenting Couch Podcast
Subscribe to the Happy Families newsletter
Leave a voice memo here or email your questions/comments to podcasts@happyfamilies.com.au
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's the Happy Families podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
It's the podcast for the time poor parent who just
once answers now.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Hello, and welcome to the Happy Families podcast. Today something
different on the pod Now and then I'm invited onto
other people's podcasts to talk about topics of interest, and recently,
in fact, just last week, an episode dropped on The
Parenting Couch with Rachel chap On Sarah Leve They do
a really great job. It's fun podcast to listen to
The Parenting Couch. We talked about bullying, and we haven't
done that here on the Happy Families podcast for quite
(00:34):
a while. We're usually talking about social media dramas and
all that kind of thing. The Parenting Couch with Rachel
and Sarah though a conversation about bullying. It was so
important that I wanted to bring you a snippet of
what we discussed. Our conversation went for about forty five
minutes fifty minutes. I'm just going to share an edited
version of that, but you might want to pop over
to The parent Couch and listen to the whole thing.
The link is in the show notes. We started our
(00:57):
conversation about bullying with some definitions and types of bullying
that our kids can encounter. Please enjoy my conversation with
Sarah and Rachel from the Parenting Couch.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
A good place to start is to get I guess,
a definition or your way of defining what bullying actually is.
Because there's obviously a bit of teasing, you know, you
and I teasing each other at the beginning of this.
So I don't think that was bullying, but it would
be good to get your take on that before we
get started more on the subject.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah, so most people agree on the definition, and it's
really important to get this right because sometimes parents will say,
my child is being bullied, and they're not being bullied.
Someone was mean to them. So you can have someone
being mean and cruel and unkind and all those things
that's not necessarily bullying. These one off instances or these
(01:53):
occasional someone pope fun or had a bit of a jab.
That's unkindness. It's still not okay. It's just respectful. It's
not okay. But bullying is. It has quite a specific definition,
and across most organizations and throughout academia worldwide, this is
a generally agreed on definition. I say generally because there's
always one or two academics who want to get really,
(02:15):
really fussy about things. But the general, the general agreement
around bullying is this bullying is repeated and intentional use
of words or actions against someone or against a group
of people because you want to hurt them, so you
try to cause distress, you try to risk their well being.
Usually we divided into four different types of bullying. There's
physical bullying. That's obviously were hitting and the pushing and
(02:36):
the shoving and the intimidating and the ripping someone's bags
off their shoulders and chucking them on the bag and
on the ground and kicking it. There's verbal bullying, which
can also be written, so I guess just the use
of woods. So it's name calling, it's insulting someone. I mean,
you've got kids who are, say, neurodivergent, and they get
(02:57):
called more names. Back when I was a kid, I don't,
I don't know that this happens anymore. Maybe it does,
and I'm just too old and too far away from
it now. But when I was a kid going through
primary school, I remember kids that wore glasses were literally
called four eyes, and that was a denigrating insult. Kids
that were carrying too much weight would be teased incessantly
about it, and so that's that verbal kind of bullying.
(03:18):
Then you've got social bullying, which is essentially ostracism when
you're deliberately excluding someone, when you're spreading rumors, when you're
sharing information and gossiping with an expectation that you are
going to cause a harmful effect on the other person.
You're going to cause reputational damage, You're going to impact
the ability that they have to be accepted socially, so
(03:41):
there are social costs. And then the last one cyberbullying,
which is pretty much any of the above and more
that could happen online of ironmobile device. That's how we
define bullying. So that was a long definition. I hope
that's okay, but it's important.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Yeah, totally, yeah. I mean, I guess what sparked this
particular conversation between and I like, we just we realize
we haven't done it an episode on bullying. And my
question is, first of all, how can we open up
the conversation with our children because they might not necessarily
they might be ashamed about it, they might be embarrassed.
(04:14):
And if you do find out, what steps do you
need to take to protect your child. Do you go
to the parent, do you go to the teacher, do
you go to the school? How do you handle it?
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Let's say that you just want to check in with
your child. I'm an ambassador for aook Day. An iook
Day happens on a specific day every year, but the
message that they really promote is it's aook day every day.
We've got to be just checking in and asking those questions. Now,
now here's something curious. The more you ask people how
they're doing, the more they realize that they're not doing
that well most of the time. Like we all have
(04:48):
moments where we're awesome and then we're not, And our
emotions are like waves. They come in and they go out,
and we have one emotion, then we have another one,
and every single one of them is going to be different. Nevertheless,
when we say to our kids, how you're doing, is
everything okay? That can feel a little bit targeted. It
can feel like it's a little bit much. If you're
in a family where you're lucky enough to have beautiful, open,
generous sharing relationships, happy days, but unfortunately, too many families
(05:11):
don't have those relationships. So I've got a couple of recommendations.
The first one is there are going to be a
few moments every day where you can get your child
at a time where they are open, when they are relaxed,
and when they're willing to talk. And I reckon you
guys could tell me those times because you would have
them with your kids. It's usually late at night when
they're about to go to bed and you're laying down. Yeah,
(05:33):
I mean, they just when the kids open up. And
if you can have those check ins reasonably regularly, maybe
once a week, maybe twice a week, maybe once a
fortnight where you just there's downtime. A good mate of mind. Unfortunately,
he passed away a few years ago. It was about
fifty years old and he just died way too early
from a heart attack. But he used to sit on
(05:53):
the couch. Rob would sit on the couch in the
living room because he knew the kids would walk through
the living room and see him there and he would
not be watching TV, and he would not be reading
a book or the paper, and he would not be
staring at a phone. He'd just be sitting on the couch.
And he described it to me. He just said, invariably,
the kids will walk through the living room and they say, oh, hey, Dad,
what youre doing? And he'll say, I'm just sitting on
(06:15):
the couch and they would come and sit down with
him because they I don't know if you've noticed this,
but when you don't seem to have a whole lot
going on, the kids, they just gravitate to you. The
more targeted thing that you can do once the relationship
feels good. I mean, here's the thing. Kids fell love
t im And just like dollars are the currency of
(06:36):
our economy, connection is the currency of our relationships. And
so when our kids feel connected, they feel seen, heard
and value. That's when you can start asking some deeper
questions if you feel a need, so you might say
something like, hey, I listened to a podcast the other
day Rachel and Sarah and the Parenting Couch. They just
my favorite people listen to And they had this chat
(06:58):
with this guy and he was talking about bullying. Do
you see much of that happening at school? Like How's
because every school's got it? Do you see much of it?
And you need to be that direct. Every school has
got it. I don't know a single school in the
country that doesn't have some bullying at some point, and
so you just say, every school's got it, how much
do you see? Does it happen much at your school?
(07:20):
And you start really wide. Does it happen much at
your school? Does it happen much in your grade? Is
there a bunch of kids that are sort of more
likely to bully than others? Or is there I'm pretty chill?
And then you might say, what about in your friendship group?
Does it happen much there? Has it ever happened to you?
And so you can see how I've started really wide,
And so the kids feeling comfortable talking generally, and then
(07:41):
bit by bit, as the conversation moves along, you finally
get to them and and ideally, in a perfect world,
if trust has been established and they're enjoying the smoothie,
they'll say, yeah, actually, something did happen to me a
couple of weeks ago. And that's the bit where you
jump across the table, grab them by the collar and
say why didn't you tell me? No, you don't really
do that, grab them and wrap them up in.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Ye yeah, never let them leave the house.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
It's twenty twenty four, so we've got to be very
careful these days. We've got to bubble wrap our kids.
And so it's this very gentle conversation where we're inviting
them in, we're just chatting with them about things. When
we get closer and closer and closer, Rachel, I guess
the other to sort of wrap up this part of
the question that you ask. The other thing that I
really like to do and encourage is to say to
(08:28):
kids something like, what would you do if you saw someone,
like just a random at school bullying another kid? What
would you do? Because there's all this talk about being
an upstander not a bystander, would you would you actually
have the guts to step in? Like? What if it
was a boy doing it to another boy? And I
don't know, Let's say your child's in grade four and
(08:50):
this bully is in grade six, for example, what would
you do then? Like, because it's really hard to be
an upstander and say to a grade six boy stop
it when you're only in grade three and he's twice
your size you how do you deal with that? And
by asking the kids that a couple of really interesting
things happen, Number One, it gives them. It gives them
the opportunity to pause and think. Because we're always lecturing them,
(09:14):
and they start to figure stuff out, they start to
figure out what kind of a person they are. They
also get a bit of a dry run, like they
get to practice safely with you in the living room
or on the couch before it really does happen, so
they can go, yeah, this is what I think I
would do, and when they give an answer, you can say,
I don't know. Let's say your Grade three boy says, well,
I've been doing jiu jitsu for the last three months,
and I think that I could take their kneecaps out.
(09:37):
And you might say, well, I guess that's one option.
How might that go? And generalmen like you don't have
to tell them that they're wrong. You can get really
creative with this and say, well, let's explore that further.
How does that help, what are the risks, what other
options are there? And so we kind of get to
play around with ideas with them until they start to
(09:57):
zero in on the response.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
So you've found out that your child has been bullied
and they've opened up to you, and you've you've you've
used the techniques that you've that you've suggested. What next?
I mean, obviously it might very depend on if it's
a young primary school or if it's a high school,
do you go to the do you speak to the
school about it? What if you're actually really good friends
with the parent. Sorry I'm actually diverging and adding extra questions,
(10:29):
but you know, like but like if you if you
know that you actually know the parent, do you send
them a message on Facebook? Or like, how do you
handle this? Because you're you're the big mama bear and
you want to look after your child and they're so sad.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah, yeah, So the first thing, the first thing that
you've got to do is regulate. Just just get yourself
under control. If you go all Mama bear or Papa bear,
if you start blowing up, then you're just going to
start bullying everybody else and it gets really really messy.
As a general rule, I don't encourage parents to contact
other parents and make an accusation that your child's bullying
(11:04):
my child. It rarely goes, well, it's really really unlikely. Now,
if you've got evidence, let's say there's some video footage,
or let's say you've got some text messages or some
Insta chat content or whatever. If you've got evidence and
you've got a relationship with these people. Then it may
in some cases, and I really want to put big
(11:26):
flashing lights around some it may in some cases be
appropriate to contact them. I'll share a personal example here.
One of my daughters was having a text chat on
whatever platform. It was maybe eight years ago, five years
ago or something like that. I think she and the
boys she was talking to, I think they were in
(11:47):
about grade eight, maybe grade nine. And he made some
inappropriate comments, and then he made some inappropriate solicitations, really
really quite explicit, and really just my daughter was like,
hang on, are we friends? Like I thought we knew
each other, We've known each other since primary school, and
they putting this on me like she was just she
(12:09):
was shocked, and she came straight out to me and
Kylie and said, can you just have a look at this.
I'm not quite sure what to do. So from that
point of view, we were really grateful. Right, here's a
child who's willing to talk to us about a challenging situation.
So I took the screenshots, and because I knew those parents,
and I didn't know them well, but I knew them
(12:32):
well enough, and so I sent them a text message
and I said, Hi, let's say it was Rachel. Hi, Rachel,
it's justin Coilson here. Something's just come up tonight involving
our kids. That's a little bit tricky, and I wanted
to bring you in on it, but it is pretty sensitive.
Is now a good time? And so by framing it
that way and by not blaming anybody, but just saying
(12:54):
there's something going on between our kids, it's a little
bit tricky. I wanted to bring you in. Is that okay?
And I got an instant response absolutely, yeah. What is
it that you want to talk? Do you want to
talk or text? How do you want to do this?
And I said, I said to them, I'm going to
send you a couple of screenshots from my daughter's phone.
Once you've had a look at them, if you just
(13:14):
want to come back to me and tell me what
you think would be best in terms of how we proceed.
So what I'm doing here is I'm really kind of
just putting it on them and saying I'm concerned. What
do you think? So I sent the screenshots. Through the
screenshots spoke for themselves. I didn't need to do anything else.
And this is the other thing, right, when you've got evidence,
when it's incontrovertible. You're on pretty sure footing, and that's
(13:37):
why I felt confident that in some circumstances like this,
I could get away with it. They came back to
me and they said, we're horrified, we're dealing with it.
Will be in touch. And about a week later they
told us about the conversations. They actually asked if they
could get some more advice because they knew who I
wasn't what I did. So that ended up being helpful.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
And as much as I can, I want to get
on the wrong side.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
And those parents wonderful and then I was able to
talk to them about, well, here's your next conversation, in
your next conversation, and that was the end of the
relationship that my daughter had with their son. That was
it broke her trust. Nevertheless, they had some good learnings
together and he saw the ramifications of it. So a
long way of saying, my general recommendation is don't contact
(14:20):
the parents, but in some circumstances such as those where
there is in controvertible evidence and you can ask them
what they think the next steps should be perfect framing
it the right way, that's helpful In terms of other
situations like let's say you're in a situation where you
don't know the parents or you don't have evidence of
what's going on, and you're just trying to protect your child.
(14:40):
This is one of those things where the severity of
what's occurring, the regularity and consistency of what's occurring, the
resources that you have available, all of these things will
play a part. Okay, if there's ongoing bullying, not that
we're trying to entrap other kids here, but if there's
ongoing bulling, then you want to be able to find evidence,
and you want to ask your child, how can we
(15:02):
get some evidence here? I would recommend if it's happening
at school, or if it's happening at whatever the sports
activity is that you do in the afternoon, or maybe
you've got a church group or something, whatever it is
that you do. Wherever it's happening, there is value in
talking to the other adults, talking to people who have
some level of accountability here, That is useful. However, once again,
(15:25):
I strongly discourage those adults, those leaders, those teachers, whoever
they are stepping in and saying right, well, I'll fix
this now, because all that happens is we pushed underground instead,
a concerted effort where there are quiet conversations tend to
be much more helpful. So maybe the school teacher sits
down and tries to understand the context and explores, explains
(15:47):
and empowers. Maybe there are some minor adjustments that can
be made at school so that the child, your child
feels safe and those bullies are in a different a
different place now, whether it's changing class or mixing up
time tables or whatever, coming up with constructive solutions will
always be the preference. Then again, if you have really
serious cases of bullying, you've got situations where children's mental
(16:10):
health is absolutely getting hammered, where there's physical harm, violence threats,
those kinds of things, then intervention is necessary. As a parent,
you've got one central job, and that is to protect
your kids. I'm not saying that to throw any shade
on families where tragedy has occurred. I'm not saying they
didn't protect their kids. What I'm saying is you just
do whatever you've got to do.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Every situation is so different and unique, and you've been
amazing as always, and we are so grateful to have
you on once again, and we will be getting you
back as we've talked about, but this is such a
big subject. It's very on topic. Of course at the moment,
I think it always has been. I think now obviously
with social media and other things, it is just right
(16:48):
and you know what you've just said, and to have
this conversation is really really important.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
So thank you for your time.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Now.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I love hanging out with you guys. I wish we
had more time. That this was fun. That's just a
sneak peek of a much longer conversation that I had
with Rachel and Sarah from the Parenting Couch. You can
find more about their podcast in the show notes. Please
click and go over and have a listen to the
whole thing. Thanks so much for listening, though. The Happy
(17:16):
Families podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media.
If you want more information about making your family happier,
send us to your questions happy families dot com dot you,
or visit us at our website and social media pages.
Doctor Justin Colson's Happy Families
It's the Happy Families podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
It's the podcast for the time poor parent who just
once answers now.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Hello, and welcome to the Happy Families podcast. Today something
different on the pod Now and then I'm invited onto
other people's podcasts to talk about topics of interest, and recently,
in fact, just last week, an episode dropped on The
Parenting Couch with Rachel chap On Sarah Leve They do
a really great job. It's fun podcast to listen to
The Parenting Couch. We talked about bullying, and we haven't
done that here on the Happy Families podcast for quite
(00:34):
a while. We're usually talking about social media dramas and
all that kind of thing. The Parenting Couch with Rachel
and Sarah though a conversation about bullying. It was so
important that I wanted to bring you a snippet of
what we discussed. Our conversation went for about forty five
minutes fifty minutes. I'm just going to share an edited
version of that, but you might want to pop over
to The parent Couch and listen to the whole thing.
The link is in the show notes. We started our
(00:57):
conversation about bullying with some definitions and types of bullying
that our kids can encounter. Please enjoy my conversation with
Sarah and Rachel from the Parenting Couch.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
A good place to start is to get I guess,
a definition or your way of defining what bullying actually is.
Because there's obviously a bit of teasing, you know, you
and I teasing each other at the beginning of this.
So I don't think that was bullying, but it would
be good to get your take on that before we
get started more on the subject.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah, so most people agree on the definition, and it's
really important to get this right because sometimes parents will say,
my child is being bullied, and they're not being bullied.
Someone was mean to them. So you can have someone
being mean and cruel and unkind and all those things
that's not necessarily bullying. These one off instances or these
(01:53):
occasional someone pope fun or had a bit of a jab.
That's unkindness. It's still not okay. It's just respectful. It's
not okay. But bullying is. It has quite a specific definition,
and across most organizations and throughout academia worldwide, this is
a generally agreed on definition. I say generally because there's
always one or two academics who want to get really,
(02:15):
really fussy about things. But the general, the general agreement
around bullying is this bullying is repeated and intentional use
of words or actions against someone or against a group
of people because you want to hurt them, so you
try to cause distress, you try to risk their well being.
Usually we divided into four different types of bullying. There's
physical bullying. That's obviously were hitting and the pushing and
(02:36):
the shoving and the intimidating and the ripping someone's bags
off their shoulders and chucking them on the bag and
on the ground and kicking it. There's verbal bullying, which
can also be written, so I guess just the use
of woods. So it's name calling, it's insulting someone. I mean,
you've got kids who are, say, neurodivergent, and they get
(02:57):
called more names. Back when I was a kid, I don't,
I don't know that this happens anymore. Maybe it does,
and I'm just too old and too far away from
it now. But when I was a kid going through
primary school, I remember kids that wore glasses were literally
called four eyes, and that was a denigrating insult. Kids
that were carrying too much weight would be teased incessantly
about it, and so that's that verbal kind of bullying.
(03:18):
Then you've got social bullying, which is essentially ostracism when
you're deliberately excluding someone, when you're spreading rumors, when you're
sharing information and gossiping with an expectation that you are
going to cause a harmful effect on the other person.
You're going to cause reputational damage, You're going to impact
the ability that they have to be accepted socially, so
(03:41):
there are social costs. And then the last one cyberbullying,
which is pretty much any of the above and more
that could happen online of ironmobile device. That's how we
define bullying. So that was a long definition. I hope
that's okay, but it's important.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Yeah, totally, yeah. I mean, I guess what sparked this
particular conversation between and I like, we just we realize
we haven't done it an episode on bullying. And my
question is, first of all, how can we open up
the conversation with our children because they might not necessarily
they might be ashamed about it, they might be embarrassed.
(04:14):
And if you do find out, what steps do you
need to take to protect your child. Do you go
to the parent, do you go to the teacher, do
you go to the school? How do you handle it?
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Let's say that you just want to check in with
your child. I'm an ambassador for aook Day. An iook
Day happens on a specific day every year, but the
message that they really promote is it's aook day every day.
We've got to be just checking in and asking those questions. Now,
now here's something curious. The more you ask people how
they're doing, the more they realize that they're not doing
that well most of the time. Like we all have
(04:48):
moments where we're awesome and then we're not, And our
emotions are like waves. They come in and they go out,
and we have one emotion, then we have another one,
and every single one of them is going to be different. Nevertheless,
when we say to our kids, how you're doing, is
everything okay? That can feel a little bit targeted. It
can feel like it's a little bit much. If you're
in a family where you're lucky enough to have beautiful, open,
generous sharing relationships, happy days, but unfortunately, too many families
(05:11):
don't have those relationships. So I've got a couple of recommendations.
The first one is there are going to be a
few moments every day where you can get your child
at a time where they are open, when they are relaxed,
and when they're willing to talk. And I reckon you
guys could tell me those times because you would have
them with your kids. It's usually late at night when
they're about to go to bed and you're laying down. Yeah,
(05:33):
I mean, they just when the kids open up. And
if you can have those check ins reasonably regularly, maybe
once a week, maybe twice a week, maybe once a
fortnight where you just there's downtime. A good mate of mind. Unfortunately,
he passed away a few years ago. It was about
fifty years old and he just died way too early
from a heart attack. But he used to sit on
(05:53):
the couch. Rob would sit on the couch in the
living room because he knew the kids would walk through
the living room and see him there and he would
not be watching TV, and he would not be reading
a book or the paper, and he would not be
staring at a phone. He'd just be sitting on the couch.
And he described it to me. He just said, invariably,
the kids will walk through the living room and they say, oh, hey, Dad,
what youre doing? And he'll say, I'm just sitting on
(06:15):
the couch and they would come and sit down with
him because they I don't know if you've noticed this,
but when you don't seem to have a whole lot
going on, the kids, they just gravitate to you. The
more targeted thing that you can do once the relationship
feels good. I mean, here's the thing. Kids fell love
t im And just like dollars are the currency of
(06:36):
our economy, connection is the currency of our relationships. And
so when our kids feel connected, they feel seen, heard
and value. That's when you can start asking some deeper
questions if you feel a need, so you might say
something like, hey, I listened to a podcast the other
day Rachel and Sarah and the Parenting Couch. They just
my favorite people listen to And they had this chat
(06:58):
with this guy and he was talking about bullying. Do
you see much of that happening at school? Like How's
because every school's got it? Do you see much of it?
And you need to be that direct. Every school has
got it. I don't know a single school in the
country that doesn't have some bullying at some point, and
so you just say, every school's got it, how much
do you see? Does it happen much at your school?
(07:20):
And you start really wide. Does it happen much at
your school? Does it happen much in your grade? Is
there a bunch of kids that are sort of more
likely to bully than others? Or is there I'm pretty chill?
And then you might say, what about in your friendship group?
Does it happen much there? Has it ever happened to you?
And so you can see how I've started really wide,
And so the kids feeling comfortable talking generally, and then
(07:41):
bit by bit, as the conversation moves along, you finally
get to them and and ideally, in a perfect world,
if trust has been established and they're enjoying the smoothie,
they'll say, yeah, actually, something did happen to me a
couple of weeks ago. And that's the bit where you
jump across the table, grab them by the collar and
say why didn't you tell me? No, you don't really
do that, grab them and wrap them up in.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Ye yeah, never let them leave the house.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
It's twenty twenty four, so we've got to be very
careful these days. We've got to bubble wrap our kids.
And so it's this very gentle conversation where we're inviting
them in, we're just chatting with them about things. When
we get closer and closer and closer, Rachel, I guess
the other to sort of wrap up this part of
the question that you ask. The other thing that I
really like to do and encourage is to say to
(08:28):
kids something like, what would you do if you saw someone,
like just a random at school bullying another kid? What
would you do? Because there's all this talk about being
an upstander not a bystander, would you would you actually
have the guts to step in? Like? What if it
was a boy doing it to another boy? And I
don't know, Let's say your child's in grade four and
(08:50):
this bully is in grade six, for example, what would
you do then? Like, because it's really hard to be
an upstander and say to a grade six boy stop
it when you're only in grade three and he's twice
your size you how do you deal with that? And
by asking the kids that a couple of really interesting
things happen, Number One, it gives them. It gives them
the opportunity to pause and think. Because we're always lecturing them,
(09:14):
and they start to figure stuff out, they start to
figure out what kind of a person they are. They
also get a bit of a dry run, like they
get to practice safely with you in the living room
or on the couch before it really does happen, so
they can go, yeah, this is what I think I
would do, and when they give an answer, you can say,
I don't know. Let's say your Grade three boy says, well,
I've been doing jiu jitsu for the last three months,
and I think that I could take their kneecaps out.
(09:37):
And you might say, well, I guess that's one option.
How might that go? And generalmen like you don't have
to tell them that they're wrong. You can get really
creative with this and say, well, let's explore that further.
How does that help, what are the risks, what other
options are there? And so we kind of get to
play around with ideas with them until they start to
(09:57):
zero in on the response.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
So you've found out that your child has been bullied
and they've opened up to you, and you've you've you've
used the techniques that you've that you've suggested. What next?
I mean, obviously it might very depend on if it's
a young primary school or if it's a high school,
do you go to the do you speak to the
school about it? What if you're actually really good friends
with the parent. Sorry I'm actually diverging and adding extra questions,
(10:29):
but you know, like but like if you if you
know that you actually know the parent, do you send
them a message on Facebook? Or like, how do you
handle this? Because you're you're the big mama bear and
you want to look after your child and they're so sad.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah, yeah, So the first thing, the first thing that
you've got to do is regulate. Just just get yourself
under control. If you go all Mama bear or Papa bear,
if you start blowing up, then you're just going to
start bullying everybody else and it gets really really messy.
As a general rule, I don't encourage parents to contact
other parents and make an accusation that your child's bullying
(11:04):
my child. It rarely goes, well, it's really really unlikely. Now,
if you've got evidence, let's say there's some video footage,
or let's say you've got some text messages or some
Insta chat content or whatever. If you've got evidence and
you've got a relationship with these people. Then it may
in some cases, and I really want to put big
(11:26):
flashing lights around some it may in some cases be
appropriate to contact them. I'll share a personal example here.
One of my daughters was having a text chat on
whatever platform. It was maybe eight years ago, five years
ago or something like that. I think she and the
boys she was talking to, I think they were in
(11:47):
about grade eight, maybe grade nine. And he made some
inappropriate comments, and then he made some inappropriate solicitations, really
really quite explicit, and really just my daughter was like,
hang on, are we friends? Like I thought we knew
each other, We've known each other since primary school, and
they putting this on me like she was just she
(12:09):
was shocked, and she came straight out to me and
Kylie and said, can you just have a look at this.
I'm not quite sure what to do. So from that
point of view, we were really grateful. Right, here's a
child who's willing to talk to us about a challenging situation.
So I took the screenshots, and because I knew those parents,
and I didn't know them well, but I knew them
(12:32):
well enough, and so I sent them a text message
and I said, Hi, let's say it was Rachel. Hi, Rachel,
it's justin Coilson here. Something's just come up tonight involving
our kids. That's a little bit tricky, and I wanted
to bring you in on it, but it is pretty sensitive.
Is now a good time? And so by framing it
that way and by not blaming anybody, but just saying
(12:54):
there's something going on between our kids, it's a little
bit tricky. I wanted to bring you in. Is that okay?
And I got an instant response absolutely, yeah. What is
it that you want to talk? Do you want to
talk or text? How do you want to do this?
And I said, I said to them, I'm going to
send you a couple of screenshots from my daughter's phone.
Once you've had a look at them, if you just
(13:14):
want to come back to me and tell me what
you think would be best in terms of how we proceed.
So what I'm doing here is I'm really kind of
just putting it on them and saying I'm concerned. What
do you think? So I sent the screenshots. Through the
screenshots spoke for themselves. I didn't need to do anything else.
And this is the other thing, right, when you've got evidence,
when it's incontrovertible. You're on pretty sure footing, and that's
(13:37):
why I felt confident that in some circumstances like this,
I could get away with it. They came back to
me and they said, we're horrified, we're dealing with it.
Will be in touch. And about a week later they
told us about the conversations. They actually asked if they
could get some more advice because they knew who I
wasn't what I did. So that ended up being helpful.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
And as much as I can, I want to get
on the wrong side.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
And those parents wonderful and then I was able to
talk to them about, well, here's your next conversation, in
your next conversation, and that was the end of the
relationship that my daughter had with their son. That was
it broke her trust. Nevertheless, they had some good learnings
together and he saw the ramifications of it. So a
long way of saying, my general recommendation is don't contact
(14:20):
the parents, but in some circumstances such as those where
there is in controvertible evidence and you can ask them
what they think the next steps should be perfect framing
it the right way, that's helpful In terms of other
situations like let's say you're in a situation where you
don't know the parents or you don't have evidence of
what's going on, and you're just trying to protect your child.
(14:40):
This is one of those things where the severity of
what's occurring, the regularity and consistency of what's occurring, the
resources that you have available, all of these things will
play a part. Okay, if there's ongoing bullying, not that
we're trying to entrap other kids here, but if there's
ongoing bulling, then you want to be able to find evidence,
and you want to ask your child, how can we
(15:02):
get some evidence here? I would recommend if it's happening
at school, or if it's happening at whatever the sports
activity is that you do in the afternoon, or maybe
you've got a church group or something, whatever it is
that you do. Wherever it's happening, there is value in
talking to the other adults, talking to people who have
some level of accountability here, That is useful. However, once again,
(15:25):
I strongly discourage those adults, those leaders, those teachers, whoever
they are stepping in and saying right, well, I'll fix
this now, because all that happens is we pushed underground instead,
a concerted effort where there are quiet conversations tend to
be much more helpful. So maybe the school teacher sits
down and tries to understand the context and explores, explains
(15:47):
and empowers. Maybe there are some minor adjustments that can
be made at school so that the child, your child
feels safe and those bullies are in a different a
different place now, whether it's changing class or mixing up
time tables or whatever, coming up with constructive solutions will
always be the preference. Then again, if you have really
serious cases of bullying, you've got situations where children's mental
(16:10):
health is absolutely getting hammered, where there's physical harm, violence threats,
those kinds of things, then intervention is necessary. As a parent,
you've got one central job, and that is to protect
your kids. I'm not saying that to throw any shade
on families where tragedy has occurred. I'm not saying they
didn't protect their kids. What I'm saying is you just
do whatever you've got to do.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Every situation is so different and unique, and you've been
amazing as always, and we are so grateful to have
you on once again, and we will be getting you
back as we've talked about, but this is such a
big subject. It's very on topic. Of course at the moment,
I think it always has been. I think now obviously
with social media and other things, it is just right
(16:48):
and you know what you've just said, and to have
this conversation is really really important.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
So thank you for your time.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Now.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I love hanging out with you guys. I wish we
had more time. That this was fun. That's just a
sneak peek of a much longer conversation that I had
with Rachel and Sarah from the Parenting Couch. You can
find more about their podcast in the show notes. Please
click and go over and have a listen to the
whole thing. Thanks so much for listening, though. The Happy
(17:16):
Families podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media.
If you want more information about making your family happier,
send us to your questions happy families dot com dot you,
or visit us at our website and social media pages.
Doctor Justin Colson's Happy Families
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!