Teach your kids how to tackle bullies – neither with violence nor with cowardice.
Kids face bullying at all ages. A 9-year-old boy who is not into games may be pushed around, called a sissy or a nerd, and generally teased to tears. A 14-year-old girl may be mercilessly targeted by her classmates for her choice of clothes, a 16-year-old boy may be boycotted by other boys because he refuses to indulge in eve-teasing. Parents often don’t know whether they should step in and complain to the school or the bully’s parents. At one level, you feel your child should learn to hold his or her own in such situations. And yet, stepping in on his behalf conveys that his family cares and will protect him. What is the right balance?
Particularly with boys, it is important that they learn to take some amount of bullying on the chin, ignore it, or even give back, measure for measure. Girls need to do this too, but the whole bullying-teasing thing seems to be more muted and not so merciless amongst girls at a young age.
Before stepping in (which you may have to do if it gets relentless or physical), you can help your children face bullies with a few strategies:
Ignoring the teasing. Which means not only to not respond, but to genuinely ignore it. This you can help him do by painting the teasers and bullies in a ‘boring’ light in conversations at home. Like they’re a stuck record. Right now he sees them as his tormentors, as strong figures; if he sees them as silly fellows with nothing better to do, he may be able to ignore them better. It is a difficult concept for a 7 or 8-year-old to understand, but do try it.
Teasing right back. This is not in the tradition of ‘Gandhigiri’, ‘turning the other check’ no doubt, but a few smart come-backs which involve targeting some trait of the teasers may go a long way in getting the bullies to back off. While this is not something one likes to do, you might have to help your child actually find something to laugh at, about them, and thus go prepared with a little verbal ‘ammunition’! Try to get him to do this in a kidding offhand manner, and not in a battle-cry mode.
Agreeing with the teaser. One way to frustrate a teaser is to agree with whatever he says, in a bland or funny/absurd way. You could get him to say things like “Of course my shirt is funny, so what?” or “Ya I wore this just so that you could laugh; see how kind I am.”
If the bullying takes the shape of really offensive name-calling or physical stuff, you just might need to step in at some point, and do three things, step by step.
Get the teacher in charge or principal to have a sensible talk about bullying to the class/school in general – particularly on the issue of studious students versus sports lovers, and the pointlessness of the so-called ‘divide’.
Take the intervention a step forward by calling up the teasers’ parents and having a calm and rational conversation about this.
Casually drop in at end of a school day and address some laughingly warning remarks to the teasers themselves. For boys, preferably this should be done by both parents, or the father alone. Because with boys, ‘mama came to save you’ teasing can quickly follow.
While all this sounds like the stuff of strategic war maneuvers, do try to carry them out as casually as possible, so that your children can put bullying and teasing episodes in perspective and move on with confidence.