But then he froze, for he had had an idea and it was a particularly amazing one.
‘No! Hang on!’ he cried. ‘Let’s share.’
Margaret Mahy, A Villain’s Night Out, 1999.25
Whether or not a child enjoys school has a great deal to do with whether or not she has friends. Friendship is a very big deal. The lonely child is also the depressed child. There is even an argument that the child without friends learns less as learning is so often done in groups.26 Being able to make friends isn’t just a big deal at school either. The ability to interact well with others is the biggest predictor of mental health and life success through the life spectrum.
So what are the skills for having and making friends? Researchers developed the following list after talking to parents, teachers and children and having them all vote on what was most important:
friendly — smiles and says hello
trustworthy
empathic — recognises when someone is sad and tries to help
fair — takes turns, doesn’t always try to be the boss, can compromise
respectful of others and their property
doesn’t verbally hurt others
praises and compliments others appropriately
funny
positive and happy
likes to spend time with you.27
You can see straightaway that the self-mastery skills are very important. The very impulsive child is at a clear disadvantage when it comes to such things as taking turns. Another standout theme is, of course, theory of mind. The better your child can imagine another child’s perspective, the easier most items on this list will become for her.
The shy child
There is an exception, however. Shy children battle to smile and say hello, to have the confidence to take their turn, to pay compliments and praise another child. This puts them at a clear disadvantage when it comes to making friends. Shy or inhibited children are shy because their amygdala has a hyperactive response to stress. Social situations are stressful, and these children experience a feeling of painful conspicuousness as their amygdala floods them with stress hormones.
They want terrifically to join in, but at the same time their over-the-top hormonal response tells them they will lose the ability to manage their behaviour if they do so. Social isolation, even self-imposed social isolation, can lead to difficulties down the track. Shyness can lead to victimisation and a further loss of confidence in social skills.
But the shy child does not have to stay ‘shy’. Research shows that it is the interaction between temperament and parenting style that lays out the path a shy child will take. Some shy children remain shy, and by teenage years this can immure them in isolation and victimhood, agonising for the parents to watch but far more agonising for the person themselves. Other shy children ‘grow out’ of their shyness and are indistinguishable from others by middle childhood. And there’s a range of pathways in between.
What kind of parenting is associated with overcoming shyness? The kind of parenting associated with secure attachment: sensitive, positive and consistent. In addition, research suggests that shy children need to be provided with firm guidelines about what to do. Never chastise your shy child in front of others for not saying hello, because this is frequently counterproductive: it further destabilises the child’s already overloaded stress system. Before any meeting, however, make sure your child knows that you expect her to say hello.
Another big ‘do not’ is being derisive or making jokes about her shyness or trying to shame her out of it. This actually leads to further social withdrawal. Trying to control your child in a social setting by intervening on her behalf with playmates, or speaking for her and so on, has the same effect.
The way forward is to be positive and encouraging. Your attitude needs to reduce the level of stress she has in relating to social occasions. Over and over again the message you are sending her is, ‘You can do it’. The more you do this, the less shy your shy child will become.28
It is during the pretend play at four and five that children practice making and cementing friendships. In all those games the fodder is their own lives — children take a word or a concept and ‘play it out’. A great deal of what they reflect on is their relationships with us and our relationships with our friends and family, so the quality of their attachment to you and your relationships, both marital and family, are powerful predictors of a child’s ability to make friends.29
If you are somebody who is a good friend to other people — in particular your partner — you will have ample opportunity to teach your child just how theory of mind leads to empathetic action. Your child sees you placing yourself ‘behind the eyes and in the life’ of your partner or your friend, and taking action to help. She will take this skill straight to the playground.
Sadly, the converse is true too. People with poor theory of mind cannot teach it to their children. If you repeatedly become ‘stuck’ in arguments, unable to give an inch, this is what you teach your children. If you must be in charge, this too is what your children bring to a game. Always having to be in charge or having everything their way or getting upset and staying upset make children undesirable play partners. Play, like life, is about flow, compromise and accepting change.
Teacher Meg Roche, who travels Australia teaching schools and families about resilience in children, says that this ability to move on and establish a compromise is of vital importance. She tells children that they can either be a duck or a sponge. The sponge soaks in the misery until it starts to dribble out. The duck, in contrast, just lets it slide off its feathers and paddles off to do something else. These two symbols are very effective in reminding children that they have a range of options for responding. Again, seeing the ability to pick and choose among behavioural options is one of the gifts of theory of mind, and giving children clear symbols for different choices allows them to more easily juggle and choose.
Using books to further grow theory of mind
We enjoy stories because we have theory of mind. The characters in stories are animated not just by the author but by the reader stepping inside and inhabiting the character. Our mirror neurons (described in Chapter 7) are active even in reading — deeply immersed in a book’s characters we embarrass ourselves in front of the one we love, stare into the before-dawn abyss, make the mistake of our lives and abide by the consequences. Without theory of mind, stories would have no meaning. Not just that, but our ability to juggle thoughts lets us hold together multiple plot lines, or join together all the separate pieces of a whodunit.30
Our ‘mirror neurons’ are activated when we read, just as they are when we watch a movie. The activation of mirror neurons means that intimate contact with a book works much as intimate contact with another mind does. It is transforming. Sometimes we can feel it happening as we read, but mostly we do not. Safely tucked inside different characters we are able to see problems surface and be worked through. As we have lived within the skins of the characters, we can come out the other side of the book a slightly different person.
This is what makes stories powerful. Some books we remove from our children saying, ‘Not that one, not yet’. We find ourselves saying, ‘How about this one?’ There is, in fact, a brand of psychotherapy called ‘bibliotherapy’, which is about applying different books to wounds or needs in the client. For example, for the child struggling with the death of a friend there is Goodnight Mr Tom or Bridge to Terabithia. Parents, the experts on their children, can do this far better.
We find a book about a little bear or a princess who doesn’t want to use the potty for our toilet-training toddlers. We read the Narnia books to our spiritually questing seven year olds. For our nine year olds, not quite sure of themselves, we find books on those other, just slightly older identity seekers: J. K. Rowling and Eva Ibbotson have written wonderful books which show children finding their way. In each case, your child’s theory of mind skills are both reinforced and expanded as she reads. And from having rehearsed life from inside another’s skin the characters will bring richer understandings to her own life.
Children don’t just gain this benefit from their own reading, of course. When you read to them this happens too. Keep on reading to them even after they are reading to their interest level — this way you can ensure they benefit from books they might not read on their own.
So our children need to know just what qualities characterise a good friend, and they need us to model those skills and require those behaviours from them in dealing with their siblings. This is something we can teach them within everyday life.
‘Fair’ is something children can begin to understand when they have developed theory of mind, but it still has to be taught. A child who breaks the rules isn’t playing fairly and will promptly be excluded from games by other children.
So how do you teach fairness? You ask your child questions and involve her in family decision-making. Whose turn is it to decide what game we play? The choice of game tends to dictate winners and losers (for example, older children win word games), so an awareness not just about what is fair at that time for all members in the group but also across time is built in. What food shall we eat? How do we work out where we go for holidays? Discuss decisions in terms of what is fair, and teach children how to weigh up a scenario from a number of different perspectives.
Household chores also teach fairness. The way in which you distribute jobs will prepare your child for when they are organising a game among a group of children. There is a gorgeous early reading book about two sisters who travel the country putting on plays. One sister is writing a play called ‘The Princess and the Troll’. The trouble comes when it is casting time because both sisters wish to be the princess. In the end, they write a new play called ‘The Two Princesses’. No-one wants to be the troll all the time. No-one wants to have to clean the bathroom or wipe down the benches or put away the washing all the time. Fair allocation of tasks teaches your child how to be fair in play with her peers.
I tend to think in terms of work teams. These days it works best if I team up with Rafael as I’m still teaching him how to work: about the fact that scrubbing the floor requires you to push hard, to look at what you are doing and that yes, you will feel tired when you finish. Tim and Sam can be left to work together on something. The ages of your children and how many you have dictate how you achieve fairness and also the teaching of work skills.
With all your concern to be fair you will never compete with your children’s avid interest in the subject. Children are the secret police of fairness. The child who is given extra privileges or extra attention by a teacher or a parent will often be punished later. And, of course, some children actually need more scaffolding, more support, more of everything. You need to teach children that fairness means giving each child what they need rather than everyone getting just the same thing. For the siblings of a child with a learning difficulty or an illness, this can be a hard concept to get across. You need to acknowledge the issue with your children, and even within a class.
Another one of the fairness issues is seeking exclusivity in friendships. Being exclusive is not a fair request to make of another child, and it needs to be taught from that point of view. What happens, you can ask your child, if she is not there one day? Who will her friend play with? And from your child’s point of view, such exclusivity puts her at much greater risk of heartbreak if the friend moves away. It is more often little girls who seek such relationships, as they feel happy with just one or two friends. For little boys, who feel more comfortable being part of a larger networked group, this is going to cause trouble. The other boys may well resent a friend who doesn’t allow them to have other friends.
Parents play a big role too in teaching children some of the other unwritten rules of friendship. While being funny is a desirable quality in a friend, saying hurtful things loses friends. Sometimes children may not realise that the things they are saying are actually offensive to other children. Name calling is never acceptable, even if it is meant as a joke. Put downs, which can be used in jest by parents who enjoy bantering with each other, are also negatively perceived by children. Be careful exactly what you model to your children, and make sure that you don’t laugh at something that has the potential to hurt another child.
Model in your own conversations this concern for the feelings of others above the need for wit. Make clear to your child the difference between friendly teasing and teasing that is designed to hurt. A child desperate for attention from other children is at great risk of using tactics such as teasing in order to be perceived as funny and a desirable playmate. Sadly, this frequently backfires, leaving the child more alone than before.
Not being picked for teams?
It is worth parents knowing what the ‘in game’ is among their children’s peers. Perhaps it is marbles, perhaps it is skipping but whatever it is, being able to play moderately well is a passport for social inclusion. Ask your children if they would like to practise at home, and be available as a play partner (not coach!) for them. Do not offer constructive criticism, just let them lead the play.
If they are having difficulty keeping up with peers in playing these games, do check through the troubleshooting section (see Appendix III) to make sure their primitive reflexes have been integrated and their adult reflexes are in place. Such games require precision, and this requires a body under full control.
While your child is still building up her skills to the group standard, she can offer to take on other roles. She can offer to score, umpire, manage the sports kit and so on. Often children who watch, and are assisted through the thinking process by their parents, can also come up with strategy ideas for teams.
Children’s creativity and individual passions are the best drivers of all aspects of their lives. Helping them preserve this, the core of their true self, is also part of a parent’s role. Unfortunately, the social environment can be a barrier to keeping a child’s sense of self intact. What you want your child to have, at least some of the time, are relationships that grow that blossoming sense of self.
Good social skills are more than just survival strategy. Theory of mind is more than just the ability to think from a number of perspectives. Together they are your child’s way in to connecting emotionally, creatively and intimately with other people, which lies at the heart of our satisfaction in life.
For some children the hardest part of going to school is the other children. This can be nearly as hard for the parents to hear as it is for the child to endure. Somewhere I read the story of a little girl asking her mother a riddle about school.
‘What do you look for every day, and sometimes you think you’ve found it, but the next day you have to start looking all over again?’
It is not a funny riddle. Eventually the little girl tells her mother the answer.
‘Every day you look for someone who likes you and sometimes you think you have found a friend, but the next day you have to start again.’
Doesn’t your heart just sink? Friendship is based on similarity: birds of a feather flock together. If your child is gifted, learning disabled, both learning disabled and gifted, culturally or ethnically different and so on, making friends is going to be harder. Being a ‘rare bird’ is not an advantage in childhood, no matter how useful it becomes in later life. For ‘different’ children the groups of the schoolyard are often just something to be survived. Some children cannot be their true self at school.
In this situation you can say to your child that a good starting point is to try to find something to like about everyone, and try to ‘reflect’ that back. The more closely we mirror another person, the more they tend to like us. Sometimes, though, mirroring another person requires us to be untrue to who we are in our hearts. At this point, you could say to your child, there’s really no choice to be made. You are you. There are children who you like, and who like you: there just might not be any around right now. Encourage your child to simply ‘get by’, not fighting, not being the victim or the bully. In adult life there are always times when we can’t be with our friends, and those skills will be valuable then.
In these circumstances a child will need to accept that she cannot be her ‘true self’ at school. Help her see that this may be the case for some of her classmates as well. Ask your child to observe what strategies seem to work well for other ‘different children’, and what strategies work poorly. One observation is that making yourself as small a target as possible is a safe way to go. This is not the same as trying to be the same as the other kids, but to intentionally reveal less of yourself. But this is no way to enjoy life.
While perhaps your child can be her true self at home, she also needs to be that person with other children if at all possible. Real acceptance (and as she grows older, intimacy) is something every child needs to feel some of the time from other children. Parents need to gear their response to demonstrating to their child that her ‘true self’ is worthy of being valued.
A special effort should be made to find friends for your child out of school: similar children with whom your child can build a lasting friendship. In addition, provide your child with chances to experiment with her identity. School groups restrict a child by their expectations. The occasional party with children she doesn’t know well; the out-of-school church group, finding a friend at the beach on holidays: all such events help your child develop a sense of having a complex self with a number of aspects.
In Australia, a 1999 study of 25,399 children found that 25 per cent of them were bullied on a weekly basis.31 So if it happens to your child it does not, sadly, qualify as unusual.
Bullying is being approached in a number of ways by researchers. They are examining societal factors, family factors and child factors. Unfortunately there is a disconnection between the research and the mainstream books that are published on the subject. One researcher writes that of three books recently released on bullying the messages within each one are wrong.32 While the researchers have not yet completed their work, this is a synthesis of the findings that might be useful to parents.
Our society is only just beginning to clearly see the damage done by children to children by bullying. In an article addressing our lack of discernment the authors begin this way:
Joyce, busy at her desk, didn’t see it coming. The assailant ran through the door, clobbered her on the head, and ran off. Joyce fell to the floor screaming.
a. (Joyce is 25) Her co-worker reached for the phone and dialed 911.
b. (Joyce is 5) The kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Coyle, looked up and asked, ‘What’s going on here?’33
They almost need say no more. As you read these words you realise that, implicit in our responses to child-to-child violence, is a society-wide belief that violence by children to children is not as serious as violence among adults. We look with our eyes at the threat to the child, and not with their eyes. They are all just children, we think. We need to look again and use our developed theory of mind to stand in our children’s shoes. As adults most of us don’t believe that being assaulted is a ‘learning experience’. Nor do we believe that workplace bullying is character building.
With this double vision we then need to set about dealing with the problem. The perpetrators are just children, so we cannot assign to them the level of ‘knowingness’ we assign to adults. But we equally must not minimise the damage done to their victims. Being bullied, mentally as well as physically as a child, whether by siblings or by other children, puts children on the path for academic and mental health problems later on. Why academic problems? As we discussed in Chapter 4, children must feel safe to learn. Fascinatingly, bullies are also more likely to feel unsafe. Whether your child is a victim, a bully/victim or a bully, his prospects of success in life are greatly damaged by these early experiences.34
The research distinguishes between the bullying that is physical, relational or verbal and behavioural. Physical bullying involves physical intimidation or injury. Relational bullying, now far better recognised than it was, involves rumour-spreading, social exclusion, unpleasant letters and name-calling. As this type of bullying is often done behind a child’s back it is extraordinarily difficult for them to counter. Behavioural bullying is when a child does something mean, such as stealing a lunch or scribbling on a book. One child seeks to ‘build his ego’ by making the other child perceive himself to be less acceptable and either physically or psychologically weaker. In all types of bullying there is a sense of the behaviour being systematic and designed to hurt.
So why are some children bullied? Why do other children veer backwards and forwards between bullying and being victimised? And why do children bully?
The children who are bullied are those who are more sensitive to negativity in the environment, and reveal that sensitivity to others in terms of irritability and impulsive and aggressive behaviour. They are often described as introverted and with lower self-esteem. Both things go hand in hand with sensitivity. This is something we remember from our own childhoods: ‘The more you react, the more they will pick on you.’
The research defines two sorts of aggression: reactive aggression and proactive aggression. Children who are easily upset, get angry quickly and are generally emotionally up and down are displaying reactive aggression. They are frequently victimised, usually by the child who is ‘proactively’ aggressive. Some children with a reactive aggressive profile are not just victims but bullies: their esteem is lowered by being bullied and they then ‘rebuild’ by attacking another child. They are called bully/victims in the research.35
The ‘pure’ bully is a very different kind of child. They are often children who are insecurely attached to their parents, so aggression becomes a pathway through which they have their needs met at home, and that continues away from home. They are described as proactively aggressive, and are more often extroverted children. They are usually bullying by the time they enter kindergarten, and at this point they have a poorer theory of mind than their peers. By bullying, however, they actually learn about people: who can be bullied and who cannot. They then develop a strong theory of mind, which, by middle primary, allows them to accurately identify just which children will succumb to their tactics. At this point their ego-building behaviours become targeted to those children who will most easily succumb.36
What does the research suggest you can do to prevent your child becoming involved as either bully or victim?
Creating a secure attachment for your child is first on the list. If your child has siblings, next comes ensuring that you have an equally warm relationship with all of them and there are no favourites. This sets your child up for a strong friendship with his siblings, and good sibling relationships are highly protective.
When children have positive experiences of sibling relationships they also expect to have just such experiences with their friends. They are then far more likely to both be ‘prosocial’ and to attract such friends, even if they fit the sensitive introverted profile of the child who is more often bullied. The prosocial child is a child with strong theory of mind, and who uses this understanding to nut out solutions to social problems. They often become ‘defenders’ — the natural counter to bullies — from kindergarten onwards.37
Friends, even those who are not prosocial, are highly protective. There is some research to suggest that those tragic events that happen from time to time, such as when a child is pushed by his peer group into taking a risk that proves to be fatal, or into hurting another child, rarely happen when children have a good friend present. The damaging potential of a group is greatly reduced when a child has a true friend among those present.38
Next comes setting clear rules for behaviour among your children. Clearly define for them just what bullying is. Monitor their behaviour with an eye to exclusion, saying nasty things, name-calling, hitting and so on, with both siblings and with peers. Children are far less likely to bully when this kind of monitoring and rule setting is in place at home. If there have been previous incidences of such behaviour among your children, know that you are not going to be able to just leave them unsupervised to play for a while.
Helping your children be friends with each other
The sibling relationship is one of the longest lasting we have. It is common for siblings, having lived quite separate lives until then, to move to live near each other for their last years. Helping your children become a ‘sibling support group’ is one of the great gifts a parent can give. So how do you do it?
Look after your relationship with your partner. Research shows that if the marital relationship is strained, so is the relationship between siblings. Even with a warm marital relationship, however, favouritism by parents damages sibling relationships. In contrast, when parents have an equally warm relationship with all their children, those children will all relate positively. And this counts in the outside world. A study of Mexican families showed that the children with the least behaviour problems had the warmest relationship with their siblings.39
But there are some families where, despite a strong marital relationship and no favouritism, siblings don’t relate warmly and lovingly to each other. What is happening here? This has more to do with family norms. Perhaps believing that siblings are natural rivals, parents don’t have a family rule that you must treat your siblings lovingly and fairly.
Ginott’s rule of ‘allowing all emotions, but not all behaviours’ works well here. A child is allowed to feel very angry with a sibling but he must not express that anger in a way that hurts the relationship. Getting angry is permissible, but hitting, name-calling, bullying, playing favourites among siblings and humiliation is not.
As well as verbalising this rule you support it in practice by:
rewarding children for playing and behaving lovingly with each other. Take photos, organise treats, sit down and play too. Do everything to convey how much you love to see them dealing warmly with each other
refusing to take a side in an argument. Children often stage arguments to receive attention from parents. If you refuse to reward fighting behaviour by taking sides but institute the rule that they must go outside if they are going to behave that way, you will see a decline in fights
having the same rules for each child. If you have different rules for different children then you are not treating them as individuals but playing favourites.
I once paid a home visit to a mother of two sons in a small country town. Dad was on a tough fly-in fly-out schedule. The two boys were very different. Both had learning difficulties, but one was far more confident and proactively aggressive. The other son, their teacher had told me, was frequently victimised by other children at school, including his older brother.
‘I know you should treat your children as individuals,’ the mother began, and I obediently nodded. ‘So I have different rules for the boys.’
The younger boy was able to sleep in Mum’s bed in Dad’s absence but the older boy was not. The older boy had to do the chores as he needed to learn responsibility but the younger boy was ‘naturally responsible’. The younger boy’s confidence was low, and she encouraged him to assert himself at home against his brother. And so it went on.
Unable to convince the mother that treating your children as individuals did not mean having entirely different rules for each child, I sought my mother’s advice. With her help I developed a home program for the younger boy that revolved around chores, and for the older boy, lots of reading with his Mum, and we added in whole-family games as well. As you can see, we were trying to ensure that each child had the chance to take responsibility, be nurtured and enjoy whole-family time.
Treating your children as individuals means accepting that they will feel differently about different things, and need more or less help on different occasions than their siblings. But the rules need to be the same for every child, otherwise you are playing favourites. Favouritism, by way of damaging your children’s relationships with each other, has a habit of spreading to their experiences at school. A number of studies have shown that half of all children who bully and are bullied at school were also bullied at home by their siblings.40, 41
The research on birth order can also show parents how their behaviour impacts on sibling relationships. One finding is that the middle child may be less close to his parents, particularly to his mother, when a mother is older at the time of the child’s birth. The risk is that such a mother is more likely to invest most of her time and energy in her very last baby The last baby often gets favoured treatment because it is ‘the last one’. Watching out for this is one of the messages from the research. The other message seems to be to cherish your middle children. Remember that they don’t ever have that special one-on-one time which is the prerogative of the youngest and oldest children.42
How does the birth order research fit with the rest of this book? If we return to Chapter 1, where we looked at baby growing his idea of himself in response to your idea of him, we see how much a child’s need to ‘de-identify’ or ‘find a niche’ may well begin in a parent’s mind. When our second baby arrives we look for differences from the first. We begin trying to establish a niche for the new baby right away — a new place in our minds and hearts. But perhaps the message from the birth order research is to stay open-minded about who this person is going to be. Be aware of any ideas you may bring from your family of origin (such as, ‘If the first is easy, the second won’t be’) and make sure that they don’t contaminate the niche you are growing for your new baby.
Watch and listen. If you do see some bullying, pull the child aside immediately and label the behaviour for him. Then talk him through it. Help him stand in his sibling’s or friend’s shoes and reflect upon how it feels to be bullied. Questions like, ‘How would you feel?’ are the ones to ask. See if you can help him identify why he felt the need to bully. Very often it is dissatisfaction with self that leads to the desire to ‘build some ego’ at the other child’s expense. Teach him it is never acceptable to ‘lay violent hands’ on either the body or the personality of another. Explain that he does not just damage the other person alone. Bullying seems to work as a strategy up until high school. ‘All signs,’ writes one researcher, ‘now point to a difficult adulthood for bullies.’33
Help the school your child attends to see bullying as something that will work against academic achievement. There is certainly adequate research to support this statement. Report any bullying you see and encourage other parents to do the same. Encourage your school to introduce an anti-bullying scheme that has been evaluated rather than one that hasn’t. Some programs can actually make the problem worse. Any tolerance of bullying simply sends the message that it’s okay.
Always keep a close eye on your children for signs that they are being bullied. Warning signs include an increasing reluctance to go to school, added to changes in behaviour such as nightmares, poor sleep, irritability, bullying siblings, nervousness, tearfulness and increasing introversion.
And what do you do if your child is being bullied? There will be a pathway at the school your child attends for you to work through. If this pathway does not lead to a prompt change for your child, consider removing him from the school. He will not be learning there. In fact, he will simply be being damaged by the experience, both academically and emotionally. Just write it all out in a frank and polite way for the school, and take action.