By Elizabeth Morris (2000)
Self Esteem Advisory Service
“I just don’t know what to do. It’s like he doesn’t care.” “She just flatly denies it. How can I get through to her that this is serious?" We hear these kinds of questions so often. For many parents the thought that their child is a bully is upsetting. It isn’t a socially acceptable thing to be and they often feel embarrassed to admit that this is the case. Somehow being the Victim of bullying is more acceptable than being the bully or Persecutor. Victims get sympathy and support, but Persecutors get criticised and ostracised. This isn’t fair because both need help and understanding.
What’s the solution?
Bullies come over as aggressive and powerful. They tend to give off the message that they are tough and can take whatever comes their way. They don’t show upset or hurt, tears or sadness. Their skins are thick and they are past masters of the ‘supercool’ attitude. All this is a self protective mechanism to defend themselves from more hurt or from owning up to their difficulties. Their way of displaying their vulnerability is to be hard - just so that you don’t get close and see how weak they really feel inside. The solution is to find ways to show them that you accept their vulnerability and that you don’t expect them to be on top of everything. Bullies often have little self esteem and the bit that they do have is built on having the power to make other children's lives miserable. They tend to feel powerless in certain areas of their lives and so make themselves doubly powerful in another area.
Emotional coaching is powerful!
One of the most powerful ways to convey your understanding and acceptance of them as people, whilst not condoning their behaviour this is through the process of emotional coaching.
In a unique longitudinal study Professor John Gottman of the University of Washington, discovered that children whose parents regularly used this approach were:
- more popular with their friends and with adults,
- had better academic results,
- were able to withstand bullying well,
- had fewer infections,
- were able to calm themselves down when they got upset
- did not demonstrate bullying behaviour.
These are things we all want for our children. The children whose parents did not do this were more likely to:
· have been in trouble with the police,
· have low self esteem
· have low expectations of what they could achieve in life,
· have been bullied,
· be bullies,
· have experimented with drugs
· carried on using drugs.
Even teenage pregnancies are being linked with a lack of self esteem. Again, if there is a way that would ensure our children had sound self esteem it is worth learning how to do it.
How do you start persuading your children to listen to you?
In some ways the answer to that question is easy – you need to start listening to them! However really listening to someone else is a lot harder than you might think. Try tuning into conversations around you in the next few hours and just hear how often people interrupt, offer advice, judge, want to talk about their own problems, miss the point of what the other person is saying and go off on their own agenda….. the list is endless. This is particularly hard when your child is denying an important problem – because all you want to do is talk about that and all they want to do is NOT talk about it. You need to make a long term plan and accept that at first you are not going to be able to tackle the most important issue. You and you child need to build up a bit more trust with one another first. This is best done by listening to them when they do talk and showing that you have heard by reflecting back what you heard them say in a non-judgemental way. Eg. ‘You were really cross with Martin today.’ In response to them coming in a saying ‘I hate that ‘Martin Smith’, he spoilt my shot at goal.’
There are five steps to the emotional coaching process.
First of all you need to recognise that your child is expressing an emotion that could be an opportunity for emotional coaching. With younger children this is often clear, they will be crying or shouting – or both. However with older children it is not so obvious sometimes. By five or six they will have learnt to hide their feelings better or they will have found ways to push the feelings down ‘below’ into their unconscious and will only act out what they feel – not express it directly. So your job becomes to be like an interpreter – when you see certain behaviour you need to think is this what he does when he’s actually angry, or sad or scared, or frustrated……? Your close observation and loving knowledge of their patterns will come in very helpful when you do this.
Next you check with yourself whether the time is right to go through the process. Have you enough time, when did you last do it, are there other people around, are you too tired or too emotional yourself to concentrate? Once you have answered these questions then, and only then, should you go ahead.
Thirdly you get down there with them, onto their level, and begin to listen empathetically. Validating their feelings and hearing how it is for them to be acting like this. At this stage you are not judging or trying to help them feel another way or do anything different – you are only listening and showing that you understand. Like the example about ‘Martin’ above.
Next you help them put names to the experience and feelings they are having. What is often very confusing for children is that they feel a mixture of things and so they cannot quite work out exactly what is wrong. Also if they don’t know what they are feeling underneath and are just acting out they need to have you just observe what it is they’re doing and gradually begin to sort out with them what they may be trying to achieve by being like that.
Finally you help them solve whatever problem it is they have been grappling with and make sure that any limits that are involved in the problem are stuck to. A very common thing for children to be struggling with is that they don’t want to abide by the rule that says – bed now, or finish that meal, or it’s time to go to school. They feel angry, powerless, controlled, interested in something else, not tired, puzzled…… The rule needs to be kept so your job is to empathise with how they feel and help them live with the rule in a healthy way. Negotiating over things that might help them go to bed or school such as a story or a promise of an exciting project when they come back are ways to manage these situations. Giving your child as much choice as possible around situations that have tight boundaries will help them deal with it better. Of course, the idea here is that they come up with the solution that will help them – not that you fix it for them. Helping them with suggestions and experiments leaves it up to them what they select. Negotiating with them about how to make the solution work best for you as well as them will teach them a lot as well as giving them some sense of control. This is particularly true for bullies who, as mentioned earlier, feel powerless in certain key areas of their lives. The more they can feel in control of as many things as possible the better it is for them.
Another idea
Yet another idea is to learn the various psychological ‘developmental tasks’ your child needs to accomplish at each age range. In the same way as they need particular mental stimulation to help them develop their brain, more or less of certain types of food to help them develop their bodies and varying social challenges to help them learn how to get on with other people so they need to hear and experience different permissions to help them grow emotionally and psychologically. There are six developmental stages and there are different sets of ‘permissions’ needed for each stage. The permissions range from ‘I’m so glad you are here’ which a baby needs to experience to ‘You are always welcome.’ for an eighteen year old leaving home.
If you have several children
Families come in all shapes and sizes and one child can have lower self esteem, or be more of a victim than another. One may be more likely to persecute others in order to make them feel better and another may be quite contant with the world and have higher self esteem. One may need more emotional coaching sessions at any one time than the other children. Self esteem is very much a family affair and arranging things in your family so that you all give positive and encouraging messages to each another can help a lot. Setting time aside to have ‘quality time’ with each child helps too.
Ask your children about their interests
Another idea is to ask your children about their interests and try to join in as much as possible. Take them there and watch if they are playing sport, read up on their passions – even Starwars and The Teletubbies – the more you can relate to what catches their imagination the more you will understand what it is like to be them. That ability to put yourself in their shoes, whilst still holding to values and limits that are set in your household the more you will be able to be an effective emotional coach. The more you express your affection, acceptance and support of them, without accepting their bullying behaviour, the more their self esteem can grow and with that they will loose the need to bully to make themselves more powerful.
Build your Family Esteem
Emotional coaching can drive the emotional health and self esteem of your family too.You may end up using it with your partner – everyone needs to be listened to and understood –it’s just human nature!
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