Extreme Parenting Against Bullies

Families of bully victims are almost forced to take extreme steps to try and help their kids. Before you continue reading, please take a minute and watch this special that aired on CBS 2 News Chicago last night:

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/category/watch-listen/video-on-demand?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=5865127

The mother's message is clear, "You have to stand up for yourself because if you don't, they're just going to keep on coming after you."

But what about her methods?

There is a kid in the background of the video asking the mom to make it stop and to help him. The kid who's being tossed to the curb and beaten between the sidewalk and the wheel well of the car is crying out for help, and the mom is acting like she's on the sidelines of a WWE match. Perhaps the Baltimore mom had just watched this clip from an episode of the Simpsons to get her parenting inspiration:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/30733/the-simpsons-fight-dirty

Homer Simpson wasn't right in teaching Bart to fight dirty, and it's not right in real life situations either.

I agree with Shannon Sullivan, the way schools are handling bullies, just doesn't do anything to fix the problem. Its almost as if the kids don't fear getting in trouble or they find it cool to be thrown in detention because they harmed another person. But to encourage your kid to fight while you are watching them being choked isn't the correct solution either.

The parents of the 9 year old bully victim in this story, Eddie and Maryann Slowikowski, used the approach that I tried using to help my sister with 2 of her more aggressive bullies. They went to the parents. They talk about confronting the bullying, letting them know that they are not going to get away with the behavior, and involving the families. They also went into the schools and got involved with the anti-bullying campaign.

Seeing the anti-bully skit mentioned in last nights newscast reminded me of something I was apart of in school. When I was in 6th grade and the beginning part of 7th before I moved for the first time, I was part of the schools peer mediation program. The guidance counselors helped train a few students to be a facilitator, and we got to sit down with students who were in conflict and help them work out their differences. Knowing that other students were passing judgment on their behavior seemed to be more of a deterrent then receiving punishment from adults.

I do think that each case of bullying takes a different approach then others. There is no cookie cutter solution that's going to give a perfect end result every time. You hope that the kids will outgrow it. You hope that they'll see the error in their ways. You hope that the kids can feel half of the pain they put their victims through. But if we have these kids fighting back in such extreme ways, we're making them no better then the bully. We're telling them that it's OK to cause physical harm which is the whole thing we're trying to avoid for them in the first place.

http://www.indiana.edu/~safeschl/PeerMediation.pdf
Learn more about Conflict Resolution through Peer Mediation

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/05/18/extreme-parenting-taking-aim-at-bullys/ Read the full report and listen to the last nights newscast