Have a New Kid by Friday - Dr Kevin Leman [42]
If your child has an accident at school, call it an accident. Don’t make a big deal about it. Bring your child a change of clothes. Do not, however, put an extra set of clothes in your child’s backpack in case your child has an accident. That would simply be reinforcing the behavior.
In bed-wetting it’s important to not embarrass your child—and to take the long-term view.
Bullying
“I was incensed when my child told me what had happened to him on the playground. How could the playground monitor not have seen what was going on? Now Daniel doesn’t even want to go back to school.”
“I was so embarrassed when I received a call from the school that Ricky had called a little girl names and then pushed her into the bushes and scratched up her face. How could I have raised a bully like that? I mean, I know Ricky can be aggressive, but I never thought he’d be mean. Especially to a girl.”
“Girls can be so mean. Seventh grade was an awful year for Crystal. In fact, so bad that we decided to switch schools midyear. A group of girls decided they didn’t like her because she couldn’t afford the right clothes and she wears glasses. They spent the first half of the year passing snotty notes about her, making rude comments about her body, and telling other girls that if they were friends with Crystal, they could never be part of their crowd. I must admit, I was more than a little tempted to smash those girls’ faces in myself. For a while I tried to let Crystal handle it herself, but it got too bad. She would cry every day after school.
“Finally I decided to talk to two of the girls’ mothers before I went to the principal. Sadly, their mothers are just like them. It seemed that everything was about being part of the popular crowd. One mom said she was late for an appointment with her personal trainer and didn’t have time to talk; another one said she didn’t see why her daughter should give ‘a girl like Crystal’ the time of day because she wasn’t part of her daughter’s group. . . . I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere with the principal since those two mothers were big donors to the private school. So I gave up and switched Crystal to a different school. We both agreed that her crying every day after school wasn’t worth it.
“After we left that school, I heard that the group of girls had turned on Jeni, the newest member of the group, and now were making her life miserable. Although Jeni had made Crystal’s life miserable, Crystal still felt sorry for her . . . because she knew what it felt like to be picked on.”
Is your child the bully or the child being bullied?
There’s something very important to know about bullies. Bullies are insecure. They think that by putting others down (physically or emotionally), they’ll feel better about themselves. They’ll feel more powerful.
When I was growing up, bullies were those nasty boys who followed you home from school on their bikes and beat you up in the back alley.
When you got home, your dad would take one look at you and tell you not to back down next time. He’d give you some tips about where to hit ’em (out of your mother’s hearing, of course). When you came home a couple days later with a black eye but grinning ear to ear, he congratulated you because he knew that you’d faced the bully square on . . . and won.
But today’s bullies are different. They’re more aggressive, and, sadly, many have parents who are physically absent, are emotionally distant, or simply don’t care. You can no longer count on the Leave It to Beaver father and mother to carry out discipline in the lives of the bullies who are making your child’s life miserable.
Bullying can take many forms. An adopted kindergartener was told