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The angry, vicious
pounding on Anita Theiss’
door was a sure sign
that her kids’ squabbles
with a classmate at
school had crossed the
line from teasing into
something much more
serious.
“This man came to the
door,” says the Mexican-American
mother of three boys.
“[He] was pounding on it
and said that my twin
sons had been bullying
his son for two years.”
Theiss’ first reaction
was to doubt her gut
instincts. She had known
that one of her twins
was being taunted at
school and that he and
his brother had suffered
more than their share of
ups and downs with some
of their tormenters.
Still, she says, “I
thought maybe my kids
have been lying, and I
thought maybe they were
the ones doing the
teasing.”
That’s a common reaction
for some Latino parents,
according to
psychologist Carmen Inoa
Vazquez. “We believe in
the concept of simpatía,
a focus on socialization,
on the other, on being
nice,” she says. Vazquez
is the author of the
book Parenting with
Pride Latino Style: How
to Help Your Child
Cherish Your Latino
Values and Succeed in
Today’s World. She
points out that in the
rush to smooth things
over, “We might
emphasize accepting
certain behaviors that
are not acceptable.”
Theiss, a high-school
teacher and ESL
instructor who certainly
knows her way around a
classroom, quickly
decided what was
acceptable and what was
not when push came to
shove. When she and her
husband called the
authorities and filed a
police report based on
the threats the man made
against them, they found
out that he wasn’t
allowed on school
grounds because he had
already threatened one
of the teachers. His son
was definitely the
aggressor at school, so
Theiss instructed her
boys to steer clear.
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JupiterImages
Corporation |
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“I told them, ‘Do not look at
him. Do not play with him. Do
not engage him in any way, shape
or form.’”
That’s a tactic that school
psychologist Izzy Kalman would
agree with. “When does teasing
cross the line into bullying?
When the victim gets upset,” he
says. “Bullying, by definition,
is when someone repeatedly does
things to you that you don't
like. No one gets picked on
repeatedly unless they get upset
by it. You can't stop someone
from teasing you once. Whether
it continues (which turns it
into bullying) depends on how
the victim responds.”
Kalman became an expert on
bullying quite by accident.
Nearly two decades ago, a
teacher invited him to her class
to give a social-skills lesson.
“One of the boys in the class
asked me, ‘What should you do
when kids call you names?’ To me
it was a no-brainer,” he says.
“I understood the 'sticks and
stones' slogan. I asked the boy
to call me names. I started
getting angry at him and telling
him to stop. Of course, he went
on and on calling me names. Then
I asked him to do it again, and
the second time I just let him
insult me, doing nothing to make
him stop. He stopped in a matter
of seconds. So I explained to
him and the class, ‘If kids call
you names, it is only because it
is fun to get you mad, so stop
getting mad, and you will see
they quickly get bored and leave
you alone.’
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Of
course, this can be
easier said than done.
Theiss says that even
though she told her sons
to ignore the bully in
their fifth-grade class,
it was tough. “The kid
caught on pretty quickly,”
she admits. “After a few
weeks, [he] started in
on them, trying to get a
reaction, taunting them.
… The kid would sit
behind one of my sons
and just breathe in his
ear. I have to give my
son a lot of credit for
not reacting.”
In
Theiss’ opinion, some of
the placid advice
offered up by today’s
media isn’t always the
best bet. |
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Julia Taylor |
Izzy Kalman |
She points out that “when my
kids first went to preschool and
kindergarten and I had my head
buried in the parents’ magazines
and was brainwashed by all the
politically correct parenting
advice that’s out there, I said,
‘The best thing to do is be nice.
If someone picks on you, just
walk the other way—say, “You’re
hurting my feelings. That’s not
nice.”’ Maybe at that age it
works to a point, but [as kids
grow older] they learn very
quickly that doesn’t work.”
Experts agree that there are
some anti-bullying techniques
that simply don’t do the job.
Julia Taylor is a professional
school counselor and author of
Salvaging Sisterhood: Small
Group and Classroom Counseling
Activities for Relationally
Aggressive Girls.
“Telling girls to ‘stop’ or ‘act
like a lady’ is disastrous and
often used by adults,” she says.
“Ignoring the situation and
getting parents over-involved
too early—when the problem could
be solved by the students—does
not help. It is important to get
to the bottom of the behavior
and involves strong listening
skills.”
Taylor says she’s also seen vast
amounts of parental denial. “I
call it the ‘not my kid’
syndrome,” she says. “If your
daughter tells you they have
never spread a rumor, engaged in
malicious gossip, or done
something mean to someone else,
they are lying. All girls have
and will do one of the above.
Ignoring [or] denying the
problem only makes it worse.”
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Parents can also go
overboard by doing too
much to stop bullies.
After skipping a grade
in elementary school,
Theiss herself was
tortured for years on
end. Her mother took a
special lunch-hour
detour from her job
every day to pick up her
daughter from class so
that she wouldn’t be
harassed by schoolmates
on her way home.
“This
is going to sound awful
now, but I wish my
mother hadn’t enabled my
fear,” Theiss says.
“Even though she thought
she was doing it to
protect me, it made feel
like I didn’t have the
ability to handle it
myself.”
But having successfully
navigated—and survived—the
minefield of bullying as
a child, she’s better
equipped to guide her
own sons through the
same dangerous waters
today—specifically
because she actively
talks to her children
and is willing to listen
to what they have to say.
According to Vazquez,
that’s the key to
success for any parent
whose child is facing a
bully.
“A child who feels loved
and has a source of
security in terms of
being able to talk to
his or her parents is
much more immune to
bullying,” Vazquez says. |
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Carmen Inoa Vazquez |
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