Download Bully For Windows 10
Rosella Bowlan
Parenting is HARD. It's a lot to expect that parents will just naturally know how to deal with tantrums, siblings fighting or pen marks on the sofa. Instead of doing or saying things you regret, take Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) and learn to love life at home.
As I mentioned in the first entry in this bullying series, I hesitate to use labels because roles are fluid; all children -- including victims themselves -- are vulnerable to slipping into this behavior.
A quick search online yields a number of articles that tell us to stay calm, to thank the caller, to listen to our child and try to find out the facts, and to let the child know his behavior was unacceptable. Some even say to impose consequences or punishments. The approach may differ depending on which type of bully the child most resembles; in some instances, it may be advisable to seek professional help.
If addressing the behavior in the Child Owns Problem box does not resolve the problem, it might arguably come to fall in this box. A child would not reasonably deflect concerns with "What's it to you if I bully or not?"
Yet, more than a question of us being unable to meet our needs, we are anxious about his well-being. When we are more troubled about the negative concrete and tangible effects on our children, then the situation falls in the next box.
Choosing to be a helper requires empathy that may be hard to drum up when we hear our son has intentionally, repeatedly hurt someone. Flooded with adrenaline, we might instead jump into lecture mode: "What are you thinking? Can't you see that hurts the other person? It goes against everything you've been brought up to believe!"
Starting to forgive ourselves is courageous and arduous work, and utterly necessary. We do whatever it takes to come to a place where we can accept that our child is very much hurting; then we can become a helper and try to turn things around.
Older kids sometimes have built up layers of protection against the world, and us. I think that, in addition to AL and the other Helping Skills, we may need to pepper our efforts with Relationship Skills from the No Problem box, namely Declarative I-Messages and Positive I-Messages.
For instance, we can make an effort to be around more, cutting things out of our own schedule to free up time to just be. We might choose to make some of his favorite meals, or buy his favorite type of bagel.
I believe strengthening the bonds with our children and helping them to feel "felt" whenever they are upset increases the efficacy of our parenting. It can, however, feel awkward, embarrassing or daunting:
What if, after we have used our Helping Skills and Relationship Skills, the bullying behaviors continue? Let's look at what other skills we can use with a child who is now, hopefully, more open since he has already felt heard, accepted and understood by us.
Shifting Gears to Active Listen will be crucial to understanding what the underlying needs are. Maybe the child will open up about a time he was treated unfairly; maybe getting turned down by someone was so excruciating that he started targeting James. He will be better in touch with what's really been tearing at him the more he has a nonjudgmental sounding board.
Our child is more likely to accept our consulting if he respects us (not out of fear but from genuine regard). All the efforts we've made so far have been helping us to have true influence with our son. Here's how consulting might look.
We can only change ourselves. Of course, if our child's behavior is a threat to others we have a duty to ensure the safety of those individuals. [See discussion of the risks of using power at the end of the first bullying post.]
Carving out time to support and grow ourselves will be important if our son is still falling back into bullying behaviors. Strategies such as meditation, counseling, journaling or EFT tapping can be options. Or, as Gordon points out, we might continue meeting with others after the P.E.T. course in "advanced groups" to achieve "greater effectiveness as a person and parent." (P.E.T. page 321)
I will discuss modeling at greater length in the next post on the bystander and prevention. I do, though, want to highlight the transformative values on display if we help and respond to our child as in the conversations above:
All this work deserves a deep breath of acknowledgment for the magnitude of the task.
A crisis like bullying may spur a parent on to realize that nothing less than a paradigm shift is needed to help our child and to revive our relationship with him.
Sometimes Active Listening moves seamlessly into problem-solving [see the first post]. Yet, in this instance, our child has been at a loss as to what to do to meet his needs, and thus reached for bullying behaviors. While a guided six step problem-solve might work later, the focus of this post has been on the delicate work of mending relations with the child and taking action to start meeting his important needs.
I chose Bully to work with because I loved it. It might seem an odd reason to give, but I truly believe that liking the picturebook makes all the difference in the way you are able to use it and communicate with your students through it. I also chose it because I was looking for a picturebook that could help me address citizenship education, specifically the power of communication (constructive interaction vs destructive interaction).
Bully allowed me to introduce a citizenship topic as well as farm animals, which is a part of the 4th grade English curriculum in Portugal. While being exposed to some new vocabulary (farm animals and kind and nasty words), students could also reflect on consequences of destructive interaction, like verbal bullying, and choices that can transform destructive into constructive interaction (e.g. saying sorry). So, it was important to make the picturebook a part of the lessons and not one-time event.
Once the students were familiar with the picturebook, its story and issues addressed, I planned some post-reading activities that enabled me to observe what they had learnt. One post-reading activity I chose was the apple experiment suggested by Anneta Sadowska.
During the apple experiment students said kind words to one apple and nasty words to another apple. Then I cut the apples in half and showed the students their interior. The apple that had heard the kind words was healthy inside, but the one that heard the nasty words was bruised. This result surprised the students and led some of them to say sorry to the bruised apple. The activity took about 10 minutes.
As a result of using Bully, the students were able to learn new vocabulary associated with farm animals but also language that they otherwise would not be exposed to like: fence, skunk, stink. The students also experienced a citizenship topic in a way that was meaningful to them, which I believe makes it easier to learn both language and values together.
Use the picturebook as a curriculum-integrated resource, planning several whole lessons or parts of several lessons around it, rather than a single event. There are so many valuable facets that your students can absorb by having more contact with the picturebook and the opportunity to really experience it.
Can't an English teacher drink in peace? Mr. Hattrick is giving Galloway guff about his drinking again which is only leading him to drink more. Teach Hattrick to lighten up by following him home and destroying his stuff. Yeah, that'll show him.
Quickly head out to the parking lot and you'll see Hattrick leaving for the day. Get on your Skateboard and skitch a ride by skating up behind his SUV and grabbing onto the bumper. Grand Master J will hang on regardless of how fast Hattrick may take a corner. That's some grip!
Once you arrive at Hattrick's home, sneak into his yard and make your way over to the greenhouse. Your objective is to smash stuff in Hattrick's yard until the damage meter on the screen fills all the way. Once you're in the greenhouse, equip your Slingshot and start shooting out the glass. The greenhouse walls and the windows in the house are worth more damage than the potted plants so concentrate on those first. The police will be there before too long but if you're quick and concentrate on windows (and the pots conveniently located at your feet in the greenhouse) you may fill the damage meter and escape before the cops ever get there.
If the cops do show up before you're finished just keep moving. It's hard to be sneaky when making such a ruckus so keep an eye on the radar to determine the cops' patrolling patterns and stay as far away as you can while you continue your smashing spree.
Mr. Galloway, the English teacher of Bullworth Academy, is sitting in his classroom drinking scotch at his desk When Jimmy walks in. Mr. Galloway calls Jimmy by his last name and greets him with the phrase 'fair thee well, young squire?', clearly drunk. He offers Jimmy a highball who gladly accepts, but Galloway quickly changes his mind on the basis that Jimmy may be a little too young. He says he better keep the liquor out of harm's way before chugging it down.
Once he finishes chugging, he is out of breath, and Jimmy asks if he will be alright. Galloway explains that he is drunk because of "that pompous ass, Hattrick". He tells Jimmy that Hattrick has been badmouthing Galloway to the other staff, claiming that Galloway is an irresponsible drunk and is trying to get Galloway fired and turn Ms. Philips against him.
Jimmy tells him that when people speak negatively of him, he likes to prove them wrong. Galloway asks if he means by rising above and being the bigger person, but Jimmy explains that he likes to show others that they underestimated him and 'really give them something to complain about'. Galloway complains this to 'the treacherous' Machiavel, enamored by the idea. Jimmy agrees before exiting the classroom.
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