Bullying – building resilience
In some cases, it is not sufficient to do something to try to stop the bullying from happening. In addition, you may also need to help the child to become more resilient, or less sensitive to the words and actions of other children. This is particularly important if the child has become exceedingly sensitive to bullying, or the bullying continues despite best efforts to stop it.
Resilience is a skill
The ability to be resilient, or to be able to ignore other people’s unkind comments, or to be able to respond to them in a dignifying way, is an important survival skill that we all sometimes need. Resilience is not a character trait that some people have and some don’t; it is a skill that people can learn, and adults can help children to learn that skill.
How to help children develop resilience
You can use Kids’ Skills to help children develop their resilience. Think about resilience as a skill composed of the ability to deliberately ignore others, or the ability to respond to others’ unkind comments in an assertive or humorous manner.
Both of these skills, ignoring and assertiveness, can be learned through role-plays. In such games you, or someone else, plays the role of the bully, and the child practices the skill of ignoring the bully, or the skill of taking the bully by surprise through responding in a creative, witty or funny way.
The child can ignore the bully in the role-play, for example, by shrugging shoulders, looking away, or saying something like ‘whatever’ or ‘that’s what you think’. Helping the child to think of witty or humorous ways to respond to the bully in the role-play is another way to practice better ways to cope with bullying.
In some cases, it is not sufficient to do something to try to stop the bullying from happening. In addition, you may also need to help the child to become more resilient, or less sensitive to the words and actions of other children. This is particularly important if the child has become exceedingly sensitive to bullying, or the bullying continues despite best efforts to stop it.
Assertiveness game
A fun way to help children develop resiliency vis a vis bullying, is to play a special card game with the child– or with the entire family. In this game you place a deck of cards on the table face down. On the face of each card you have written something mean that other children have previously said to the child, or the child is afraid that they will say in the future. Players take turns to pick up cards from the deck and then compete in inventing witty answers to the nasty sentences on the cards. The one who comes up with the wittiest response gets to keep the card and when all cards have been played, the winner is the one with the most cards.
It works even silently
The ability to respond with humour or wit to the unkind words of other people is a strength that children can use to survive bullying with dignity, and this is true even when the child does not respond aloud but only silently thinks about the witty response in the mind.
Instruction
If the child is particularly sensitive to bullying, consider helping them learn coping skills such as the ability to deliberately ignore others, or the ability to respond to bullying in ways that preserve the child’s dignity.
You can introduce this idea to the child by explaining that many superheroes – such as characters in cartoons and computer games – have the ability to become invulnerable. It is possible for children to do the same, for example, by imagining that they have an invisible shield around them that protects them from the mean words of other children.
Use the steps of Kids’ Skills to motivate the child to learn this skill. Ask the child to give the skill a name, pick their supporters, and come up with ideas what possessing the skill would mean in practice.
Play a role-play together with the child that allows the child to practice the skill. In order to have real examples as material for the role-play, ask the child to tell you a number examples of bullying.
This article is owned by: Kids’Skills http://www.kidsskillsapp.com/
