Oh I'm all for teaching kids how to deal with emotions....that's been hard with DS and his autism. But we have done everything we can....we talked to him about his reactions and how that's what the bullies are going for....if you don't react, they will stop because it's not fun anymore. We had him do a 10 week program where kids were supposed to learn to be more confident, etc. We tried talking with the bullies and their parents. We tried telling him to go play somewhere else when kids started getting mean....they follow him.
And I think teaching the kids to communicate and negotiate amongst themselves is a great idea....but we have to remember they are kids and they CAN'T do it themselves yet...they need adults to facilitate it and teach them. When something happens, the teacher needs to step in and have them each tell their side, and teach them how to talk it out. And they also need to look for patterns...who is having a LOT of disagreements? Who is being singled out? This method put everything solely on the kids so the teachers didn't have to deal with it.
The kids were supposed to work it out themselves and they weren't allowed to ask an adult for help until they had told the person to stop the behavior at least 3 times, and tried walking away and tried getting some friends to stand with them. And then if all of that failed and they went to the teacher, the teacher reprimanded the perpetrator verbally, and that was it.
And also when teachers SEE something, or it's reported, it needs to be recorded in some way so they can FIND those patterns, and they need to hand out consequences where appropriate. I came upon two boys slamming my son against a brick wall and I literally had to rip one off of him. I reported it to the school, it was not recorded, so when the same boy did something else, they treated it as a first offense EVERY time he did something. And the only thing he had to do was say he was sorry. There was no consequence for it, even though I had seen it happen and had physically pulled him off of DS. And they were 3 years older than my son. Another girl was having problems with the same boy and the school did nothing. She had enough and punched him, and they called HER mother and SHE got in trouble for physical violence. He tortured her for weeks and when she finally stood up to him, SHE was the one who got in trouble, though she had reported his bullying multiple times.
The teacher walked in on a boy snapping my son with a towel, repeatedly, taunting him and telling him to cry because he's a cry baby. I came to report the same boy having spit on my son, tripping him in the hallway, pushing him into a wall, etc and when I said I wanted to talk about this boy, she said "Oh, is this about the incident of him snapping your son with a towel today?" which I hadn't even heard yet. The teacher walked in on it!!! Saw it happening. And told him to stop, and that was it. No consequences for it...in fact, again, my son was told it was his fault because of how he reacted.
You can not get skin thick enough to handle daily torture. And while I'm all for teaching kids to stand up for themselves, how do deal with their emotions, if you only tackle it from that side and don't teach the bullies not to bully, the only thing you are doing is teaching the bullies that their behavior is ok, and teach the victim that it's their own fault for not being stronger. It's not about learning that not everyone is going to be nice to you. But if you teach those kids they can be CRUEL to others without consequences, then of course you're going to continue to have a problem. The reason the kanjer training didn't work is that there was never a consequence for intentional bad behavior. Everything was treated as though it was an accident, so they had to say sorry and the incident was considered over.
