How to Stop Parental Bullying (4)

Personal development and emotional intelligence may seem like the stuff of workshops and seminars, but they are made up of simple mindset changes anyone can do to have a better life. As long as you have the desire to change, this series of posts can show you how. And when you start changing, even just a little, you will gradually pick up speed and be able to make changes more quickly and easily.

We are often so busy living our life we assume it cannot be changed and that make changes harder, because we are not letting go of what is happening here and now. If that is the way you feel, spend a few minutes breathing deeply with your eyes closed, let here and now dissolve away and imagine how your life could be.

When you are relaxed and hopeful, keep reading.

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How to Stop Parental Bullying (3)

In the previous chapter of the bullying series, I started introducing my 50 personal development techniques to help bully parents stop the cycle of bullying.

I believe that “happy parents Raise Happy Kids” and strong and powerful parents raise strong and powerful children that no one can bully or push around. Parents with high emotional intelligence do not bully their own kids to gain power even if they are bullied by someone else.

Each of these tips can make a huge change in family life by itself and help you gain the power you need to parent your kids in a healthy, happy, supportive environment. Use your power wisely!

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How to Stop Parental Bullying (2)

The previous post of the bullying series talked about stopping bully parents with awareness, because awareness is the first step towards any change. The following posts will show how we can stop bully parents by introducing personal development.

I believe that happy parents raise happy kids and that parents with good emotional skills raise children with good emotional skills, so this will also stop many kids from being bullies and others from being victims.

In the next 10 anti-bullying posts, I will list more than 50 bullying items and expand on some personal development technique to overcome some bullying behavior or help your kids stop being bullies or victims. Consider this your free parent coaching course to recognize, avoid and eliminate bullying from their life.

Some bullying behaviors are much more severe than others, but this activity is not meant to judge you or any other parent. It is there to give you tools to overcome snappy, fearful, aggressive or manipulative behaviors that arise from feeling powerless.

It will help you regain personal power so you do not try to get this power from abusing your kids, your partner or your employees (remember, every bully is also a victim and even if you are feeling like a victim, you may be bullying others).

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How to Stop Parental Bullying

Teen girl holding her hand out to stop bullying

In the last chapter of the bullying series, I wrote about bully parents (some people call them toxic parents) and although I think there is sometimes a fine line between carrying out our parenting responsibility and bullying, there is no doubt that bullying is a cycle that will never end unless we help parents stop it.

Yes, we have law enforcement officers whose job is making sure it does not continue, but if parents stop bullying their kids from fear of the police or the authorities, it will only increase their sense of disempowerment. Their focus will be again on gaining power without the authorities’ knowledge, which will create another cycle of making kids afraid of reporting and worse, hiding their physical injuries and hurts from others. This reduces the support structure available to bullied children and the chances of stopping the bullying or recovering from it.

Parents must stop the bullying cycle not because of the fear of being caught, but because they have gained power and understanding through developing their emotional intelligence. This way, the parents will be happy too.

We must stop the cycle of bullying so that in 10 years, we will talk about it as history and say, “This is what people did in the past, but we are more civilized and in control and we are better parents for our children”. We need to be proud of making a difference.

In this post, I want to help parents discover if they were bullied themselves when they were young and if there is a form of bullying in their home towards their own children.

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Bully Parents

Teenage girl looking sadly out the window

Bullying parents are a very dangerous phenomenon in our society, because parents are supposed to be the people who protect their kids from bullying. Yet, as I have described in previous chapters, there are many parents who feel weak and lack the emotional intelligence to maintain a sense of control without bullying someone else. Being smaller and weaker makes kids easy targets for them.

Why are there bully parents?

Parents bully their kids because they have been bullied themselves as children or they are being bullied by someone else (often severely or continuously for a long time – see Workplace Bullying). This creates a never-ending cycle of parents who bully their kids, causing them to grow up and bully their own kids (and other people at work) and so on.

Often, people who have been bullied as children do not realize that their behavior is bullying. When you grow up in a place where bullying is the norm, you accept it as part of life and behave accordingly.

I am sure you have gone to a friend’s home many times and discovered that they ran things differently, which questioned the way things are done in your family. In the past, aggressive behavior, physical violence and abuse of power were part of daily life – kids were physically beaten at school with a cane or denied food or sleep as part of a discipline method that was totally controlled by their parents.

When kids are bullied at home and have never learned ways to resolve conflicts peacefully, they react in an aggressive way when things seem to get out of control with their own kids. Had they lived in a home where the parents set a good example of conflict resolution, they would have developed healthy ways to handle challenges and difficulties.

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Sharing and Caring

We have all noticed that human communication and relationships seem to be deteriorating – the rate of divorce is still on the rise, bullying is a worldwide phenomenon and the point of discussion everywhere, young people are staying single longer or choosing not to have kids and let’s not get started on customer service. Things are bad and we know it.

But why is that?

It just so happens that this week, I have had a few opportunities to think about this and I would like to share these thoughts with you.

At a pool party for Noff’s friend, one father complained about his daughter disregard for the high of mobile phone charges and said he was surprised she had been so careless with his money. Another mother spoke of how her daughter used Facebook to splash every little thought in all her friends’ faces without taking into account how they might take it. Both parents were quite frustrated with their kids.

When I was growing up, I was told to be polite and considerate. My parents thought about what others would think about the way I dressed, the way I combed my hair, how I spoke, the grades I got and many other things. They looked me over and made sure I was presentable before I went out the door.

It was all about others. We had to get special permission to think of ourselves.

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How to Raise Friendly Kids (3): Friends are forever

If you want your kids to be friendly and succeed in life, you must help them develop social skills by providing them with many opportunities to experience interaction with friends. So what are those social skills kids need?

Last week, I described the first 8 out of 15 friendliness skills and today, I will introduce you to another 7: Avoiding criticism, Being positive, Keeping secrets, Never gossiping, Not being bossy, Listening and Being fun.

I believe that these skills are more important than academic and thinking skills, because social skills can clear the way to good academic performance, but not the other way around. Stress is the biggest inhibitor of thinking and creativity, so having good social skills and a good social group can make sure your child is happy and confident, which will expand their capacity for learning.

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How to Raise Friendly Kids (2): Me and you together

I am sure you will agree that kids need social skills and they cannot learn them by sitting in front of the computer. In order to learn how to be friendly, you simply have to spend your time with real friends and engage other people directly in various situations.

If you want your kids to have friends, you must teach them the right friendship skills and provide them with many opportunities to experience and develop those skills. So what are the social skills kids (and grownups) need?

There are 15 of them and today, I will introduce you to 8 of them: Sharing, Having Manners, Giving Compliments, Starting Conversations, Winning and losing with grace, Collaborating, Working in a team and Helping.

Read How to Raise Friendly Kids (2): Me and you together »

In My Opinion

As a parent, you must have found yourself facing a stubborn child who will just not do what you ask of them. No matter what you want – clean your room, do your homework, stop nagging me to go home – kids sometimes seem to insist on doing the exact opposite.

If that is not enough, your partner may suddenly have strange notions of what should be done and how it should be done with money, around the house, in the yard or on vacation. You find yourself wondering if they have “lost the plot” and if you are the only person who can see things clearly.

These sorts of clashes can be very unpleasant and distressing. They also have the nasty habit of escalating to scary proportions very quickly. Whatever you do to make the other side “get it already”, they grow more persistent, until both sides start throwing hurtful comments, calling each other names and absolutely fuming.

Well, I am here to offer another way of looking at things, which is likely to help. But first, a couple of stories.

The Experiment

Last week, Ronit and I watched a movie called The Experiment. It is loosely based on Stanford University’s prison experiment, but instead of students, a group of adults who really need money are promised $1,000 a day for a “perfectly safe” 14-day experiment. They are taken to an isolated warehouse (the real experiment was in a campus basement), where they are divided into Guards and Prisoners. The guards are given simple rules and told to respond “commensurately”, which means “in proportion to the offense”, and never to use violence. In the “guard” room, there is a red light that will come on if the experiment has to be terminated.

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How to Raise Friendly Kids (1): What are Friends for?

When we play The Value Game in my parenting workshops, friendship is usually somewhere at the top of the list after happiness and love. As part of the game, I pretend to be a fairy and ask the parents to write the things they would like to bless their kids with. Most parents do not know they can, in fact, grant their kids those wishes and all they need is the special “fairy dust” of love and determination.

Every interaction with others requires social skills, so friendly kids have a better life than those who are not friendly. Usually, they are healthier and have higher self-esteem.

Although some kids are naturally friendlier than other, social skills can be learned from a very early age. As with any other skill, the younger the child, the less they need to unlearn and the more “naturally” friendly they will be, so there is no better time to start than today.

Some time ago, some of my son’s friends came over for a music jam and had lunch with us. One of the topics of conversation was “Facebook” and Gal and I asked them how long they spent on Facebook. Most of them (except one) said about 4 hours. I asked in shock, “A week?” and they said, “No, a day”…

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