Anti-BullyingTips for Parents
Parental involvement is the key to reducing and preventing bullying and the problems it brings. The NCPC offers the following tips to help prevent bullying incidents in your child’s school and community:
- Listen to your child. Encourage him or her to talk about school, social events, classmates and the walk or ride to and from school so you can identify any problems he or she may be experiencing.
- Take your child’s complaints of bullying seriously. Probing a seemingly minor complaint may uncover more severe grievances.
- Watch for symptoms that your child may be a bullying victim. These symptoms include withdrawal, a drop in grades, torn clothes or the need for extra money or supplies.
- Tell the school or organization immediately if you think that your child is being bullied. Alerted caregivers can carefully monitor your child’s actions and take steps to ensure his or her safety.
- Work with other parents in your neighborhood. This strategy can ensure that children are supervised closely on their way to and from school.
- Teach your child nonviolent ways to resolve arguments.
- Teach your child self-protection skills. These skills include how to walk confidently, staying alert to what’s going on around him or her and standing up for himself or herself verbally.
- Help your child learn the social skills needed to make friends. A confident, resourceful child who has friends is less likely to be bullied or to bully others.
- Praise your child’s kindness toward others. Let him or her know that kindness is valued.
- Don’t bully your child yourself, physically or verbally. Use nonphysical, consistently enforced discipline measures as opposed to ridiculing, yelling or ignoring your child when he or she misbehaves.
Although anyone can be the target of a bully, victims are often singled out based on psychological traits more than physical traits. The National Resource Center for Safe Schools says that passive loners are the most frequent victims, especially if they cry easily or lack social self-defense skills. Many victims are unable to deflect a conflict with humor and don’t think quickly on their feet. They are usually anxious, insecure and cautious and suffer from low self-esteem. In addition, they rarely defend themselves or retaliate and tend to lack friends, making them easy to isolate. Therefore, it is vital that you instill confidence in your child and empower him or her to become a healthy, socially adjusted adult.
References
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- National Crime Prevention Council
- National Institute of Child Health & Human Development
National Resource Center for Safe Schools
CyberBullying Tips for Parents
For Family Members:
Prevention
§ Talk to your child about responsible online behavior.
§ Monitor the amount of time your child spends online and provide guidance for online surfing.
§ Set up the computer in a common area where you can supervise your child’s Internet use.
§ Purchase tracking software to block inappropriate Web content and check your child’s online activities.
§ Encourage your child to tell a parent or trusted adult about threatening or harassing messages.
§ Discuss and provide opportunities to practice strategies for responding to cyberbullying.
§ Exemplify safe use of the Internet.
§ Encourage your child’s personal responsibility in respectful Internet use.
Intervention
§ Don’t reply to cyberbullying and save the evidence.
§ Block offending e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers, or change your child’s phone number and e-mail address.
§ Try to identify the perpetrator and contact the parents if feasible.
§ Report incidents and file complaints with communication services providers and Web sites where the cyberbullying is occurring.
§ Report any potential criminal behavior related to cyberbullying to law enforcement
§ Get legal advice.
§ Notify your child’s school of the problem
Want the only reasearch based tips for good study habits? Read below:
The article “Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits” by Benedict Carey appeared in the September 6, 2010 edition of the New York Times. We highly recommend reading Carey’s article because it covers recent research conducted by cognitive scientists that directly contradicts much of conventional wisdom about good study habits. These “scientists have shown that a few simple techniques can reliably improve what matter most: how much a student learns from studying.”
For example, alternating study environments, mixing related content, spacing study sessions, self-testing, or all of the above are demonstrated to improve retention for longer and to leave a deeper impression on the brain. One caveat the researchers point out is “none of … these techniques … will turn a grade-A slacker into a grade-A student. Motivation matters.”
Below is the link to the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/health/views/07mind.html?_r=1&ref=general&src=me...
More Reading for Parents:
Nurture Shock by Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman. Survey of recent research on self-confidence, intelligence, academic performance. Highly readable for the layman.
Intelligence versus Hard Work
| Wednesday, May 5th, 2010 |
Emily Halevy | CWK Producer |
“Students who are learning that intelligence is something that's gained over time when they don't do well, they know that they just have to try harder and they will be able to reach that goal.”
– Ken Carter, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology, Emory University
Parents tell their children all the time, 'you can do anything you set your mind to.' A new study shows that's not only true but can also make all the difference in a child's academic success.
16-year-old Toni Simon is like a lot of other kids. She's afraid of math.
"I panic when people just mention the word," she says, "because it's just been a really big issue in school for me. I've always been horrible at it."
It seems that kids have two different ideas about intelligence.
One is that IQ is fixed at birth, "and that idea is that intelligence is a thing, and you have a certain amount of it," explains Dr. Ken Carter, associate professor of psychology at Emory University.
"The other theory," he says, "is the incremental theory of intelligence, which suggests that intelligence is something that you gain or that you gather over time."
Researchers at Stanford University studied 91 seventh-graders, who were poor math students.
Half the kids were taught that intelligence can be developed – that, with work, you can get smarter.
"And just from that little intervention," explains Carter, "they found an increase in students' motivation in their classes and in their math courses - the courses students have the most trouble with, sometimes. They found about a half-a-letter-grade higher in the students that learned about that theory."
He says their grades went up because they learned that it's not so much intelligence that determines your grades. It's how hard you work.
"When they fail, they think they need to put more effort into it," says Carter. "Their reasoning is that they didn't - that they need to try more and then they'll be able to do it."
And the other kids, who thought they weren't very smart and there was nothing they could do about it? Their grades stayed the same.
"Students who believe that intelligence is a thing usually give up," says Carter, "because they just believe that they're not smart enough to do it."
He says the lesson that parents can teach their kids is, intelligence can be developed and it can grow - if the child is willing to work and not give up. "This shows them that they may be able to do things that they might not know that they can do," he says.
18-year-old John Taylor says that's the message his parents have given him; that his perseverance has helped him get through school. "I think sometimes, not succeeding can be more of a learning experience than succeeding," he says, "cause when you don't succeed then you can see what you did wrong - and then you can always go back and try it again, and you might get it that time."