The heartwrenching stories and startling statistics coming out about bullying are commanding a justified level of concern in parents. With new data revealing that more kids are affected by bullying and cyber-bullying than we ever imagined and that both bullies and victims are at higher risk for suicide, our eyes are opening to the fact that we're faced with a potentially life-threatening situation. So what can we do to protect our children against the painful effects of bullying?
The primary step in helping our children persevere when being bullied or facing other sources of trauma is equipping them with a solid foundation of emotional resilience by ensuring that they feel accepted at home. It is important that we accept our kids for whoever they are, no matter how different they are from us or from how we expected them to be. When kids feel consistently accepted for who they are, they are more able to cope with stress and adversity.
According to NPR, a study conducted Dr. Caitlin Ryan, Director of the Family Acceptance Project, has "found that the gay, lesbian and bisexual young adults and teens at the highest risk of attempting suicide and having some other health problems are ones who reported a high level of rejection by their families as a result of their sexual orientation." Dr. Ryan further found that if kids are bullied, being accepted by their families has a buffering effect, making them less susceptible to negative outcomes.
As parents, we want our kids to feel confident within themselves, so that even if they experience bullying, they will be able to recover. As PTSD expert Dr. Donald Meichenbaum has said, "Resilience reflects the ability to 'bounce back' ... [and] move from being a victim to being a 'survivor', and even to becoming a 'thriver'." If we want our children to have the ability to adapt to, handle, and overcome the tough situations they encounter in life, the effort to provide them with these skills must begin at home. Here are some of the dos and don'ts of building resilience in our children.
Do:
- Inspire Positive Emotions: It's essential that we provide our kids with opportunities to have positive emotions. This sounds simple, but very often we get so distracted by the practicalities of parenting (making sure our kids change their clothes, brush their teeth, and do their homework) that we fail to provide them with enough opportunities to be joyful. We should always encourage our children to find pleasure and humor in life.
Don't:
- Support Maladaptive Thinking: Negative thoughts contribute to a child's insecurities and low self-esteem. Allowing our children to focus or dwell on a perceived weakness or negative trait is not constructive. Rather, it is productive for us to encourage them to challenge their hostile self-criticisms and self-attacks. This form of maladaptive thinking, which is referred to as the "critical inner voice," leads a child to feel mentally defeated and victimized by circumstances. Allowing our kids to ruminate or act on these critical inner voices can have harmful effects. Instead, encourage them to identify these negative thoughts and challenge them in their actions. Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice, a book I co-authored with Dr. Robert Firestone and Joyce Catlett, provides exercises for recognizing and overcoming this internal bully.
As parents, we may not be able to protect our children from the bullies that exist in the world, but we can help our kids build the resilience required to not allow bullying to have the devastating impact it is capable of having on a child's life. And this will provide them with an essential coping tool that they can take with them into adulthood.
Hear more from Dr. Lisa Firestone and Dr. Donald Meichenbaum on building resilience in the free upcoming Webinar, "Road Map to Resilience : Ways to Bolster Resilience and Well-being."
Read more from Dr. Lisa Firestone on parenting at PsychAlive: Alive to Parenting.