• Friendships play a critical role in children’s social and emotional development.
• Children with autistic traits have difficulty with socioemotional skills, putting them at risk for peer rejection.
• Autistic children who are also aggressive or disruptive are particularly vulnerable.
• Parents and teachers can support children with autism through early interventions targeting socioemotional skills and lessons about peer acceptance for all children.

Friendship and acceptance by other children are vital ingredients for thriving young lives and are at the heart of growing up. They help children get out of bed in the morning, and encourage them to look forward to attending school, playing and learning, and building relationships. In contrast, loneliness, isolation, feeling awkward, and being bullied make everything more problematic. How do we ensure that the lives of children with autistic traits are not harmed by rejection?

Children with autism typically experience challenges developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships. They want friendships but struggle to make them. Mostly, they have difficulties adjusting their behavior to suit various social contexts.

Children with autistic traits who also have behavioral problems need the most support with their peer relationships.

They may not be able to communicate in ways that lead to friendship or understand how to share imaginative play in the same ways as typical children do. How does this impede acceptance and fruitful relationships at school? What can be done to improve this aspect of life for children with autism?

My colleagues and I have been studying five- and six-year-olds in primary schools in the Netherlands (called elementary schools elsewhere). The children had varying levels of autistic traits, often at such low levels that it was not clinically diagnosed. We know that young children with autistic traits are more likely to experience rejection and non-acceptance, even when the traits are at a low level.

The impact can be considerable. Studies show that having a friend at school can protect a child from an unwanted situation or behavior. A friend can act as a source of emotional support, providing a safe space to express thoughts, experiences, and opinions.

Photo: Wallpaper Flare.

Being without a friend at school can lead to feelings of loneliness and isolation, which can, in turn, make children vulnerable to bullying and negative behaviors. These experiences can have lasting effects on overall well-being, leading to low self-esteem and poor academic performance.

Risk of aggressive behavior

Our study identified a particularly vulnerable group of young children with autistic traits: those who are also aggressive and disruptive. Children with autistic traits who also have behavioral problems need the most support with their peer relationships. Other children tend to isolate them or make them targets of bullying.

Schools can address these matters through programs designed to improve peer relationships in inclusive classrooms. Some programs focus on reducing children’s behavior problems (e.g., aggressive acts, poor temper control, sadness, anxiety, fidgeting, impulsive acts), especially when the problems are above and beyond the autistic traits that most convincingly predicted poor relationships in our study.

In many cases, children with autistic traits can and do have friendships and experience acceptance.

Successful friendships

Our study also considered children with lower levels of autistic traits (whose autism may not have been diagnosed) and with non-aggressive behaviors. As noted earlier, their condition was associated with less peer acceptance and more rejection. It may be hard for these children to carry out basic social skills such as starting and maintaining conversations, taking turns, and responding appropriately to social cues. They may find it difficult to understand others’ minds, and to decode others’ intentions, emotions, and thoughts, leaving them confused, so it is important to help these children navigate social situations more effectively.

In many cases, children with autistic traits can and do have friendships and experience acceptance. Other children seem to find ways to engage with them. In some cases, particularly in inclusive environments, a peer understands that a child has autism. A teacher might explain the condition and the peer develops a friendship with the child, accepting that it will be a different kind of friendship that is less reciprocal than their friendships with neurotypical children.

Photo: Leeloo Thefirst. Pexels.

How to support young children

Our findings suggest many opportunities for improving the relationships of children with autistic traits. The first step is recognizing and accepting the trait, not denying it. Parents should be alert: A child who initially responded to their name might suddenly, around 18 months, cease to respond. That can be a red flag.

Much can be done to help a child with autistic traits interpret a world that can seem confusing. With children as young as three, flashcards attached to everyday activities – waking up, having breakfast, taking a nap – can help build a vital vocabulary.

Likewise, photos of parents or caregivers highlighting labelled emotions – such as happy, sad, tired – can help train a child to better recognize facial expressions, improving the reciprocity and responsiveness of their interactions. Parents can role play what happens when other people visit, going through the language of meeting and greeting. It helps to start early.

The message from our research is that friendship and acceptance matter a great deal to each child’s development, both socially and academically. Adults can help children enjoy friendships by spotting traits of autism early and intervening in appropriate ways. Such interventions should address aggression, which is most harmful to children’s chances of having successful relationships.

The post Autistic traits can undermine young children’s relationships, but aggressive behavior is the bigger risk appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

Children need to be empowered to seek help about bullying and to be helpful.

When my daughter was in the second grade, the boys started a silly game during recess of grabbing the girls’ coats at the neck to stop them in their tracks. Of course, after a few days, the girls “told on them” – complaining to the teacher on playground duty about the boys choking them. The teacher’s well-meaning response was to tell the girls to play near her so they would be safe. The girls went on to tell their own teacher who, in turn, told the boys’ teacher, but the game continued. My daughter then told me – a child psychologist who is supposed to know what to do! We decided to write to the principal for help. My daughter dictated and I wrote it all down. She took the note to the principal and the game stopped. What is the point here? Seeking help is important for children, and the other side of this interaction is that adults need to respond to children’s requests for help.

“Our children deserve to feel safe at school. How can schools and parents work together to prevent conflicts before they become bullying?”

Conflict is normal in children’s interactions with their peers at school – just as it is normative in our interactions with other adults at work, at home, and in the grocery store. Not all peer conflict is bullying or results in bullying, but repeated aggression that targets children who are perceived as less powerful or different in some ways (often due to gender, race, ethnicity, disability, behavioral problems, or mental health) is bullying. Our children deserve to feel safe at school. How can parents work with their own children and schools to prevent conflicts before they become bullying?

Our own research highlights two social behaviors of children that make a difference in reducing aggression and emotional problems and in enhancing school climate. We call these social responsibility and prosocial leadership. The former is essentially about being a cooperative social member of a classroom or family, while the latter is about facilitating others’ work and well-being, and looking for opportunities to help. These two protective factors are incompatible with bullying and victimization of peers, and they can be enhanced by both home and school activities.

Photo: ihtatho. Creative Commons.

Consider how these two prosocial behaviors of children might work in families. Does your family generally cooperate in making your family environment positive, safe, and fair? Do the children in your family generally have opportunities to make valued contributions to your family’s everyday life? Sometimes? No? Yes?  Creating a positive family climate is a lifelong endeavour that encounters both smooth winds and heavy storms. It is not static. All family members from all kinds of family structures have changing needs and different abilities to contribute to overall family well-being. Children’s abilities to contribute reflect differences in their ages, but also differences in their sense of belonging to a cooperative team that is trying to create well-being for everyone.

How? One factor that can make a difference is to find a way to open conversations about conflict and conflict resolutions. Being part of your family’s well-being requires that you have input into its functioning. Responding to conflicts and aggressions with silence allows conflicts to be repeated unchanged. Having a family plan for managing the inevitable day-to-day conflicts of interpersonal interactions is as important as having a plan for fire prevention or emergency responses. In my intervention research, we have developed and tested a plan that is working in schools, with family support. The WITS Programs open conversations about conflict by using a common language. WITS stands for Walk Away, Ignore, Talk it out, and Seek help. When adults respond with this practiced, common language, we present conflicts as solvable. “Did you use your WITS?” or “What WITS did you try?” The program also identifies “WITS PICKS,” children’s books in the popular domain that present conflicts in which children have opportunities to talk about how they handled them and what else they could do. Many of the books are read online and are free to access.

“One thing that can make a difference is to find a way to open conversations about conflict and conflict resolutions.”

Using your WITS is not the only way to have open conversations about conflict. Many families establish their own routines, like reflecting on and talking out conflicts when everyone is calm or at bedtime, making a siblings plan for taking turns, and valuing family kindnesses and contributions Families can also talk about movies and TV programs in which the characters resolve conflicts. Thinking about what you do in your family and making these routines visible to children is important. Young children like to know what is the right thing to do. Seeking help can be rejected as “tattling” or embraced as problem solving.

Children need to be empowered to seek help and to be helpful. Parents can create opportunities and family cultures that make a difference in their abilities to resolve conflicts, and they can support schools in their efforts to do the same. By opening conversations about resolving conflict at home and in school, you can help your own children enhance their social responsibility and prosocial leadership, which can make a difference in improving school cultures.

The post Can parents prevent bullying among elementary school children? appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

Gender nonconforming youth are more likely to experience rejection and verbal, physical and sexual abuse from both parents and peers.

Gender nonconforming children, particularly boys, experience victimization. They are more likely to be rejected and verbally abused by their parents, and they suffer higher levels of both depression and PTSD. Men who identify as both gay and “effeminate” report more sexual abuse in childhood. This may be related to the general low value given to “feminine” behaviors and characteristics. Possibly as a result, boys are less likely to be gender nonconforming than girls. 

Gender identity and child development

Children learn gender labels when very young, at 18 to 21 months, shaped by parental behavior and expectations. For example, parents give girl and boy toddlers different toys, and they often expect boys to be better at crawling than girls. At two years, children can already feel atypical if they are not like others of their own gender.

Researchers at Yale and Harvard universities in the USA reviewed how victimization of gender nonconforming children influences their development. They present a “social cognitive” approach which proposes that gender identity develops through direct influences, such as verbal messages about how boys and girls should behave, and indirect influences, such as parents modelling gender specific behavior. A child is an interactive agent in this process of development. The process is influenced by culture: for example, non-Western or more religious men are likely to be less accepting of gender nonconforming individuals.

Two types of socialisation have been studied: in the home and among peers.  

Gender socialisation at home

At home, gender socialisation takes place through things like clothing, how parents praise their boys and girls and how parents use gender specific pronouns. Experimental studies have shown that adults interacting with infants introduced as a girl were more likely to give ‘feminine’ toys to the child, such as dolls and domestic items. If the infant is introduced as a boy, however, they are more likely to introduce ‘masculine’ toys, such as tools and cars, and they encourage more physical activity. Parents support things like exploration, rough-and-tumble play and dressing up differently in boys and girls, despite a lack of evidence that boys and girls are different in any domain typically associated with gender, such as crawling ability. 

Parents tend to associate gender nonconformity in children with homosexuality and often discourage gender nonconforming behavior. Discouragement of nonconformity in children as young as four years includes telling them to change their behavior, punishing or restricting their nonconforming activities and sending them to counseling. Such children are also at greater risk of physical, psychological and sexual abuse in the home, and of PTSD later in life.

These problems affect sexual and gender minority youth in particular—individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, or another orientation that is not heterosexual, as well as those who identify as transgender, agender, gender fluid, or another category that is not cisgender. Transgender youth are particularly exposed to negativity from their parents. 

Gender socialisation among peers

When young children play among peers, their play becomes more gendered. For example, girls are less likely to play with toy cars when they are not alone. Preschool and middle-school children are more likely to befriend same-sex children with similar levels of gender-typed behaviors. Peer popularity of children is strongly related to gender conformity across childhood: there are strong social rewards for conforming. 

The process of gender socialisation is visible in trends across childhood. Over time, children’s attitudes about the other gender become more similar to their friends’ attitudes. Children’s identification with their own gender grows; at the same time, peer harassment and victimization of nonconforming children increase. As a result, gender nonconforming behavior falls over the school years.

This process is linked to children’s cognitive development: they are increasingly able to make social comparisons between boys and girls, to develop a sense of self around gender and to imagine what others are thinking about them.  

Gender nonconforming youth are more likely to experience rejection and verbal, physical and sexual abuse from peers. They are more likely to experience low self-worth, but only when they do not feel accepted by their peers. If they do feel accepted, no increased risk of low self-worth is present.

Child development risks from negative responses to gender nonconforming children 

Gender nonconforming children are more likely to suffer depression and to have suicidal thoughts. They are also at greater risk of bullying others and becomingaggressive.  The authors of the review describe the process according to “minority stress theory”, which encompasses both actual discrimination and the internalized response to it on the part of the victim. Such responses may include internalized homophobia, chronic vigilance about rejection and concealment of sexual orientation. 

What can be done?

Family acceptance of gender nonconforming children is important. For example, a father’s acceptance of nonconforming behavior in his son protects the child from psychological distress. (No such link occurs between fathers and daughters.)

The researchers make recommendations to parents about how to support sexual and gender minority children – talking about gender nonconformity, respecting it, ensuring other family and community members do the same, finding adult role models, and welcoming the child’s friends. 

Action in schools to support gender nonconforming children is particularly important given the long span of strong peer influence on child development. Again, the researchers direct their recommendations to the particular case of sexual and gender minority children. They recommend that schools explicitly address sexual orientation and gender and negative reactions to gender nonconformity. Teachers need training, and gender nonconforming students need support groups. The topic should be on the school curriculum, they write, and sexual orientation should be an explicit part of anti-bullying strategies.

The post Gender nonconforming children are at greater risk of victimization, particularly boys appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

Sustained, moderate-to-severe play deprivation during the first 10 years of life appears to be linked to poor early child development, later leading to depression, difficulty adapting to change, poorer self-control, and a greater tendency to addiction as well as fragile and shallower interpersonal relationships. Play deprivation in childhood has come up in numerous interviews that I have conducted with some of America’s most violent criminals.

This emerging evidence is set against childhood environments where outdoor play has decreased by 71 per cent in one generation in the US and UK. Intergenerational play and ‘family’ games are also in decline. Poverty and fewer opportunities to play are endemic, particularly in inner cities.

Joe Frost, the leading American scholar of play, contends that the diminution, modification and/or disappearance of play during the past 50 years is causing a public health crisis and a threat to societal welfare that may last generations. 

Findings on play and early child development

Mounting evidence regarding the impact of play deprivation on early child development and social and emotional learning comes from three sources: behavioral studies of mammals; neuroimaging and chemical analysis of animal brains during and after play; and exploring the childhood play histories of thousands of human adults.

The evidence remains incomplete because it would be unethical to deprive human infants or young children of play intentionally. But findings are sufficiently compelling to demand that we rethink early child development policy and practice around play in homes and in early years’ institutions and schools, and that we reconsider how adults lead their lives.

Photo: Shutterstock

Researchers have detailed behavioral evidence in rats showing both the deleterious effects of play deprivation and the positive effects of adequate play. Rats do not function well if they don’t play. Play-deprived rats can’t distinguish friend from foe. They don’t mate well, and they are less resilient than normal rats in response to stress. All rats react with fear and flee if they are subject to a cat odour-laden stimulus. However, rats that play get over it and return to normal. Play-deprived rats don’t get over the stress well. 

Play primes the brain for social and emotional learning 

There are parallels with severe play-deprivation in individual humans – particularly young children who find themselves unable to play because, for example, they are caught up in wars, severe poverty, or abusive home settings. When these children do not play normally, they may have real difficulty joining in with the human tribe and recovering from their experiences. That’s because belonging to your own social group is a complex social and emotional learning experience, catalyzed by play.

When they reach elementary school, severely play-deprived children may not have learned the complicated languages of play which harmoniously bring together the cognitive, emotional, physical and social elements that are all necessary for personal competence in playing.

The social and emotional learning that allows safe play between kids occurs slowly. A child who has not had early experience of healthy play may overdo the play process or may simply not understand what is going on. These children can become isolated or bullied, or they may become bullies. The lingering effects of childhood play deficits echo in later adult attitudes about becoming a viable part of a community.

Behavioral evidence around play-deprived children is reinforced by studies of rats. These experiments show the anatomical benefits of healthy play, which activates a wide array of genes in the prefrontal cortex. This is the executive area of the brain, governing decision-making for rats as well as other social mammals, including humans.

Jeffrey Burgdorf at Northwestern University created an experiment in which rats, aged between four and 15 weeks, engaged in rough-and-tumble play. After they had experienced intense play, he found that between 300 and 1,200 genes had been activated in the prefrontal cortex. The late Jaak Panksepp, a play neuroscientist and co-author, with Lucy Biven, of ‘The Archaeology of the Mind,’ suggested that as many as 3,000 genes in the cortex may be activated by play. In short, play seems to be vital in crafting social brains.

“Rats do not function well if they don’t play. They can’t distinguish friend from foe. They don’t mate well and they are less resilient than normal rats in their responses to stress.”

This work needs finer analysis. We do not yet fully understand the processes by which chemicals such as dopamine, endocannabinoids, opiates and IGF-1 are released in the brain. We need to know more about how neurotransmitters and neuro-hormones operate in response to play experiences and how they can influence brain development, functioning and lifetime plasticity. 

Early child development of young male murderers 

Another piece helps to build a fuller picture. My own research, conducted since 1968, has involved around 6,000 individually conducted play histories. It correlates play deprivation during early child development with the predilection of felons for violent, antisocial criminal activities. We found the play experience of homicidal individuals to be vastly different from that of other human beings. Their childhoods were typically characterized by isolation, abuse or bullying. 

As a clinician reviewing incarcerated young male murderers, I noted that none of them, in their self-reporting or in family recollections, remembered ‘normal’ playground rough-and-tumble play. They were unable to remember the names of playground friends. Bullying and inappropriately acted out aggression were their ‘play’ patterns. There is an intriguing parallel here between rats and antisocial humans: behavioral research shows that rats deprived of rough-and-tumble play don’t possess the social skills to distinguish appropriate from inappropriate aggression. 

Early child development underpins play ‘drive’ 

The skills and capacities to play seem to begin to develop in humans very early on, from the first communications between mother and child. Normally, joyfulness naturally erupts between mother and infant as they perform baby talk spontaneously and instinctively.

This attunement and bonding between parent and infant underpin a sense of safety, and they are accompanied by mutual joy that provides grounding for the play drive to respond to opportunities that arise. In contrast, when that attunement process between parent and child is interrupted or does not occur, early child development is disrupted. Then infants tend to see the world as threatening and unsafe, and they are less ready for play.

Allan N. Schore, a leading neuropsychologist, has shown how fine attunement and trust between mothers and infants produce mutual electrical rhythms that shape the baby’s brain and, likely, set the foundations for a child being able to play and establish trust with other people. 

Risks of ‘helicopter’ parenting for social and emotional learning 

For parents in general, an issue that is more relevant than severe play deprivation is the need for children to be able to respond to play within their own instinctive capability. Parents or caretakers should allow that natural gleeful pleasure in play to emerge in its own way. However, ‘helicopter’ parents sometimes orchestrate how they think infants should play rather than leave them free to respond.

Photo: Shutterstock

When children are highly sensitized to what the adults want to see, or their parents have a fixed plan for what their children should become, they may learn to suppress their intrinsic play experience to fit the adult who is trying to mold them. So authentic play is set aside to gain their parents’ approval.

Among my early interviewees was Charles Whitman, whose childhood play history featured consistent play deprivation due to an overbearing and disturbed father. In August 1966, in Austin, Texas, Whitman killed his mother and his wife. Then, by sniper fire from the University of Texas clock tower, he killed more than a dozen people and wounded more than 30. His preschool teachers, recalling Whitman’s childhood, said that, rather than spontaneously engage in activities of his choice, he would look carefully to see what pleased the teacher. He mimicked what he thought would be appropriate rather than picking behavior that was true to himself. He became a gifted mimic, hiding his inner feelings from others.

Such compensatory behavior occurs among many play-deprived children – they can become skilled in pleasing adults and in conforming behavior. In doing so, they are not expressing their own motivations. That intrinsic motivation is found in childhood through play. If children don’t play, they do not find the authentic exuberance that is so obvious in the playground when they play freely from within themselves. 

Play-deprived early child development 

In contrast, severely play-deprived children will tend to engage in automatic and repetitive activities, failing to engage socially. In later childhood, the play-deprived child may have more explosive reactions to circumstances rather than a sense of belonging.

As adults, they are often unoptimistic and subject to smoldering depression due to a lack of joy in their lives. They tend to be more ideologically fixed and certain with little ambiguity in their social worlds. That’s because play fosters the social and emotional learning and acceptance that ambiguity is a part of complex and human interactions.

Play-saturated children tend to have more resilience. They feel comfortable with, and are curious to know, other children who are different. Tolerance and developing empathy are natural outgrowths of more complex play processes.

Rough-and-tumble play provides nuanced social learning that inclusion and exclusion is part of the politics of human beings getting along. It is not a life or death thing – you can roll with the punches and still belong to social groups. A child who does not gain this social and emotional learning may become hyper-reactive to criticism, interpreting it as exclusion. 

“Reviewing incarcerated young male murderers, I noted that none of them remembered “normal” playground rough and tumble play … Bullying and inappropriately acted out aggression were their “play” patterns.”

The late Brian Sutton-Smith, a pioneering play researcher, contended that among adults who continuously disrupted a group process in, say, a church or civic organization, one could normally find that play deficits had occurred in their childhoods which appeared to keep them from ‘belonging.’ This disrupted early child development created a lack of social skills and made it difficult for them to participate in tribal sharing and cooperative activity in an adult unit. 

Play implications for social and emotional learning 

Is there a play crisis? We should certainly be alert to the possibility. Numerous influences are currently diminishing access to self-organized childhood play. We do not know the outcome of these many influences.

All parents should identify their own play nature, recognize the spontaneous play natures of their children, and allow environments to nourish those natures. The anarchy of normal play at preschool should be given space. Within it lies a complicated learning process, as complicated as learning to read.

The social and emotional learning that is fundamental in play behavior is vital for human survival. Play might seem trivial in industrial societies, but we should understand that it exists because it helps us adapt to each other. It is a basic aspect of human socialization that lets us have more fun with each other and, yes, helps to keep us from killing each other and allows a cooperative ethic to develop in each of us.

Play also equals learning. Children engaged playfully will have memorable learning experiences. If math is joyful with a playful teacher, children learn better. Play should be infused into the education system because it makes learning joyful and school into a source of reward, not a punishment.

In the West, we have distorted life by separating work and play, forgetting our pasts as hunter-gatherers, in which sharing and joyfulness were integrated into the task of finding food. Honoring a human need to be in a state of play and seeing this as a public health necessity is as important as hand washing, good nutrition or careful driving.

Educators, pediatricians and families should advocate for and protect unstructured play and playful learning in preschools and schools.

Teachers should focus on playful rather than didactic learning by letting children take the lead and follow their own curiosity.

The post Play deprivation can damage early child development appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

The science: the social and emotional development of children is a family affair

Children’s social and emotional development is profoundly a family affair. How children behave outside the family with other people is highly influenced by what they experience within it. This applies very much to bullying.

For example, children who experience harsh and authoritarian parenting, conflict and aggression in the home and poor communication with their parents are more likely to be bullies. And children who experience overprotective or overly permissive parenting are more likely to be victims.

It makes sense, therefore, that any school wanting to tackle bullying should engage with parents. This includes both mothers and fathers, as well as other carers – all those who influence the child.

Limited evidence suggests that mothers and fathers may respond to bullying differently. Mothers are more likely to give advice, contact the school, seek professional help and involve the child in self-esteem activities or self-defence classes. Fathers are more likely to advocate self-sufficiency, thus normalising the behavior, or, alternatively, to go straight to the authorities. (These are tendencies, not a description of how individual mothers or fathers in diverse families would respond.)

The research found that engaging mothers and fathers helped the program to be effective

The Friendly Schools, Friendly Families program engages with parents systematically to improve six things:

• knowledge about bullying;
• confidence to talk to their child about it;
• non-toleration of bullying;
• the number of conversations with their children;
• confidence to help their children respond to bullying when they encounter it, and;
• knowledge of what the school is doing.

Parent engagement consists of the following:

• Awareness raising: 25 newsletter items, a 25-page parent booklet, five scripted assembly items, six songs and referral information.
• An annual three-hour training session for staff on how to engage parents.
• Two-hour parent workshops.
• Four six-page parent-child communication sheets.
• Six classroom-home activities.

In a study in Perth of 3,211 parents of children in three age groups — 6-7, 8-9 and 10-11 — improvements were seen in all six aims for parents. The researchers found that part of the program’s success in reducing bullying came from engaging with parents.

The program affected mothers and fathers differently, however.

The program engaged with far more mothers than fathers: 83% of the parents involved were mothers and only 14% were fathers.

Before the intervention, mothers tended to discuss bullying with their children more than fathers did – just over 60% of mothers compared to just over 50% of fathers. The intervention increased these percentages considerably when measured 10 months later. It worked more for mothers than fathers of children aged 8-9 and 10-11.

But 22 months later, the situation had reversed – the percentage of mothers’ discussing bullying with their children had dropped to around 20%. Meanwhile, fathers’ discussions had fallen much less. Fathers were two to four times more likely to discuss the topic with their children than mothers were. It should be noted that this figure comes from data on only one parent per family, so it doesn’t tell us what would happen in between two parents in the same family.

Prevalence of bullying in Australia

The prevalence of bullying in Australia is similar to that in other developed countries. 27% of students aged 8-14 years report being bullied, and 9% report regularly engaging in bullying. It peaks when children are around 10-12 years old. Being bullied, bullying and witnessing it all have negative impacts on children’s social and emotional development.

Implications for future programs

The results of this study suggest that engaging with parents, including both fathers and mothers, can play a key role in fighting bullying in schools.

Most studies recommend engaging parents in bullying programmes, but, in reality, few schools do so. Those that do focus on raising parents’ understanding, for example, through written guides and information meetings. One Australian study examined a more elaborate cognitive-behavioral program for parents of chronically bullied children and show good results. But this was not a whole school programme aiming for the prevention of bullying.

The post Tackling bullying in schools should involve mothers and fathers appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

Research shows low-cost, effective way for teenagers to run campaigns against bullying.

Socially influential pupils can dramatically cut teenage school conflict and bullying by working together to identify and spread solutions together, according to a study of of over 24,000 students in 56 US ‘middle’ schools for children ages 11-14.

Groups of just 20-32 students, when they included five or six of a school’s more influential young people, reduced disciplinary episodes by 60%. These groups of students designed and ran an anti-conflict campaign at their school, modelling and speaking about the changes that they identified as important. They were operating in schools that averaged 800 pupils, ages 11 to 14.

The study was led by Betsy Levy Paluck, Professor of Psychology and Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. It shows that conflict, which is sometimes considered to be inevitable in schools, is in fact highly mutable, provided young people are at the heart of working out social rules, modeling them and persuading others to follow them. Groups of students, particularly when they include influential figures, can significantly influence how their peers behave and help make schools more harmonious.

“Our findings,” says Professor Levy Paluck, “offer a low-cost, effective way to reduce conflict, which includes behaviors like spreading rumors, sexual harassment, physical fighting, and bullying. Alternative anti-bullying strategies, which often have a more top-down approach, sometimes have questionable value because, often, they are poorly evaluated.”

Identify key, socially influential students

The Princeton team identified socially influential students by asking pupils to name 10 young people in their school who they chose to hang out with, either face-to-face or online. Using their responses, the researchers built a social network profile of the school.

This network was a diverse selection of influential students, not just the “cool kids.” Some, for example, belonged to the school band or were in the math club, and they mattered to a particular subset of students. Some were highly involved with conflict—not the type that teachers typically select for anti-bullying campaigns.

“Conflict, which is sometimes considered to be inevitable in schools, is in fact highly mutable, provided young people are at the heart of working out social rules, modeling them and persuading others to follow them.”

“Counter to conventional wisdom,”, explains Professor Levy Paluck, “such pupils can be extremely helpful to anti-conflict programs because they can speak authentically about the causes of conflict. Conflict can be sport for some, but it’s not usually enjoyable for anyone. So it was not difficult for even these pupils to identify sources of stress or unhappiness that they wanted to change at their school.”

Next, the team randomly selected groups of about 20-32 students in half of the 56 schools that tried our conflict reduction approach (it did not convene any activities in the control group of 28 schools). The researchers didn’t deliberately load any groups with socially influential students. Pupils were randomly assigned. But conflict was reduced more dramatically when a particular school’s program happened to involve more influential students.

“We never used the term “bullying” with our groups of students. When we assembled a group in a particular school, we asked them to discuss what made people unhappy or uncomfortable at school. The group would meet every second week to discuss those issues, with an adult from outside the school facilitating.”

It’s about more than just bullying

The students identified a wide range of issues, not just what is typically thought of as bullying. For example, many were worried about language they took to be hurtful, such as the use of “gay” to describe something bad. Social exclusion was also important – where, for example, only certain people were welcome in areas of the school such as tables in the cafeteria or in places where people congregate before class or where they sit on the school bus.

The social lines and invisible barriers that prevent young people from talking across friendship lines were often raised. After establishing trust within the groups, girls in particular were able to discuss harassment from boys and from other girls about their relationships with boys.

Groups came up with strategies to reduce conflict in their schools, explains Professor Levy Paluck: “So, for example, though showing respect was seen as a desirable quality across all schools, ways of expressing it differed. For example, in one school program, students said that you show respect for someone when you walk home with them from school. That worked well for that school.”

Some traditional anti-bullying programs seemed flawed in students’ eyes. Many programs advise students to be an ally or an active bystander when someone is bullied, to tell a teacher if something negative happens, or to intervene in conflicts. But the study found that active bystanders are often disliked by peers, as are those who tell the teachers.

Novel approaches to persuading peers

The groups generated lots of ideas on how to advertise their stance against conflict in school. These included, for example, making posters, starting petitions, beginning one-to-one discussions with people, wearing anti-conflict wristbands or using online strategies such as Instagram posts or conversations on Facebook.

“Those who ‘matter’ were not necessarily the ‘cool kids’. Some belonged to the school band or were in the math club. Some were highly involved with conflict—not the type that teachers typically select for anti-bullying campaigns.”

Studies of other anti-conflict programs have sometimes asked students to report how much their behavior has changed. As a more independent measurement, this study collected school records on who was brought to the office for disciplining because of conflict with another peer.

Over a single school year, the study recorded a 25% reduction in peer conflict reports in schools whose pupils tried the program. When at least 20% of a treatment school’s anti-conflict group was composed of socially influential students, reductions of 60% were achieved, compared with schools that didn’t develop a program. In total, during a single school year, in the 28 schools where the program was implemented, disciplinary events fell from 2,695 to 2,012 across the 11,938 students involved.

This research also saw the effect that socially influential students can have on values, such as racism, in one-to-one encounters with their peers. For example, in schools where our program was implemented, a pupil who hadn’t talked with a socially influential student typically agreed that only “a few” students disapproved of racial and ethnic jokes. In contrast, a student who had been exposed to an influential person typically agreed that “about 75%” of pupils disapproved.

The message to schools and policy makers, says Professor Ley Paluck “is that we have a low-cost, effective way to reduce conflict in schools.” The study shows that a relatively small number of students (less than 5 per cent) can be involved in developing a program tailored for their school that can be highly effective within a single year. The key to maximizing success, suggests the research, is including a good number of socially influential students who matter to their peers and who will be listened to, probably far more than any teacher.

The post Influential students can halve bullying incidents at school appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

Targeting prevention efforts at the entire peer group supports expression of anti-bullying attitudes and makes it harder for bullying to carry on.

Schools’ anti-bullying strategies sometimes fail because they focus too narrowly on bullies and their victims. Our research demonstrates that preventive work should encompass the whole school culture, empowering bystanders to express disapproval and to intervene on behalf of victims.

“In groups where trust, respect and friendship tend to be lacking, bullying can be the ‘glue’ that holds the group together. However, the group, if aware and empowered, can put a stop to the bullying or maintain it, depending on how individuals react.”

We found that children and adolescents were empowered if they understood how their group’s behaviour could support bullying. Bullying behaviour was reduced if students practiced withdrawing social rewards from bullies and understood ways to help victimized peers. Targeting prevention efforts at the entire peer group supported expression of anti-bullying attitudes and made it harder for bullying to carry on.

Every time we learn of a case of bullying, it’s important to tackle it. Bullies should hear that the behaviour is unacceptable, that they must change their behaviour. Victims should be told that their mistreatment was wrong and should be shown support. However, rather than simply fighting fires like this, it would be more effective to invest in prevention of bullying.

The consequences of failure are considerable. Victimisation by bullies can lead to school avoidance as well as to self-esteem problems, depression and anxiety. It has even been linked to suicide. If we don’t intervene with perpetrators, their behaviour can carry on into the adult workplace. Bullies tend to be more involved in delinquent behaviour as they grow older, as well as dating violence and general aggression in relationships. And children who have only been witnesses of bullying can be harmed. They may experience anxiety, perhaps because they fear for themselves or feel empathy for the victim.

Finland’s KiVa anti-bullying program, which operates in several other European countries as well, conceives of bullying as a group process. So it explicitly targets bystanders to raise students’ awareness of group processes in bullying and encourages them to support victimized peers rather than reinforce the bullies. Such programs have increased the likelihood that students will intervene as bystanders and has decreased their tendency to reinforce bullies’ actions. Evidence shows that preventive school-based activity can also reduce online bullying because it influences children’s views about bullying.

Teachers are important in setting the tone. Our research shows that children who perceived their teacher to increasingly disapprove of bullying were less likely to bully later on. Victimization declined most in classrooms where teachers conscientiously followed anti-bullying curricula.

Effective programs start with understanding how bullying functions for perpetrators and for the whole group. In groups where trust, respect and friendship tend to be lacking, bullying can be the ‘glue’ that holds the group together. Such groups often have weak anti-bullying attitudes – children tend to think that bullying is OK and that victims deserve it. In these circumstances, bullying can provide a semblance of cohesion for the group, albeit at the victims’ expense. It also allows perpetrators to improve their status, making them popular and visible in their peer group. And other children may believe that if they intervene, they will also become unpopular and perhaps become the bully’s next target. However, an aware and empowered group can withdraw status from the bully. The group can put a stop to bullying or maintain it, depending on how individuals react, by showing they are against the bullying.

There are evidence-based programs designed to teach children about accepting others as they are. Before talking about bullying, they talk about respecting others. The KiVa program begins by teaching about emotions, group dynamics and the principle of inclusion, rather than tackling bullying straight away. For example, when school starts, a new group of children forms. It’s important at that point to know how relationships between children are forming, to create opportunities for everyone to get to know one another, and help prevent a dysfunctional atmosphere from being created.

Once children have key skills – for regulating their emotions and respecting their peers – then the learning moves to bullying and what members of the group can do to prevent it, or how children’s behaviour might reinforce bullying. KiVa, for example, offers a variety of activities for children to practice not being passive around a bully. They can do group dramatic role playing and can experiment with electronic learning environments through online games.

Bystanders are important. Their silence can offer enough social reward to sustain bullying. Often only a minority of students show support for victims by actively intervening or otherwise offering support by talking to victims after an incident has taken place. These defenders can play a major role in determining not only whether the bullying continues but also how it affects victims. Those subject to bullying often say that the worst part wasn’t the incident itself, but the fact that no one defended them. Defenders can be crucial in helping a victim recover.

In many parts of the world, there is a welcome desire to reduce bullying. But too little of what people do about bullying is based on sound evidence. Policy makers should support evidence-based approaches to bullying, such as KiVa.

The post Combat bullying by empowering whole school rather than focussing just on bullies and victims appeared first on Child and Family Blog.