Barry E. McNamara

Keys to Dealing with Bullies by Barry E. McNamara, Ed. D. and Francine J. McNamara, MSW, CSW. Age: adult. Bullying is a serious problem and if you are like me, you suffered from bullying and ostracization in school and saw your kids suffer too. This book is both for parents of bullies and parents of kids victimized by bullies. How does a child become a bully? Families that produce bullies often have authoritarian or dictatorial parents. They often use physical or verbal abuse to keep the rest of the family in control. Bullies turn right around and do the same thing to their victims, whom they are uncannily good at targeting. This book offers tips for parents to make their family relationships less authoritarian, so parents are better role models who use communication, praise and support rather than abuse to rear their children.
This book also offers tips for parents of victimized children. Rather than telling their child to just ignore it, or hit back (bullies select smaller kids than themselves to victimize, so guess who’d win a fight?), this book offers ways to diffuse the bully and whom to contact at school if your child is victimized. I remember our son and his friends being victimized and they would report that to their guidance counselor who dealt with the bullies.
Rather than wait until a problem has reached a crisis point, like at Columbine High School, where the victimized kids shot up the school as revenge for being bullied, this book offers real help so situations are taken care of before they reach the point where the victim anesthetizes himself with drugs or alcohol, commits suicide, or brings a knife or gun to school to for protection or to seek revenge.
The authors also note that bullying differs between boys and girls. With boys, it is more physical and overt, usually seen by many. Bullies enjoy knowing that others have seen how tough and aggressive they are. Girls are more devious – excluding the victims, writing malicious notes, trying to ruin reputations, making menacing phone calls. The authors also note that kids with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Learning Disabilities (LD) are more often victimized because they cannot read social cues – they may even not realize the bully is targeting them until it’s too late to avoid a confrontation, and they often don’t have the verbal skills to joke or jolly their way to safety.
This book is short but to the point, with many specific suggestions. Trying to ignore bullying does not make it go away. However, you can do much to make your child look less like a victim, for example, by buying her a few pieces of clothing that are trendier, showing her how to walk with a confident manner, and helping her find hobbies and sports that will give her enough confidence to recognize that bullying is unacceptable and know how to find adults to help in situations that arise. Principals need to know the extent of bullying in their school so they can take steps to alleviate it, and they won’t know the extent of bullying unless we, the parents, tell them when it’s happening and demand action to stop it. Bullying hurts and it’s not funny. It is such a problem that ELCA synod assemblies are seeking to pass ELCA rulings about it. That’s a good step in the right direction.… (más)