17 Aug 2018
Week 4 – Relationships
As well as starting Peer Support this term, students will be learning about friendship and positive relationships. All children want close relationships with friends and classmates at school. These important relationships help them to cope better with life's occasional hard times. Children who have good social skills are more likely to achieve more at school and be more successful in their future careers, and are less likely to get into trouble, or be attracted to anti-social peer groups or become depressed. There is a ‘luck' factor with regards to the people they will meet as potential friends, but it will be their social skills that make the difference in developing and maintaining friendships.
Key messages to communicate to your child about relationships
- No one has close friends all the time and most people feel lonely sometimes.
- Not everyone will like you but lots of people will.
- Friendships can change and not be as strong as they once were.
What can you do to help your child develop good social skills and make friends?
- Make your child's friends and classmates welcome in your home and get to know them.
- Model good social skills when you are with your own friends and talk to your child about what you do to be a good friend
- Suggest to your child that all of the children they meet regularly at school, sporting activities and clubs are potential friends. Encourage them to develop a diverse social network so that they can interact with and learn about many people, not just people who are similar to them.
- Help your child to develop empathy by talking about how others might be feeling by stressing the importance of trying to understand rather than judge.
Week 6 – Relationships
Key messages to communicate to your child about relationships
- Social skills are ways of behaving that help people get along and make friends.
- To HAVE a good friend, you have to BE a good friend.
- It's OK to have an argument as long as you don't hurt the other person.
What can you do to help your child develop good social skills and make friends?
Teach your child how to negotiate by negotiating with them whenever possible (i.e. look for a way in which they can obtain some of what they want but you also get a lot of what you want, because you are still the boss!). For example, they may not want to shower at the time that suits your timetable. You could offer them a 15-minute extension on the time if they agree to get up and do it without any further argument when that time arrives.
- Teach and model the social skill of ‘respectful disagreeing', which involves finding points of agreement before stating disagreement (e.g. ‘The scary movie you want to see did get a good review but I think most of us would rather see a funny movie.')
- If your children are arguing with each other, sit them down and get them to listen to each other's feelings and points of view and then insist on their negotiating a solution. Try not to act as referee, and stress that put-downs are unacceptable.
Week 8 – No Bullying
Many children occasionally get teased or annoyed by other children at school. Responding to this is one of the common challenges that children have to face at school. Being bullied is more serious. Bullying is when one child (or a group) repeatedly and deliberately uses negative words and/or hostile actions against one specific child that causes distress. Bullying can be:
- Physical (e.g. hitting, pushing or damaging personal property)
- Verbal (e.g. insults or nasty name-calling)
- Social (e.g. trying to socially isolate someone by spreading lies or rumours about them or stopping them from joining in)
- Cyberbullying: this means using technology (such as email, mobile phones or social networking sites) to bully someone verbally or socially or to frighten or intimidate them.
- It isn't called bullying if any of these things happen only once, if children have a mutual argument or fight, or if a child chooses not to spend time with another child.
Key messages to communicate to your child about bullying
- It's never OK to bully someone or take part in bullying even in small ways.
- It's never the fault of the person who is being bullied.
What can you do to help your child if they are bullied and to encourage them not to bully others?
- Let your child know that you strongly disapprove of bullying. Taking part in bullying can be the start of a pattern of antisocial behaviour for many children.
- Encourage your child to support someone who is being bullied (e.g. they could: calmly tell someone who is bullying that it's a mean thing to do, defuse the situation by suggesting something else to do, let a teacher know about it, or later offer them comfort and support).
More about anti-bullying in Week 10.
Week 10 – No Bullying
In Week 8's edition we discussed how children occasionally get teased or annoyed by other children at school. Responding to this is one of the common challenges that children have to face at school. Being bullied is more serious. Bullying is when one child (or a group) repeatedly and deliberately uses negative words and/or hostile actions against one specific child that causes distress.
Key messages to communicate to your child about bullying
It is important to ‘think for yourself'.
If other people try to convince you to take part in bullying someone, don't just do what they tell you to do. Think for yourself and do what is right and don't just go along with what other children are doing.
Asking for support and acting responsibly are not the same as dobbing.
Dobbing means trying to get someone into trouble. It's not dobbing when you ask for help when you're in trouble or when you try to help someone else who is in trouble.
What can you do to help your child if they are bullied and to encourage them not to bully others?
Respond calmly if you think your child is being bullied. Talk to them about what is happening. Listen to the whole story before responding or asking questions. Ask how they would like you to help. One of their fears will be that you might over-react and make things worse. Discuss with them what they could do, e.g.:
- avoid high-risk areas and not respond to nasty text messages etc.
- say ‘leave me alone' in a calm voice and leave the situation (rather than yelling or responding in an upset or emotional way)
- talk to their friends about what's happening and ask for help
- speak to a teacher and ask for support to solve the problem.
- If the situation doesn't improve, make an appointment to speak to the teacher and work together with the school to improve the situation.