Defuse Bullying

Dr Naomi Fisher Dr Naomi Fisher is a clinical psychologist, author and speaker. This page is not clinical advice.

As a psychologist, it was a surprise to me when parents started telling me how much they hated the word 'resilience'. To me it sounded like a good word, an empowering one. Not to them. Here's what they tell me.

When their children are young and school becomes more formal, lots of them start to show distress. They meltdown after school, chew their sleeves to shreds and wet themselves. When they raise it with professionals, they're told to carry on and 'they'll get more resilient'.

As they move up through primary school, some of them find relationships difficult. They are excluded by other children, or don't feel liked by staff. They tell their parents they feel lonely and unhappy. When their parents raise it, they're told they need to 'become more resilient’.

They get older and move to secondary school. Here, the sensory experiences can be intense. Children talk about the pain of the dining hall noise or the vomit-inducing smell of the toilets. They come home crying, and parents are told they need to 'develop their resilience'.

They get older still and pressure starts to pile on. They worry about exam results. They wake at night sure they will fail and their life will be over. They talk about how stressful it all is & when they ask for help, they are told they need to learn to 'be more resilient'.

They are subtly put down. Parents and young people are told 'the world won't pander to them for ever' or 'everyone is going to fail some time, we don't wrap you in cotton wool here'?'. They're sometimes told, we have 'high expectations' and 'we're not ashamed of that'.

It makes young people feel bad. They feel shamed because they are asking for change. They feel that it's being implied that they are weak and that they just have to suck it up. To them, that's what resilience means. No wonder they don't like the word.

It's a misuse of the term resilience. Resilience isn't about putting up with what happens to you and not showing your distress. It's not about accepting things without speaking up, or being 'pandered to' (what a horrible term). Why, when young people speak up and ask for change, are they often dismissed in this way?

Resilience is something that exists in a system, not just in individuals. A resilient system can cope with change. It can hear challenge without defensiveness. It can adapt & flex in response to difference. It responds to feedback. A rigid system causes more distress.

If we want our young people to be truly resilient in the future, we need to listen to their voices now. We need to empower them to say No and ‘that’s not right’. We need to tell them that it's not 'pandering' when they are listened to, and that speaking up is part of genuine resilience.

Above all, we need to ask ourselves questions. Is this another way to avoid listening to our young people? Does it mean that we can dismiss their feedback and say it’s not their lives, it’s them? Is it more comfortable for adults to say it's a lack of resilience than to see their distress?

And if so, maybe we need to start with ourselves. Maybe the real question is, how can we build our own resilience to the point where we can allow ourselves to really hear them?

Illustration Eliza Fricker ().

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Five Things All Young People Should Know About GCSEs

1. It is not possible for everyone to succeed in their GCSEs. The exam results are referenced against earlier cohorts, meaning that around 30% will get failing results every year. If everyone does very well one year, they'll shift the pass mark so that some will still fail.

2. You can take GCSEs at any age. There is nothing magic about taking them all at age 16. Those who are older (autumn born) do better on average than those who are younger (summer born) when they take them. It is not a level playing field.

3. Learning does not 'only count' if you have a GCSE in it. If you are a passionate musician or linguist or artist, this will be much more important in your life than whether you have a GCSE in music or French or art. Don't let an exam result convince you that you are no good at something.

4. GCSEs can be a stepping stone to college. It is rare for a college to require more than five or six. Some colleges will take you with no GCSEs. Doing nine is something some schools insist on but it isn't essential.

5. A GCSE is a measure of how you performed in a particular set of tests at a particular time in your life. It is not a measure of your worth nor a reflection of your future potential.

Photo by Yustinus Tijuwanda on

Have you ever stopped to really think about the behaviour we (as a society) expect - and often demand - from children?

We expect them to be in control of their emotions at all times, to never lose it and yell or shout, tantrum or sulk. If they do, their behaviour is considered 'bad' and they are appropriately (or so we believe) punished.

We shout back, we send them to their rooms alone to "think about what happened and learn to do better next time" (hint - that doesn't happen, they just learn that they don't get help from you when they need it most) and we use consequences (in this instance - consequences is just another word for punishment that makes our act feel a bit softer, but it isn't).

The injustice in all of this, is that we expect them to behave better than we do. We expect them to have more mature emotion regulation skills than we do.

We punish them for being kids with an immature brain and we punish them for behaviour that we, as adults, still struggle with.

The irony in all of this, is that our behaviour actually inhibits the development of the emotion regulation skills we are so desperate for them to possess!

What do they need?

Support, connection, guidance, empathy and someone to genuinely listen.

How do we do that?

First, we must learn to regulate ourselves and we must reset our expectations, so that we set them up to succeed, not persistently fail.

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“Today in one of our classes I introduced the children to two apples (the children didn't know this, but before the class I had repeatedly dropped one of the apples on the floor, you couldn't tell, both apples looked perfect). We talked about the apples and the children described how both apples looked the same; both were red, were of similar size and looked juicy enough to eat.

I picked up the apple I'd dropped on the floor and started to tell the children how I disliked this apple, that I thought it was disgusting, it was a horrible colour and the stem was just too short. I told them that because I didn't like it, I didn't want them to like it either, so they should call it names too.

Some children looked at me like I was insane, but we passed the apple around the circle calling it names, 'you're a smelly apple', 'I don't even know why you exist', 'you've probably got worms inside you' etc.

We really pulled this poor apple apart. I actually started to feel sorry for the little guy.

We then passed another apple around and started to say kind words to it, 'You're a lovely apple', 'Your skin is beautiful', 'What a beautiful colour you are' etc.

I then held up both apples, and again, we talked about the similarities and differences, there was no change, both apples still looked the same.

I then cut the apples open. The apple we'd been kind to was clear, fresh and juicy inside.

The apple we'd said unkind words to was bruised and all mushy inside.

I think there was a lightbulb moment for the children immediately. They really got it, what we saw inside that apple, the bruises, the mush and the broken bits is what is happening inside every one of us when someone mistreats us with their words or actions.

When people are bullied, especially children, they feel horrible inside and sometimes don't show or tell others how they are feeling. If we hadn't have cut that apple open, we would never have known how much pain we had caused it.

I shared my own experience of suffering someone's unkind words last week. On the outside I looked OK, I was still smiling. But, on the inside someone had caused me a lot of pain with their words and I was hurting.

Unlike an apple, we have the ability to stop this from happening. We can teach children that it's not ok to say unkind things to each other and discuss how it makes others feel. We can teach our children to stand up for each other and to stop any form of bullying, just as one little girl did today when she refused to say unkind words to the apple.

More and more hurt and damage happens inside if nobody does anything to stop the bullying. Let's create a generation of kind, caring children.

The tongue has no bones, but is strong enough to break a heart. So be careful with your words.”

Words by: Mum in the Moment

Are the effects of trauma on children a clinical issue to be managed in hospitals by health professionals like me? Should everyone else keep in their lane and leave it up to the experts to make diagnoses and prescribe treatment? Here’s why that viewpoint is damaging.

‘Trauma’ means so many different things, but at the most simple level, it means difficult events which continue to affect a person emotionally even when the event has ended. It means experiences which make us scared, or angry, or numb, sometimes for years.

These events happen all the time, to children as well as adults. Abuse, illness, bereavement, family breakdown. A challenge of life is how we integrate those events into our story. Do we lock them away & pretend we’re fine, or can we make sense of what has happened to us?

Whether we can integrate them depends on the world around us. Do we feel safe to show our emotions? Do we have caring people who listen? Do people understand that sometimes distress is shown in other ways than tears? Can they see that our anger and behaviour is due to pain?

If a child doesn’t have the right support around them, they won’t be able to make sense of what has happened to them. They won’t feel safe. They’ll feel flooded with unpredictable emotions and they’ll get in trouble for their behaviour. They may learn that they are bad.

This will lead to more difficult experiences - and because the child is already struggling with their emotions, these experiences will feel worse to them. A shouting teacher, a strict telling off, a detention - and that child will go down a spiral of frustration and anger.

This will be seen as more bad behaviour, and the punishments will increase. By now, the child doesn’t feel safe anywhere, and so their nervous system will be in high alert. They won’t be learning effectively because their brain’s priority is survival.

The child starts to refuse to go to school, or becomes extremely disruptive, or shuts down and gives up hope that anything could be better. This is again treated as more bad behaviour, and so the punishments and pressure increase.

Now adults and child are locked into a downward spiral. Child doesn’t feel safe and their behaviour reflects this. Adults punish the behaviour which makes the child feel even less safe. Their behaviour get worse. Punishments get more severe. There is no way out.

Usually it’s at this point that a child might see a health professional. Things have already gone very badly wrong. The child might be on the edge of exclusion, deeply unhappy or not leaving their bedroom at all. Everyone is desperate.

It’s years too late. Now there is a serious problem, but it didn’t have to be like that. If, right back at the start, someone had seen the signs of distress and instead of laying down the law, had listened and empathised, then the spiral could have been stopped.

We all experience traumatic events through our lives. It’s part of being human. We need the right circumstances to heal, but mostly that can happen without a therapist. We need empathy, time and feeling safe. We need relationships.

When we work with children, we are often creating their inner landscape. The way we talk to them, the way we relate to them, stays with them. Kids tell me about the teacher or mentor who reached out when they were at their lowest, and how it transformed their life.

This means that mental health can’t ignored until you need a professional. That’s like saying health should be left to doctors. Doctors know about ill-health, but staying healthy - that’s something we all have to do. For kids, that means we have to help them.

Photo by on Unsplash

“You’re Making It Worse” (with Missing The Mark)

When a child is struggling at school and become reluctant to attend, their parents are given advice. A lot of it is about how to ignore their child’s distress. Other parents say ‘We just don’t give them the option’ and professionals say ‘You need firm boundaries’. Parents are told that their child’s misery is ‘behaviour’ and that it will be reinforced if they ‘give in’. Others are told that it’s anxiety, and that by allowing children to avoid school, the anxiety will only get worse.

This puts parents in an impossible situation. They are caught between their child’s obvious distress, often expressed through meltdowns, stomach aches and tears, and the advice which tells them to persist regardless. They’re told that if they are just consistent enough, things will get better. As one book on ‘Getting your Child Back to School’ says ‘Their complaints will taper off’.

This puts children in an impossible situation. Nothing that they say is really heard, because it is all framed as ‘behaviour’ or ‘anxiety’ – which means, we shouldn’t take what they think seriously. They should do their breathing exercises and challenge their negative thoughts. They should stop complaining because it will make no difference. If they continue to shout, they’ll lose their iPad time. Parents should ignore their cries, for if they give in (they are told), it will just make things worse.

If it’s not working, the answer is to do it more.

This is because the solution to difficulties with attending school is almost always said to be more school. Success is 100% attendance, no matter what the cost. No matter how unhappy the young person is, or how many times they wake up at night worried that their parents might go to prison. No matter how little they are learning when they are there. Getting through those school doors and staying there is the aim.

Parents and young people tell me that the impact of this focus on attendance lasts for years. They tell me that young people stop trusting adults to listen to them. They tell me that they develop trauma symptoms to anything to do with school, that they start to panic when they see the street where the school is and won’t go near a reading book. Parents tell me they feel under threat when they get an email and wake up at night with their heart beating fast, worried about the next morning drop off.

What if there really is a problem with school for some children? What if it’s not a place where all children can thrive? What if our system is becoming ever more rigid and restrictive, with less account taken of child development and how children learn? What if the way we are defining ‘learning’ is too narrow and it limits children’s lives?

We will never find out, whilst we frame children’s communication as ‘behaviour’ or ‘anxiety’ and completely miss the reality that behaviour and anxiety are reactions to the world around us. We’ll never find out, whilst parents are told that they just need to show more ‘tough love’.

We’ll never know any different, if we continue to tell parents and children than the only answer to the way that school makes them feel is more school. We must stop assuming that school is right, and children are wrong.

Change will only happen when we allow ourselves to consider whether for some children the school system might be the problem, and that more of the same cannot be the solution.

Pupil protests across England and Wales spread by social media, experts say Disruption relating to issues such as rules on uniforms and use of toilets has taken place at a number of schools since last week

Our free visual timetable for the half term https://reachoutasc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/OurDayAtHome.pdf

These systems leave no room for understanding the reason behind certain behaviours and what they mean. They don’t involve working with the young people but focus on control.

AutismSketches

“We think in pictures and we should be painting accurate pictures. The cervix nor the va**na bloom. The cervix is not a zip lock bag. The purpose of labor is NOT the creation of an opening or a hole... The purpose of labor contractions and retractions is to BUILD the fundus, which will, when it is ready, EJECT the baby, like a piston. Without a nice thick fundus there is no power to get baby out....the cervix does not dilate out....it dilates UP as a result of the effort to pull muscles up into the uterus to push muscles up to the fundus. The cervical dilation is secondary to that. The cervix is pulled up as a result of the building of the fundus. Assigning a number to cervical dilation is of little consequence and we make a huge mistake by interpreting progress or predicting time of birth to that number. Any experienced midwife or OB can tell you that the cervix can be manipulated and that a woman whose cervix is at 7 could have the baby in a few minutes or a few hours.
If more providers and educators knew the truth about birth physiology, we could make a huge difference for mothers. What is important is to keep her well supported for the purpose of the appropriate chemistry, to keep her well hydrated and nourished for muscle strength, and to believe in her. We should be supporting her so that her physiology and that of her baby are unhindered, so they can finish what they started.
We should not be measuring, poking, or interpreting her labor. THIS CHANGE in teaching about labor could make such a difference for women who are imagining what is happening in their bodies during labor. How much more strength might they have if they have an accurate picture?"

-Carla Hartley

http://www.indybirthservices.com/blog/nova-birth-services

Shel Silverstein ❤️❤️
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Sad but true! It really shouldn’t be such a fight. 💙

Sounds about right. 💯

💙