August 10, 2025 • 15 mins
Most of us think we know what to do when our child is being bullied—stand up to the bully, teach resilience, demand punishment. But what if those responses are making things worse?
In this No Bullying Week episode, Justin and Kylie bust the myths around bullying and offer counterintuitive, compassionate, and powerful alternatives. Discover what actually works to support kids being bullied—and how to raise kids who don’t become bullies in the first place.
KEY POINTS:
If Your Child Is Being Bullied:
- Stop telling kids to “stand up” to bullies. This victim-blaming advice ignores power dynamics and often escalates harm.
- Avoid framing bullying as “character-building” or a “resilience opportunity.” Bullying is trauma. It’s not a test of toughness.
- Don’t demand punishment. Zero-tolerance and “make them pay” approaches often backfire. The system needs repair—not retribution.
To Prevent Your Child from Bullying:
- Watch for “dominance in disguise.” When we reward confidence or competitiveness without checking the impact on others, we may be reinforcing bullying.
- Reflect on your parenting style. Harsh, authoritarian parenting models the very power-over behaviour we’re trying to prevent.
- Go beyond “treat others how you want to be treated.” Help kids develop real empathy by guiding them to reflect on how others feel.
Bonus: Get your kids involved in service. Nothing builds empathy like helping others in need.
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
“Our job isn’t to make kids bounce back from abuse. Our job is to make sure the abuse doesn’t happen in the first place.”
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
- When Your Child is Bullied: A Calm, Practical Guide for Parents [Article]
- National Centre Against Bullying Conference
- Wall Street Journal article on the parenting pendulum
- Bullying No Way: A National Week of Action
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS:
- Work with the school: Ask for systemic solutions, not quick punishments.
- Validate your child’s pain: Listen, believe, and support—without trying to “toughen them up.”
- Model empathy and connection at home: Choose collaboration over control.
- Encourage service and perspective-taking: Real-world connection builds character better than lectures ever could.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
All this week It's No Bullying Week around the nation
Bullying No Way Week eleven to fifteenth of August. And
it matters, we need it why well. On a national scale,
fifty nine percent of Australian students that's two point three
million students nationally have been on the receiving end of
bullying in the last year, with twenty percent experiencing a weekly.
(00:27):
Thirty percent of Australian fifteen year olds were bullied at
least a few times a month, compared to the OECD
average of twenty three percent. Ah, the numbers just get
worse and worse and worse. Australian ranks number two globally
for school bullying. Only Latvia reports higher levels among twenty
four OECD countries, according to the twenty twenty two piece
of data released by the Australian Council for Educational Research. Today,
(00:49):
on the Happy Families podcast, we talk about three things
that you can do if your child is being bullied.
They are not the things you used to hearing, believe me.
And then we're going to talk about three things that
you can do to prevent your child from bullying. Stay
with us, Hello, Welcome to the Happy Famili's podcast Real
Parenting Solutions every day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast.
(01:12):
All this week we're going to be focused on bullying
because it's no Bullying Week, bullying no way right across
the country. Ye, We're going to kick off today's conversation
by getting straight into it and having a look at
three things that I've been thinking about to do if
your child is being bullied. I'll share them with you
and then you add your reactions. So the first thing
(01:32):
that I want to suggest is that all too often
I still hear parents say when my child is being bullied,
and this is what my dad used to teach me
if you ever get picked on, if you ever get bullied,
you just turn around and punch and right in the nose,
fight back or tough enough. It's the stand up to bullies,
tough en up narrative. And my suggestion today is that
this is the worst advice ever, telling kids to stand
(01:54):
up to bullies. I'll fight back. And the reason for
that is I see it as victim blaming. I think
that it gnare's power dynamics and it can clearly inevitably
I think escalate dangerous situations are there's stories where people
fight back. Yeah, all the time, and we kind of
get excited when somebody does that, But I just don't
think it's healthy. Instead, our job is to validate our
(02:17):
children's experience and focus on the system. Focus on finding
solutions within the school system. So work with the school,
work with the head of year, the head of house,
the deputy principle, the well being leader, whoever it is
that you can change the culture rather than asking your
vulnerable child to fix failures within the system.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
But I also think the bully wants a response, So
as soon as you give them a response, then you're
fueling the fire. You've actually given the fuel, the very
fuel that they want.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
It's kind of like social media on steroids bullying anything
that creates hostility or gets a crowd. The bully gets
status from saying, look at how tough I am, Look
what I've done. There's just something about it that is endemic.
It continues no matter how many conversations we have about it.
Here's my second one. I think that we need to
stop framing a bullying sorry as a learning opportunity or
(03:10):
a character building experience or a resilience thing. Some people
think that if you can deal with the bully, that
that must mean that you're resilient, And what I think
it does, I'm not a big fan of I think
that we've got too much conversation about trauma in our
world today. But one thing that I do know is
that bullying is a traumatic experience. And when you say
(03:31):
just be resilient, it minimizes what I would call genuine trauma.
And again, it keeps on shifting responsibility for the bullying
onto the victim. I don't think it's your kid's job
to bounce back from an unfair abusive situation. It just
doesn't seem right. Rather, we're supposed to be creating an
environment where abuse doesn't exist and our children have the
(03:54):
unconditional support that they need.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
You talk about the idea that we talk too much
about trauma when we understand that trauma isn't what happened
to us, it's our ability to process.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah, how we respond to this.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
It's all about processing and response to events in our lives.
I actually can see how so many of the life
experiences that our children go through, and even us as
adults go through, become traumatic because we actually have not
learnt the skills to be able to process challenging and
difficult experiences in our lives, and when we're unable to
(04:31):
process it, that becomes traumatic to us because we can't
move forward, we're stuck.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
This is true, However, I think the main point that
I'm making here is that the bullying shouldn't be happening.
I want perfect world solutions here, right, and the bullying
shouldn't be happening, so we shouldn't have to process it
because it shouldn't be happening. My interest is how do
we get rid of the abuse and telling the kids
that they need to bounce back, they need to be resilient,
they need to learn from this works against them now
(05:01):
once it's happened. Yes, processing is important, and dealing with
the trauma and healing from the horrible experience matters. We've
got to be careful not to make too big of
a deal about that and just guide our children gently
through it. But fundamentally, if bullying is occurring, I would
argue that almost always it's a result of inadequate structures
(05:21):
within the system to help kids be safe from inappropriate
interactions with their peers.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
I love that you said that, because I am watching
what's happening for our eleven year old daughter who's homeschooled.
We've had experiences in the school system and the challenges
that she has in relationships within the school system have
been profound. And now that she's at home, we found
this beautiful homeschooling group and these kids literally from dawn
(05:50):
till dusk can't get enough time together. They can't get
enough time together, and there has not been a single
altercation between them in over twelve months.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yep, yep. So when the system works, when you're in
a need supportive environment where you feel confident, you feel
like you have a sense of control, and you feel
like your relationships are good, you just don't get bullying.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
I don't think I can like articulate this enough. Watching
our daughter have these positive experiences within peer relationships is
mind blowing to me because in the school system, well
it's so hard to get that.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, we've had several kids who have been absolutely bullied.
I won't go further, but we've had several kids who
have been bullied because the quite often, not always, but
quite often, the school environment simply can't support needs the
same way that you can in a smaller environment. Let's
move on to the third one, because time is going
to get away from us. I think that we've really
got a challenge the punishment focus within schools when somebody
(06:54):
is being a bully, when somebody has been bullying, most
anti bullying programs fail, and I talk about this at
the National Center Against Bullying Conference about six or seven
years ago. Now, most anti bullying programs fail because they
rely on consequences and zero tolerance policies that don't address
the root cause. And so essentially, when there is a
kid who's being a bully, then all the adults in
(07:16):
the school start to bully the bully. And I'm using
that term a little bit loosely, but fundamentally, what we're
doing to kids is we're saying you did the wrong thing,
and now we're going to make you pay a price.
We're going to introduce a systemic, ongoing regime where we
make you feel a consequence because of what you're doing,
and it doesn't make things better. The idea that we're
(07:38):
going to discipline the bully, if we can get beyond
that and stop doing too but rather start working with
we're going to get better outcomes. And so many parents
demand when their child is being bullied that the school
do something, and when they say do something, they mean
I want you to hurt the kid that hurt my kid,
which doesn't lead to better outcomes at just perpetuates problems
(07:58):
within the system.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
We talk regularly about the idea that when our kids
are acting out and giving us the worst of what
they have to offer, it's the time where we actually
need to lean in, step up, and you know, get
close and intimate with them to understand the root cause
of what's going on. These kids their kids, their kids,
and they are struggling with whatever's going on in their world,
(08:23):
and it doesn't it's really hard when your child is
on the tail end of their bad behavior, Like that's hard,
it's really hard, but recognizing and knowing that somebody needs
to step up and actually help this child understand what
it is that's actually the root cause, because right now
they're acting out in anger, and we understand and know
(08:44):
that anger is, you know, kind of just masking everything
else that goes underneath.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
It's that secondary emotion. After the break, we're going to
talk about what we can do within the system to
prevent your child from being a bully. Okay, Kylie, Three
things that we can do to prevent our children from
being a bully. The first one that I want to
(09:09):
highlight is this, I think we've got to stop rewarding
dominance in disguise. What do I mean by that? A
lot of parents inadvertently encourage bullying by celebrating what I'm
going to put it in scare quotes leadership or confidence
or competitiveness, but they don't examine whether or not that
leadership or that competitiveness or that confidence involves putting others down.
And so quite often we're saying, oh, my child is
(09:31):
so strong and my child is winning, but it actually
reinforces this zero some worldview where somebody has to lose
so that our child can succeed. The more the environment
is competitive rather than collaborative and cooperative, the more that
our children are asserting themselves at the expense of others,
they might look like leaders, they might look like they're winning,
it might look like they're being competitive, but for those
(09:53):
who are on the receiving end, it just feels like bullying.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Number two.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
The second thing that will prevent kids from bullying, I
think is just examining our own power dynamics. I hate
to say this, but kids who bully. There is an
association between bullying behavior and children bulling behavior at high
authoritarian parenting parenting that it emphasizes control and obedience parents
who honestly are just too tired. There was a recent
(10:18):
Wall Street Journal article that talked about how parenting is
going through a pendulum swing of mammoth proportions right now.
Gentle parenting has been the fad for the last half
a dozen years or so. It's been the crazy it's
been everywhere, But the Wall Street Journal recently reported on
something called Goodbye gentle parenting, Hello, f around and find out.
(10:38):
Fuss around and find out, we'll call it. In other words,
we're moving away from gentle parenting and moving back to
hardcore parenting. In a week or two, we're going to
do a podcast episode about why that parenting approach is
a problem. But one thing that I will highlight right
now is that when you have a fuss around and
find out approach to parenting, a consequence based, punishment based
(11:00):
approach to parenting, you're using your size advantage to make
your child comply, and you're modeling precisely the kind of
behavior that you're claiming to oppose. When you say that
you don't like bullying. Autonomy, supportive or need Supportive parenting
involves collaborative engagement with your child, and that is going
to prevent bullying more than any number of lectures about
being kind and lucky. Last, the third one is that
(11:21):
we need to This is kind of a funny one
and it might not make sense initially, but hear me out.
I think we need to ditch the quote unquote treat
others the way you want to be treated platitude. And
the reason for that is that a lot of kids
who bully have internalized the harsh treatment that they've received previously,
or they've internalized the idea that harsh treatment is normal.
I'm never endingly astounded at the casual brutality with which
(11:43):
children treat one another. And they really do think that
it's normal to mock each other, to punch each other,
to shove each other, to call one another names, to
throw slurs at one another. Because they think that it's normal. Therefore,
they think that it's okay to treat other people that way.
It's not. We need to help kids to develop empathy
by asking questions like how do you think that person felt?
(12:04):
And how would it have felt if somebody did that
to you, and if they say I'm fine with it,
then that's where we go back to it. Well, based
on the look on their face, I'm reading their responses
different to yours. We've got to get past the superficiality
of kindness and get into authentic connection. So they are
I three ways for preventing kids from bullying.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
If I was going to add anything else to your list,
I think it would be getting children outside of their
own comfort zones and getting them helping in the community,
helping other people who are less fortunate than them, who
don't have the same you know, lifestyle that they experience,
to recognize just the goodness that's in their lives and
the joy, the absolute joy that comes from helping somebody else.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
I love how I give all the fancy psychology answers
and then you step in and say something beautiful like that.
I don't know. I don't know of any psychological research
around this, But what I really do believe is that
the best way to help children to be better kids
is to get them involved in service and helping others.
They get out of their own head they get out
of their own head space, They ceased to have that entitled,
(13:12):
privileged approach to life. They just recognize how lucky they are,
how good their life is, and they want to treat
people better. Such a great response.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
We did a really simple experiment with our kids when
they were much younger. We went and visited an elderly
couple one night and we sang them some songs and
she had an experience with them. And our eldest daughter
at the time was just about to turn fourteen, and
she had a bit of anks, She had a bit
of you know, pushback, and she watched as this grumpy
(13:40):
old man and he was He was a real grumpy
old man, just sit in his chair and sob as
we spent that time with him, and something in her
shifted and she said to me when we got home,
she said, Mum, I think I want to go and
spend more time with Betty and Arthur. From then on,
every week she would catch the bus home from school
to their house and play Chicken Scratch. I still don't
(14:03):
even know what the game.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
I'm sort of a game, yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Card game, but she played it with them every week
and it was the best time of her week. Like
she absolutely loved it. Looked forward to it and the
difference it made in that elderly couple's life was just profound.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Tomorrow on the Happy Families Podcast, we talk about how
to have a conversation with kids regarding terminally ill parents.
It's a really tough one. And then later in the
week we get back to bullying no Way with a
couple of really important conversations with people who know more
about bullying than pretty much anyone on the planet. That's
all happening this week on the Happy Families podcast. Make
(14:36):
sure you stay with us and join us again. The
Happy Family's podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media.
Mim Hammond's provides admin research and additional support, and if
you'd like morefo about making your family happier, we'd love
for you to check out Happy Families dot com dot
au for more resources.
All this week It's No Bullying Week around the nation
Bullying No Way Week eleven to fifteenth of August. And
it matters, we need it why well. On a national scale,
fifty nine percent of Australian students that's two point three
million students nationally have been on the receiving end of
bullying in the last year, with twenty percent experiencing a weekly.
(00:27):
Thirty percent of Australian fifteen year olds were bullied at
least a few times a month, compared to the OECD
average of twenty three percent. Ah, the numbers just get
worse and worse and worse. Australian ranks number two globally
for school bullying. Only Latvia reports higher levels among twenty
four OECD countries, according to the twenty twenty two piece
of data released by the Australian Council for Educational Research. Today,
(00:49):
on the Happy Families podcast, we talk about three things
that you can do if your child is being bullied.
They are not the things you used to hearing, believe me.
And then we're going to talk about three things that
you can do to prevent your child from bullying. Stay
with us, Hello, Welcome to the Happy Famili's podcast Real
Parenting Solutions every day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast.
(01:12):
All this week we're going to be focused on bullying
because it's no Bullying Week, bullying no way right across
the country. Ye, We're going to kick off today's conversation
by getting straight into it and having a look at
three things that I've been thinking about to do if
your child is being bullied. I'll share them with you
and then you add your reactions. So the first thing
(01:32):
that I want to suggest is that all too often
I still hear parents say when my child is being bullied,
and this is what my dad used to teach me
if you ever get picked on, if you ever get bullied,
you just turn around and punch and right in the nose,
fight back or tough enough. It's the stand up to bullies,
tough en up narrative. And my suggestion today is that
this is the worst advice ever, telling kids to stand
(01:54):
up to bullies. I'll fight back. And the reason for
that is I see it as victim blaming. I think
that it gnare's power dynamics and it can clearly inevitably
I think escalate dangerous situations are there's stories where people
fight back. Yeah, all the time, and we kind of
get excited when somebody does that, But I just don't
think it's healthy. Instead, our job is to validate our
(02:17):
children's experience and focus on the system. Focus on finding
solutions within the school system. So work with the school,
work with the head of year, the head of house,
the deputy principle, the well being leader, whoever it is
that you can change the culture rather than asking your
vulnerable child to fix failures within the system.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
But I also think the bully wants a response, So
as soon as you give them a response, then you're
fueling the fire. You've actually given the fuel, the very
fuel that they want.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
It's kind of like social media on steroids bullying anything
that creates hostility or gets a crowd. The bully gets
status from saying, look at how tough I am, Look
what I've done. There's just something about it that is endemic.
It continues no matter how many conversations we have about it.
Here's my second one. I think that we need to
stop framing a bullying sorry as a learning opportunity or
(03:10):
a character building experience or a resilience thing. Some people
think that if you can deal with the bully, that
that must mean that you're resilient, And what I think
it does, I'm not a big fan of I think
that we've got too much conversation about trauma in our
world today. But one thing that I do know is
that bullying is a traumatic experience. And when you say
(03:31):
just be resilient, it minimizes what I would call genuine trauma.
And again, it keeps on shifting responsibility for the bullying
onto the victim. I don't think it's your kid's job
to bounce back from an unfair abusive situation. It just
doesn't seem right. Rather, we're supposed to be creating an
environment where abuse doesn't exist and our children have the
(03:54):
unconditional support that they need.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
You talk about the idea that we talk too much
about trauma when we understand that trauma isn't what happened
to us, it's our ability to process.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah, how we respond to this.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
It's all about processing and response to events in our lives.
I actually can see how so many of the life
experiences that our children go through, and even us as
adults go through, become traumatic because we actually have not
learnt the skills to be able to process challenging and
difficult experiences in our lives, and when we're unable to
(04:31):
process it, that becomes traumatic to us because we can't
move forward, we're stuck.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
This is true, However, I think the main point that
I'm making here is that the bullying shouldn't be happening.
I want perfect world solutions here, right, and the bullying
shouldn't be happening, so we shouldn't have to process it
because it shouldn't be happening. My interest is how do
we get rid of the abuse and telling the kids
that they need to bounce back, they need to be resilient,
they need to learn from this works against them now
(05:01):
once it's happened. Yes, processing is important, and dealing with
the trauma and healing from the horrible experience matters. We've
got to be careful not to make too big of
a deal about that and just guide our children gently
through it. But fundamentally, if bullying is occurring, I would
argue that almost always it's a result of inadequate structures
(05:21):
within the system to help kids be safe from inappropriate
interactions with their peers.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
I love that you said that, because I am watching
what's happening for our eleven year old daughter who's homeschooled.
We've had experiences in the school system and the challenges
that she has in relationships within the school system have
been profound. And now that she's at home, we found
this beautiful homeschooling group and these kids literally from dawn
(05:50):
till dusk can't get enough time together. They can't get
enough time together, and there has not been a single
altercation between them in over twelve months.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yep, yep. So when the system works, when you're in
a need supportive environment where you feel confident, you feel
like you have a sense of control, and you feel
like your relationships are good, you just don't get bullying.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
I don't think I can like articulate this enough. Watching
our daughter have these positive experiences within peer relationships is
mind blowing to me because in the school system, well
it's so hard to get that.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, we've had several kids who have been absolutely bullied.
I won't go further, but we've had several kids who
have been bullied because the quite often, not always, but
quite often, the school environment simply can't support needs the
same way that you can in a smaller environment. Let's
move on to the third one, because time is going
to get away from us. I think that we've really
got a challenge the punishment focus within schools when somebody
(06:54):
is being a bully, when somebody has been bullying, most
anti bullying programs fail, and I talk about this at
the National Center Against Bullying Conference about six or seven
years ago. Now, most anti bullying programs fail because they
rely on consequences and zero tolerance policies that don't address
the root cause. And so essentially, when there is a
kid who's being a bully, then all the adults in
(07:16):
the school start to bully the bully. And I'm using
that term a little bit loosely, but fundamentally, what we're
doing to kids is we're saying you did the wrong thing,
and now we're going to make you pay a price.
We're going to introduce a systemic, ongoing regime where we
make you feel a consequence because of what you're doing,
and it doesn't make things better. The idea that we're
(07:38):
going to discipline the bully, if we can get beyond
that and stop doing too but rather start working with
we're going to get better outcomes. And so many parents
demand when their child is being bullied that the school
do something, and when they say do something, they mean
I want you to hurt the kid that hurt my kid,
which doesn't lead to better outcomes at just perpetuates problems
(07:58):
within the system.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
We talk regularly about the idea that when our kids
are acting out and giving us the worst of what
they have to offer, it's the time where we actually
need to lean in, step up, and you know, get
close and intimate with them to understand the root cause
of what's going on. These kids their kids, their kids,
and they are struggling with whatever's going on in their world,
(08:23):
and it doesn't it's really hard when your child is
on the tail end of their bad behavior, Like that's hard,
it's really hard, but recognizing and knowing that somebody needs
to step up and actually help this child understand what
it is that's actually the root cause, because right now
they're acting out in anger, and we understand and know
(08:44):
that anger is, you know, kind of just masking everything
else that goes underneath.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
It's that secondary emotion. After the break, we're going to
talk about what we can do within the system to
prevent your child from being a bully. Okay, Kylie, Three
things that we can do to prevent our children from
being a bully. The first one that I want to
(09:09):
highlight is this, I think we've got to stop rewarding
dominance in disguise. What do I mean by that? A
lot of parents inadvertently encourage bullying by celebrating what I'm
going to put it in scare quotes leadership or confidence
or competitiveness, but they don't examine whether or not that
leadership or that competitiveness or that confidence involves putting others down.
And so quite often we're saying, oh, my child is
(09:31):
so strong and my child is winning, but it actually
reinforces this zero some worldview where somebody has to lose
so that our child can succeed. The more the environment
is competitive rather than collaborative and cooperative, the more that
our children are asserting themselves at the expense of others,
they might look like leaders, they might look like they're winning,
it might look like they're being competitive, but for those
(09:53):
who are on the receiving end, it just feels like bullying.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Number two.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
The second thing that will prevent kids from bullying, I
think is just examining our own power dynamics. I hate
to say this, but kids who bully. There is an
association between bullying behavior and children bulling behavior at high
authoritarian parenting parenting that it emphasizes control and obedience parents
who honestly are just too tired. There was a recent
(10:18):
Wall Street Journal article that talked about how parenting is
going through a pendulum swing of mammoth proportions right now.
Gentle parenting has been the fad for the last half
a dozen years or so. It's been the crazy it's
been everywhere, But the Wall Street Journal recently reported on
something called Goodbye gentle parenting, Hello, f around and find out.
(10:38):
Fuss around and find out, we'll call it. In other words,
we're moving away from gentle parenting and moving back to
hardcore parenting. In a week or two, we're going to
do a podcast episode about why that parenting approach is
a problem. But one thing that I will highlight right
now is that when you have a fuss around and
find out approach to parenting, a consequence based, punishment based
(11:00):
approach to parenting, you're using your size advantage to make
your child comply, and you're modeling precisely the kind of
behavior that you're claiming to oppose. When you say that
you don't like bullying. Autonomy, supportive or need Supportive parenting
involves collaborative engagement with your child, and that is going
to prevent bullying more than any number of lectures about
being kind and lucky. Last, the third one is that
(11:21):
we need to This is kind of a funny one
and it might not make sense initially, but hear me out.
I think we need to ditch the quote unquote treat
others the way you want to be treated platitude. And
the reason for that is that a lot of kids
who bully have internalized the harsh treatment that they've received previously,
or they've internalized the idea that harsh treatment is normal.
I'm never endingly astounded at the casual brutality with which
(11:43):
children treat one another. And they really do think that
it's normal to mock each other, to punch each other,
to shove each other, to call one another names, to
throw slurs at one another. Because they think that it's normal. Therefore,
they think that it's okay to treat other people that way.
It's not. We need to help kids to develop empathy
by asking questions like how do you think that person felt?
(12:04):
And how would it have felt if somebody did that
to you, and if they say I'm fine with it,
then that's where we go back to it. Well, based
on the look on their face, I'm reading their responses
different to yours. We've got to get past the superficiality
of kindness and get into authentic connection. So they are
I three ways for preventing kids from bullying.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
If I was going to add anything else to your list,
I think it would be getting children outside of their
own comfort zones and getting them helping in the community,
helping other people who are less fortunate than them, who
don't have the same you know, lifestyle that they experience,
to recognize just the goodness that's in their lives and
the joy, the absolute joy that comes from helping somebody else.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
I love how I give all the fancy psychology answers
and then you step in and say something beautiful like that.
I don't know. I don't know of any psychological research
around this, But what I really do believe is that
the best way to help children to be better kids
is to get them involved in service and helping others.
They get out of their own head they get out
of their own head space, They ceased to have that entitled,
(13:12):
privileged approach to life. They just recognize how lucky they are,
how good their life is, and they want to treat
people better. Such a great response.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
We did a really simple experiment with our kids when
they were much younger. We went and visited an elderly
couple one night and we sang them some songs and
she had an experience with them. And our eldest daughter
at the time was just about to turn fourteen, and
she had a bit of anks, She had a bit
of you know, pushback, and she watched as this grumpy
(13:40):
old man and he was He was a real grumpy
old man, just sit in his chair and sob as
we spent that time with him, and something in her
shifted and she said to me when we got home,
she said, Mum, I think I want to go and
spend more time with Betty and Arthur. From then on,
every week she would catch the bus home from school
to their house and play Chicken Scratch. I still don't
(14:03):
even know what the game.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
I'm sort of a game, yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Card game, but she played it with them every week
and it was the best time of her week. Like
she absolutely loved it. Looked forward to it and the
difference it made in that elderly couple's life was just profound.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Tomorrow on the Happy Families Podcast, we talk about how
to have a conversation with kids regarding terminally ill parents.
It's a really tough one. And then later in the
week we get back to bullying no Way with a
couple of really important conversations with people who know more
about bullying than pretty much anyone on the planet. That's
all happening this week on the Happy Families podcast. Make
(14:36):
sure you stay with us and join us again. The
Happy Family's podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media.
Mim Hammond's provides admin research and additional support, and if
you'd like morefo about making your family happier, we'd love
for you to check out Happy Families dot com dot
au for more resources.
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