You Want to Do What?: Instant answers to your parenting dilemmas. Karen Sullivan

anything that his peers have, he may be stealing to keep up with the crowd; if he doesn’t have a lunch made for him or any lunch money offered, he may be hungry and angry about his position and take it out on others. If he doesn’t have an appropriate amount of pocket money for his age and is therefore unable to keep up with normal social requirements, he may resort to stealing. Be realistic, and ask some questions of your child and the parents of your child’s peers.

      

Increase your supervision of your child’s activities and whereabouts, and with whom they are associating. Spend time with your child and set reasonable rules for their activities and curfews.

      

If your child is viewing violent television shows, including cartoons, and is playing violent video games, this will increase violent and aggressive behaviour. Change the family and child’s viewing and play patterns to non-violent ones.

      

Make sure that your child is not seeing violence between members of his or her family. Modelling of aggressive behaviour at home can lead to violence by the child against others at school and in later life.

      

About one per cent of all bullies have a serious sadistic nature, in that they enjoy the pain of others. Such children tend to be rather unfeeling when they bully and are not anxious nor is their self-esteem low. Such children often have serious problems with criminal behaviour later and can become quite abusive. If you think your child may have sociopathic tendencies, ask your GP to refer you for counselling. He may genuinely need help.

      

Parents may inadvertently support bullying by accepting it as just a normal part of growing up and leaving children to solve their own problems. Don’t make that mistake. Bullying is wrong; this message needs to be repeated and reinforced in your home, and guidance needs to be offered at all stages and ages.

      

Find out exactly what it is that your child has been doing. What has your child been accused of doing? What does he admit to doing?

      

Ensure appropriate adult supervision at all times. Be aware of your child’s involvement in activities inside and outside of school. Make certain that adequate adult supervision is present in every situation.

      

Report any incidents of bullying behaviours to school officials, even if your child is the one engaging in those behaviours. This will teach your child that he or she is accountable for his or her behaviour. Engage school officials’ help in monitoring and addressing these behaviours. This will show your child that you will not tolerate such behaviour and that you want to help your child avoid it.

      

You need to give them some feedback, make them accountable for their behaviour and help them accept responsibility for it. You will need to raise their understanding of how they made it happen and enable them to look at the impact of their behaviour. Help them plan not to do it again, identify the situations to avoid and suggest alternatives to bullying.

      

Try to avoid threats and warnings which will shut your child up. You need to get cooperation without building resentment. Concentrate on passing on responsibility not blame, focus on the behaviour not the child, solutions rather than problems. Don’t bully your child.

      

Make it very clear that it is OK to stick up for yourself, but that bullying is not acceptable.

      

Assess what your child does and what he gets from it; what need is the bullying fulfilling in his life?

      

Try very hard to see your child’s point of view. It may be a complete anathema to side with a bully, but you need to understand in order to get anywhere. There may be genuine reasons for his behaviour.

      

Encourage your child to see the victim’s point of view, and to try to make up for his behaviour in some way. Ask him to think of a way he can make amends to the victim, perhaps by apologising. Perhaps if the victim is timid and shy he can befriend that child and be protective towards him or her.

      

Look at yourself, too. Make sure that you never, ever blame a bullied child or show any type of bullying behaviour yourself (such as using sarcasm, joining in with teasing or name-calling as a joke). Avoid having favourites within your family unit, and do not embarrass or humiliate your child in front of others. Most importantly, perhaps, have a reasonable and rational approach to the problem – don’t ever tell your kids not to tell tales or not to get involved. All kids face bullying today, whether as bully, victim or bystander, and they need to know that they have rights and the ability to get some help.

      

Offer to talk to the victim’s parents and to school staff, if the bullying has been happening at school. But do not defend him. Even if he was not the ringleader, the fault is still his. If you do determine that your child is using controlling, aggressive behaviour, experts agree that the responsibility lies first with you to teach your child non-coercive ways to negotiate.

      

Maintaining a set family communication time – usually dinner time – is critical, Marsh says. Deliberately pose a question to the aggressive child or all the children in the family, and then give each one an opportunity to respond without interruption and without judgement. ‘This is much better than dealing with this problem by jumping on the kid and saying, “What did you do today? That was terrible! You should know better! We’ve taught you for years”.’

      

If your child is very young, read aloud books about bullies. Let him or her take care of a pet. Invite other children over to your house and monitor them. Let them play in a non-competitive way.

      

Enrol an older child into groups that encourage cooperation and friendship, such as social groups or Scouts. Have him or her volunteer to learn the joy of helping others.

      

Remember: you are not alone. Other parents have had this problem and fixed it. One parent said the best thing that ever happened in their son’s life was when he changed from being a bully into a compassionate human being.

Calculators

      Should my child be encouraged to use a calculator for maths homework?

      Many parents are unsure of what is acceptable practice and what is encouraged by the school. Your child may be completing homework in record time by using a calculator for what was intended to be mental maths homework, or he may genuinely be following instructions. Calculators form a part of most maths teaching these days (see below), and their use is often condoned and indeed