Bullying: How Should Schools Respond?

As school begins, we all set high hopes for wonderful school experiences in the new year.  Parents are excited to see their children return to the routine of school, but many are reticent as fear lies in the background, the fear of bullying.   A topic in schools and among parents, Queen bees, cliques, schoolyard fights and horrifying tormenting that has crippling effects on students are all lumped into the one category:  bullying.

Tormenting of children is an unacceptable occurrence, and schools must take a hard line in true bully prevention.

I am curious, however,  about childhood behavior that is often seen as intentional bullying but is rather the genesis of what later becomes bullying in the adult world: a child who has not been taught about emotional regulation, identifying feelings, development of empathy, and solving conflicts in peaceful ways. Children who are punished for isolated incidents instead of being taught new ways of dealing with emotion or problems become adults whose fear and anger run rampant later in life.

It’s true that some heinous things have happened to children who were victims of vicious behavior by peers. These stories and the books that have been written to enhance the financial security of authors create a mania of mislabeling normal childhood behavior as bullying. They are scary stories that provoke fear in adults, particularly in adults who feel vulnerable.  Adults who feel vulnerable need guidance in how to sift the fact from fiction and learn to support their child without enhancing problems.

Adrienne van der Valk, in her article “There are no Bullies: Just Children Who Bully—And You Can Help Them” (http://www.tolerance.org/print/magazine/number-45-fall-2013/there-are-no-bullies), wants educators and parents to ask about children who exhibit bullying behavior:

‘Why do they have this need for control and power?'”

As adults we must do all we can to ensure that children are safe. But being safe does not mean that children are never hurt. Life does bring with it unexpected situations. These situations allow children opportunities to develop the skills of dealing with adversity. Van der Valk points out that bullying behavior spikes when children feel off-kilter in the social scene. They use tools that think will get them what they want.  People learn through trial and error, especially young people.  And as adolescence bring in new factors, physiology and socially, their problem solving becomes newly challenged.

Mistakes are a part of learning.  Most children will bully at some point in their childhood.  We do not expect perfect behavior of children;  our goal is to create thoughtful humans who can learn from their mistakes, make reparations, and move forward in life as better people.

In The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander,  author Barbara Coloroso explains that the solution to bullying behavior and the often mislabeled isolated violent action is to involve parents and schools to support children in learning social tools.

Coloroso describes healthy family cultures that nurture secure attachment and foster strong self-directed behavior. She notes the following attributes of environments that foster healthy problem solving behaviors:

• Environments that teach democratic principles by respecting children’s feelings and perspectives.
• Environments that foster “creative, constructive, responsible activity”
• Discipline that allows for limit setting, but also allows the child to keep dignity and create reparations, leading to the teaching of self-regulation rather than a fear of punishment.
• Reasonable and natural consequences to undesired behavior.
• Children are given opportunities to learn about their feelings and to develop tools in which to help them use thinking to express those feelings in a healthy manner. (Social Thinking, developed by Michelle Garcia Winner, and mindfulness training can be implemented in classrooms to teach specific skills such as perspective taking, empathy, and learning to pause and consider options.

We are missing the very opportunity we require to help children learn how to be respectful members of a community when we punish children for their isolated lack of self-regulation skills rather than using  incidents for teaching. The root of the word discipline is not “to punish” but “to teach.”

Repeated hurtful behavior must be stopped. If a parent feels that a child is bullied and the bullying cannot be stopped, sometimes finding a new school is the best alternative. But parents need to know that a child who hurts another child is a hurting child. Both children need attention and development of social and emotional skills.

The pendulum has swung too far  from ignorance of the existence of bullying behavior to creating bullies where children who need our help exist. School handbooks outline specific definitions of bullying and harassment for adults and children as well as preconceived consequences instead of enlightening parents about the social causes for behaviors we label bullying.  Schools need to have effective programs that develop interpersonal skills within all classrooms;  teachers need training to become child advocates, not police.  School routines and supervision are often a factor in perceived bullying, easy remedies for bullying within the school environment.

Bullying is a problem and also a wonderful opportunity in our schools. The real solution to  what is commonly described as “a bullying problem” is for adults to become curious and mindful about their own behaviors, own the important task of teaching social emotional tools, and lead by example.

Testing for Giftedness: New York Leads the Way?

Ah, yes, New York, once again hits a home run, sending education over the back fence.  In an article titled, “Schools Ask: Gifted or Just Well-Prepared?”  we find the newest trend in education to be cranking out 4-year-olds who can pass admissions tests for entrance to gifted schools.  In fact, the kids have become so savvy as a result of excellent tutoring programs geared at the tests, that the bar keeps rising.  The tests just can’t keep up.

The creator of the test, Dr. Samuel Meisels from Chicago’s Erickson Institute, asserts that the test is used erroneously;  the test was designed to detect early delays to enable skilled early childhood educators and parents to provide intervention for children who might not otherwise be successful in school.

One wonders what the definition of giftedness is, and why we need to identify giftedness so early in a child’s life?  Is it just to skim the cream off the top so that schools can enroll homogenized kids?  Or is giftedness more difficult to discern, as Harvard’s Howard Gardner has postulated?  One who has worked with gifted students in middle school can see a profile of a student who hungers for more,  requires uniquely tailored learning experiences, and is likely to be a quirky kid who is anything but homogenized!  And as Gardner notes, giftedness shows up in many venues, among them: artistic, scientific, nature-oriented, social-emotional, few of which can be identified on a test given to children at the age of 4.

So let’s talk about 4-year-olds.  Is it possible to train a bright 4-year-old to pass items on a test?  Yes.  Is it also possible that a gifted child might lack the focus at 4 to sit still for a test, lack the dexterity to use a pencil effectively, or might be more interested in taking apart the phone of the person administering the test?  I’d think so.  4-7 year old children are what I describe as “popcorn.”  They inexplicably develop along their own timeline, irrespective of cognitive potential, for cognitive potential is what most of these tests attempt to measure.  Development is multi-faceted, and as children age and grow “into themselves” they reveal increasingly the kinds of bits of themselves of which Gardner speaks.  Do 4 year-olds benefit from the specter of adults hovering over them to ensure they can meet marks meant for older children, children whose bodies have fully developed? What are we doing to the children whose giftedness is being cultivated like a prized rose?  What will they learn about their value as human beings?  What will they feel as they step forward into their lives?

Truly “gifted” students require specialized schooling.  As a society we need to begin to address the education of children to discover the humane and nurturing response to the needs of truly gifted children.   And what about the assumption that cognitive potential is fixed by 4?  Why do we accept that assumption?  The current process of training and testing 4 and 5 year-olds is off the mark, particularly to those of us who care about the well-being of children.

“The Impossible”: Lessons for our World

(photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/jynmeyer/57795277/)

Wayne Dyer tells us that  people are like fruit.  Squeeze an orange and orange juice, not lemon juice, will drip out.  Events in our lives reveal to us the truth of who we are by applying pressure and requiring us to peel off that hard exterior.

This last year has provided Americans with significant events that point the way to our interior lives.   One can ask why such things happen, and one can ask about the meaning of such events, to no avail.  But natural and human-caused tragedies, political necessity, and personal life events reveal much about us as people.

The movie, “The Impossible” chronicles one family’s struggle following the Asian tsunami of 2004. One cannot possibly provide a legitimate portrayal of the catastrophic proportions of devastation, but viewing the shocking tragedy through the eyes of one family allows us to step out of the story to hear the words of Maria Bennet, a character based on the true events in the life of Maria Belon.

Designed for Hollywood melodrama, perhaps, Maria’s words come at a time when she seems unlikely to survive, propped up by the stoic companionship of her son, Lucas.  As mother and son  plow through mire and muck, they hear the small voice of a child.  Lucas insists that they head for shelter in a tree, protection from a possible oncoming surge of water.  His mother tells him, “What if that child were your brother?  Wouldn’t you want someone to help him?  If this is the last thing we do, we need to save him.”

I am the first to call myself a romantic.  As I think about political rhetoric, the recent tragedies,  and as I think about the many agendas we debate as a nation, the courage of Maria Bennet stands out as a challenge to me, for sure, and I hope to us all.

What last action would we want to define our lives?  What do we want to protect:  our greed or our children?  Our bottom line or our planet?    What can we bring into the focus of our lives in this new year to lead with our compassion and our hearts?  How can we turn this tide of combative energy in this country toward a spirit of collaboration to meet the difficulties we face?

Empathy: A timely topic.

I find it impossible to maintain both a sour disposition and the full presence of the ocean.  In the same way that our own, small, human experiences disappear in the presence of nature, empathy for another human being is transformative.

Empathy can be painful for us as we view the tragedies that play out in the world. At any given moment, our hearts can be filled with grief, causing us to feel vulnerable and impotent.  However, when armed with full understanding of the power of empathy, we can move out into the world with a commitment to shine our mirror neurons into the light.  Empathy implies “shape-shifting” or finding a way to view the world in a new way.

“We worry about our traditional literacy rates, but we should be more worried, I think, about our emotional literacy, our ability to connect to ourselves and one another. In schools, we teach children to read, but if we don’t teach them to relate to others, they will be lost in life—lost in their relationships, they will not have success in their jobs, and we will not have peace in the world.”  — Mary Gordon, founder of Roots of Empathy, a program that brings babies into the classroom to cultivate empathy in children, http://www.rootsofempathy.org/.

What is empathy?  Research is still filling in the blanks about this mysterious and necessary human trait, but most agree that empathy reflects a person’s ability to feel the emotions or understand the perspective of another.  Some forms of empathy are innate, displaying as soon as we are born!  Newborns reflect the moods of their caregivers or cry in response to the cries of other babies. Newly discovered “mirror neurons” allow us to internalize emotional states of others. Our own  personal growth capacities allow us to be compassionate rather than responding to another person’s emotional state with criticism or our own upset. Our wiring for empathy may be in our DNA. Fraser and Bugnyar found that ravens observing a conflict offered consolation to the victim.

Children raised with empathic parents seem to grow up to be empathic adults. My good friend and professional colleague, Kelly Priest, reminds us that autistic children can benefit from therapies such as Social Thinking, by Michelle Garcia Winner, that cultivate skills in shared perspective taking (http://not-that-special.com/2012/12/25/they-lack-empathy/).  Autistic children, says Priest, possess empathy but may have difficulty expressing it.

Mirror neurons explain the phenomenon of shared moods, paving the way for either raising or lowering the emotions of a work or social situation.  As we become more sensitive to our own moods, more self-reflective of our own inner worlds, often referred to as “resilience,” we acquire skills in shaping the world around us.

Perhaps counter to our own expectations, Lisa Sideris tells us that the most resilient, adaptive individuals are those who have experienced challenges in their lives and identify as “survivors.”  People who acquire the traits of “flexibility, sociability, confidence, and curiosity” as a result of physical and mental trauma, according to Sideris, have the inside track on developing empathy.  Education and exposure to those outside our own cultural identities also expand empathy.

Empathy, when carried into action, allows us to contribute to our families, our work, and our society.  Empathy in action brings us closer to people in our daily lives and allows us to contribute in socially meaningful ways.  As a young dancer, my teacher cautioned:  “Bring in foul energy and you pollute us all;  bring in bright energy and you contribute to everyone’s experience.”  She described the power of empathy in action.  Walk into the business meeting with confidence and “good vibes” and you bring the possibility of a positive outcome.  Find the right word to change a trying family moment; transform tension to humor.

We can even embody empathy for our planet, thus cultivating habits that benefit everyone.  Keep bags in your car to bring to the market;  walk when you can;  turn off the water while brushing your teeth.

Empathy.  I see you, I feel you, I empower your life and mine.  Doesn’t that sound like a good start for a new year?

Slow Living in LA…continued

One of the blessings of living in LA is the access to so much popular diversity. I love working with and having friends of different cultural backgrounds. I feel expanded as I look at life from different vantage points.

I am reading a book, given to me by a dear colleague in education, about the Chabad movement. As I struggle with a commitment to lose 35 pounds to amend a genetically instigated cholesterol reality, I was struck by the author’s description about the food regulations about which she writes. She described the kashrut laws as enabling a person to slow down as they contemplate what they are choosing to eat. The idea resonated so strongly with me as I shift into new life patterns of eating guided by what foods will contribute to my health. Rather than feeling restricted, I feel liberated by giving myself the time and opportunity to consider my choices.

As a young, working mother in Los Angeles, my life was on super-drive. I lived in the San Fernando Valley and found a wonderful job in Santa Monica, so I commuted even though I had a job two blocks from my house. I gave a baby shower for my brother- and sister-in-law, and thought nothing of collecting kewpie dolls in all sizes from Pasadena to Torrance for the decorations (in pre-internet search times!). I was blessed with three amazing kids, and their activities kept me in my car. Perhaps that is a function of youth, to be fast, thorough, and cover lots of turf?

I am doing something that I wanted to do earlier in my life, building a career as a consultant. It’s brave to step out in a new phase, and financially tougher in some ways. But my choices allow me to shape my reality. I choose to cut costs rather than working hard to pay for things I don’t really need. I iron my clothes rather than sending everything to the cleaners. I eat less, eat out less, and clean my own house. I enjoy being home, really home, not just stopping for a short respite from my next activity. I notice that I spend more time connecting with friends, so I don’t feel the need to plan large, expensive parties each year at the holidays to “catch up,” which one can never do en masse anyway.

People ask me how I like LA, and I answer differently than I would have 20 years ago. I love life in LA. I have cut my life down to manageable bites, literally and figuratively. I spend most of my time within a small radius of my home, share a car with my husband so I walk for many of my errands, and keep trips to far corners of the city to a minimum.

Life is simpler, more meaningful, now. Perhaps it is a function of growing older. If so, I embrace it. I have more energy and happiness than I had 20 years ago and I embrace that, too. I have time and space to ask myself: What do you want?

I am answering that question day by day, moment by moment.

Life is Grand!

If you don’t recognize the photo, it’s a sunrise on Lake Michigan taken from a hotel in Chicago.  Chicago, it seems, is a part of my heart, as someone dear to me lives there.  I’m not in Chicago and did not take the photo; my husband did, and emailed it to me in DC.  He went there when I left for a long-needed vacation with a dear friend.  It seems a part of my heart lives in DC as well.  And in Oregon, and in Las Vegas.  In fact, if I tally it all  up, parts of my heart are in Alaska, Texas, Canada, San Francisco, St. Louis, San Luis Obispo, Ukraine, Minnesota, North County San Diego, Mexico, and all over nooks and crannies of the Los Angeles area.

Our hearts are amazingly expandable.  I can sit here looking out into the forest and feel my heart in all those places, seeing the faces of loved ones and friends and flashes of memories.  When I choose to spend time and money to see them, I’m recharged; but when I’m focused on other things, I can tune into my love-line, visualizing the beautiful faces and locales. Like pearls on a necklace, they shine brightly.

Vacations give us a change of perspective if we are willing to move with the energy of newness. The energy of newness is slow energy. Being here in DC, along with the reddening trees, my pace is slow, even slower  than my newly crafted, self-employed life has offered me the chance to be.  Slow energy is something I experienced as a dancer. Slow energy is not lazy energy;  as a dancer I moved all day, first in modern, then in folk, then swimming for a change of pace, and lastly in the studio for choreography or a master class.  Slow energy is being fully alive and at the same time present to mind, body, and spirit. Slow energy crawls up our bodies from the center of the earth, grounding us with intention.   Slow energy is different from LA, fast-paced energy, the kind that makes us believe that we must get so many things done in a day.  On vacation I set aside more of my “shoulds” and move more akin  with my dancing self, with more intention and less restriction.  Although my home provides me with the beach and beautiful weather,  I seem to allow daily life to  intrude on my real appreciation of the kind of presence provided by slow energy.

Today is day six of my vacation.  It’s been a long time since I have been away from home without a work agenda for an extended length of time, and three more days are to come!  I’m able to make this time available to myself firstly because I ask for it, secondly because I have a wonderfully understanding husband, and thirdly because I have a kind and generous friend who shares her home with me for as long as I like.  It’s easy to step into slow energy surrounded by the greenery, the freedom to plan my days minute by minute, and the patience and ease of a truly open hostess.

As I sit here, my fantasy becomes one in which all of my special people, all over the world, can know one another and see each other as I see them.  Next, the locus of the fantasy as me, becomes a many faceted matrix composed of each of them as the center of their own wonderful, heart-opening lives.  I imagine the world, criss-crossed by the fabric of human compassion, lit by one face and one snapshot at a time the movement of loving energy all over the planet.   I wonder if I can bring home awareness of the peace and love I feel as I sit here alone, filled with the slow, purposeful, and intentional energy that follows us everywhere we go!

Update on Carsharing in LA

Week number three of carsharing: all is well. Although my husband and I both have intensive, full time jobs, we have somehow managed to set up a lifestyle without the requirements of one car per person. Significantly absent in our present stage of life are our three children. After 33 years of active parenting and the carpool aspects that go along with that dedication, our “empty nest” status confers some freedom from car bondage.

Two aspects of our lives have allowed this unique LA experience: we are dedicated to clear communication and we have focused on finding jobs that are within 15 miles of each other and our home. As challenging as communication can be, locating jobs within 15 miles of each other can be prohibitive in Los Angeles, as my sojourn to San Francisco demonstrates.

But here we are, managing. We find that clarity helps, and releasing our stereotypes of each other is a necessity. In no situation is the adage about assumptions more applicable. In our early years of marriage, my husband would be very loose with time; a 7:00 date was really at 7:30. His work addiction often left me waiting at home long after the agreed-upon 6 pm dinner.

No longer. Now when he says I should pick him up at 9, he means 9! I need to ask: Is that a firm 9 or should I come a little early and plan to work while I wait for you? (No sarcasm, please!!–just a clear question).

We have given up the need for an immaculate car; our car now houses both of our belongings: in the car, my gym bag and his dry cleaning, in the trunk a slew of shopping bags, various school materials (mine, usually), and any other regalia we accumulate.

Car sharing means giving up some autonomy but cultivating partnership and collaboration. I think it’s worth it!

Compassion for the world: Sharing a Car in LA

After my two-year sojourn in San Francisco, I developed some habits I’d like to maintain as I re-enter life in Los Angeles:  recycling everything possible, always carrying my own bag, and walking in place of driving.  LA does not make it easy for me to retrain myself!  In San Francisco, everyone walks out of a movie to find a choice of where to drop one’s trash:  recycle, compost, or trash. In LA I’m hard pressed to find a trash can, much less a recycling or ,Heaven forbid,  compost container!  In SF store owners comment if one requests a bag, and Whole Foods contributes money to feeding the homeless for every bag brought in.  BART and other public transportation ease life for those who do not have cars, and parking in San Francisco is as challenging as the weather up there, providing yet another impetus to walking. In LA we are always in a hurry to do everything we can on the way to where we are going.

My health improved as I adjusted to life without a car.  I lost weight from walking everywhere. I challenged myself to create interesting explorations, often walking more than two hours toward a destination, increasing my stamina both for climbing hills and long walks.   My knee and hip joints loosened.  The pain of walking stairs disappeared and yoga became enjoyable rather than painful.  I felt 10 years younger.

We  sold two of our three cars when I moved to San Francisco and our youngest moved to Chicago.  My husband was left with a single car in LA.  When I returned, I saw in full-blown detail the non-homeless version of living in one’s car. Both my husband and I shifted when we entered the car, and I don’t mean the transmission.  He pushed the seat back;  I pushed the seat up.  He changed the channel from music to sports and I changed it back.  When he drove, his workout clothes and backpack were where he wanted them, and the dry cleaning both dirty and clean had their respective places as he drove each morning both to a coffee store and the cleaners.  I anticipated removing his things and placing my cell phone in the median, my water in the cupholder, and my things on the back seat as I moved his things into the trunk.   I dearly hoped that I could create a life without dependence on freeways and car-based errands and that both of us could be flexible enough to find other ways to organize our days.   I challenged my husband to entertain the notion of being a one-car family, at least as a trial.

Summer vacation days (we are both on school calendars for our jobs) were a snap.  Walking become part of our daily routine.  We aimed at doing at least one walk a day, sometimes more than one as walking errands and finding resources in our home neighborhood become a high priority.  When our work began, we hit our first snag.  Each of us had histories of organizing our lives around our cars, and as we fell into the new school year, old habits emerged.  The conflicts that ensued presented the first blessing of the one car family:  focusing on communication.  Not only was it possible to shift from our habits, it was also possible to discuss the logistics of each day without rancor or anxiety.  Our focus became each other rather than the list of necessities in our head.  We aimed at collaboration rather than satisfying personally-oriented agendas.

The second blessing was the need to shift perspectives as we collaborated.  We began to see that our necessities were not as fixed as we thought they were.  We were used to operating alone, in different cities, and conjectured that we had operated that way even before I went to SF.  As we worked together to share the car, we worked together to see the day from each other’s point of view and through the lens of new possibilities. The third blessing:  we found we did not really need to accomplish everything we originally planned to accomplish.  We made more time to be with each other. We now enjoy walking together.  Our errands are often wrapped around a walk. Perhaps living 1000 miles away from each other set the groundwork for wanting to spend more time together, but sharing a car provided the need.

While my motivation for being a one-car family was somewhat financially motivated and at the same time motivated by wanting to maintain my healthier life  San Fran life style, the “aha” came when I read an article in the  Winter, 2009 magazine,  Greater Good, documenting a discussion between the Dalai Lama and Paul Ekman.  Americans are attached to materialistic ways of life;  releasing the attachment becomes a compassionate practice.  Choosing freely to forego our American desire to “have it all” one comes in contact with one’s heart.  We see that we are contributing to the future, a world in which our resources support everyone on the planet.  We cannot cure all of Earth’s problems, but we can start with committing to one act of releasing attachment.  The act brings us in touch with our compassion for those outside of ourselves, and brings compassion close to us as well.

I do not know how long this experiment will last.  Our daughter will visit in a few weeks and she will put a third person into the equation as we plan for use of the car.  I can tell you that so far, I have found Ekman and His Holiness to be right:  as my husband and I  exert effort to reduce our ecological carbon footprint in Los Angeles, we gained access to compassion for each other. What could be a better outcome than creating a better world for future generations while we create more peace in our present world?