Is Your Child Being Teased?

Teach Them Not to Bite
 

"Chicken."   "Four Eyes."   "We beat you. We beat you."

These are typical taunts that children regularly experience. But what happens next?
Much of that depends upon the child who is being teased. All too often children fall into patterns of reacting to the tease without even thinking, says Karen Gedig Burnett, an elementary school counselor with more than 20 years of experience with kids. For children, teasing is part of daily life. Sometimes the sole purpose of the tease is to gain a reaction. So when the child reacts, the teaser gets what they want. They feel powerful.

How can we help children learn alternatives to reacting to the tease? Ms. Burnett has developed an intriguing and entertaining approach. I compare a tease to a fishing hook, tossed out for the person to bite, she reveals. Then I show them that instead of biting and getting upset, they can learn ways to swim around the hooks. Now she offers this proven technique to all children (and those who love and work with them) in her new book, Simon's Hook: A Story About Teases and Put-Downs (© 2000, GR Publishing, $14.95 hardcover with jacket/ISBN: 0-9668530-0-8; $8.95 softcover/ISBN 0-9668530-1-6, www.grandmarose.com).

In the story, Simon feels confused and hurt when he is teased by his friends. A kindly neighbor, Grandma Rose, introduces Simon to a group of fanciful fish characters who help him learn alternatives to biting.
To stay free, the fish must learn to:
Do little or nothing, not react to the hook
Agree with the hook
Distract or change the subject
Laugh about? or make fun of? the hook, but not the fisherman, and/or
Swim on the other side of the pond, away from the person throwing hooks.

It is important that children don't get sucked into the emotion of the tease. By using the fish hook analogy they can begin to see teasing from a new and objective angle, Burnett says. It provides a very concrete example for a fairly abstract activity. Simon's Hook also helps children recognize they have choices. When a child is teased, they often feel helpless, trapped, stuck, or powerless?they think they have to bite. But by using the fishing analogy and showing them how to swim free, they see that they truly do have choices, they are not powerless. They can then begin to recognize and exercise their personal power. Personal power is not about the power we have over someone else, Burnett emphasizes. Rather, it is about the power we have over ourselves: our actions, our choices, in any given situation. This helps them feel more in control of their life and enhances self esteem.

Another important part of this approach is that it teaches the children to focus on their own actions rather than the teases or the other person. Complaining about another person's behavior, the cruel hook or the unfair situation is counterproductive, points out Burnett. By doing this children focus on things they don't control. This leads to feelings of helplessness and self pity. Instead, when children focus on their own actions and exercise their own options they feel more powerful, more in control of their life.

So how can we help children face teases and taunts?. "We can't always protect them," says Burnett. "But more than us protecting them, we need to teach them how to protect themselves. They need to learn not to bite'.

GR Publishing pub@grandmarose.com (831)335-5366

Grandma Rose's Neighborhood 2002