Discussion of NurtureShock, Chapter 9 "Plays Well With Others"

We're talking about NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman all summer. One chapter every Friday. Jump in whenever you'd like. The first week we talked about Chapter 1 about praise. The second week we talked about Chapter 2 about sleep. The third week we talked about talking about race with your kids. The fourth week we talked about why kids lie and how we're inadvertently promoting that. The fifth week we talked about intelligence testing for preschoolers for school placement purposes. The sixth week we talked about how having siblings socializes children. The seventh week we talked about why teens lie to their parents and engage in risky behavior. Last week we talked about how to teach kids self-control. This week we're talking about what makes kids act violently.

This chapter, entitled "Plays Well With Others," irked me. A lot. I felt like the whole thing was a series of hit-and-run accidents. They dropped bomb after bomb but didn't really parse them out or help situate them, so I ended the chapter feeling confused and not sure what to do with the information. Which made me sad, because I've really enjoyed the rest of the book so far and have found it to be just about exactly the right amount of information on each topic to make me think more but not to make me obsess.

In the order in which it's presented in the chapter, here's what they told us:

• There are three kinds of aggression kids perform: physical aggression, relational aggression, and verbal aggression.
• Kids who watch educational TV programs acted more relationally aggressive than did kids who didn't watch educational TV, or who watched things traditionally thought to be "violent" (like Star Wars and Power Rangers).
• Educational TV watching increased the rate of physical aggression as much as watching violent shows did.
• Kids who see their parents fight  are stressed out if the parents don't show them how they resolve the conflict. If they see their parents fight but then come to a resolution, they did not display symptoms of stress or more aggression.
• Spanking kids and using corporal punishment increased rates of aggression in kids EXCEPT in African-American families and white Conservative Protestant families, in which kids who were spanked showed less aggression over time.
• Bullying is bad, so parents are getting excited about zero tolerance, but that makes kids afraid of the adults and secretive.
• People think that aggressive kids are kids without social skills, but the kids who are most effective at being aggressive are the ones with the best social skills (think Mean Girls).
• Parents who stop their kids form being aggressive may be stripping their kids of social tools.
• Kids spend so much time with each other instead of with multi-generational groups that they're in an echo chamber, and this feeds aggression and lack of perspective.
• "Progressive Dads," who are very involved and competent with their kids, actually have more aggressive kids than do "traditional Dads" who are involved more at their partners' direction. This seems to be because Progressive Dads know they don't want to discipline the way they were disciplined, but don't know how to stay consistent for disciplinary effectiveness.

Do you have whiplash? I do. And I have NO IDEA what to do with this information.

I'm not going to start spanking my kids as discipline. (I am a white Protestant, although conservative theologically but not.) Of all my reasons for not spanking them, fear that they would become more aggressive didn't even come into play. So I don't really have any idea what to do with the studies that show that in some US subcultures spanking increases aggression while in others it doesn't. I can understand that Bronson and Merryman were kind of tripped out by this, but it seems like it's missing the point, both of studying spanking and of studying aggressive behavior in kids. And I really can't judge because there just wasn't enough about it here.

I also couldn't really figure out where they were going with the discussion of social kids and aggression. Were they saying we should work harder to get the social kids not to be aggressive? Or that we shouldn't worry about it because aggression is another tool humans use in daily interactions? I couldn't figure it out.

Of all the chapters, this is the one I really wish they'd turned into an entire book, mostly because I think they'd *really* be able to look at all the aspects of the aggression issue to figure out if it's something to be avoided or something we should accept. As it is, this chapter just seems raw and unhelpful.

If Bronson and Merryman's people are reading, please consider exploring this mish-mash of a chapter in a long form that lets you tease out all the information instead of just tossing it together.

Did anyone feel this chapter was more comprehensible than I did? What did you take from it?

Comments

[Cloud]

Well, I didn't hate this chapter, but then I haven't been loving the rest of the book as much as some.

I thought that the bit about educational TV was interesting, but incomplete. It seemed to be lumping SpongeBob in as educational TV. The point I took was that shows that show sarcasm and teasing may actually be teaching our kids how to do relational aggression. Since that is the point I took, it didn't make me worry about the shows I let my daughter watch, which are all pretty sarcasm-free.

I liked the idea that we should let Pumpkin see us make up if she sees us argue. That makes sense to me. I'm not going to go pick an argument with my husband to put this into practice, though.

The bit that I didn't know what to do with was the stuff about whether or not aggression is "bad". I think I'll still try to teach my daughters not to be mean. But I guess I've always known that I'll need to also teach them how to handle the stuff that this chapter called "relational aggression".

To me the idea of zero tolerance on bullying means that you address bullying the first time it happens- but not that you necessarily kick the kid doing the bullying out of school. Surely there is a more appropriate response that will send the message that the behavior is not OK while still allowing for the fact that kids screw up sometimes.

[caramama]

This chapter also left me at a complete loss. I have no idea what to think now, or do. From what TV programs I should let my kids watch, to how I should treat relational aggression, to what I should think about my progressive-dad spouse! GAH!

Oh, I want to point out that they said the spanking in African-American and white Conservative Protestant families didn't increase rates of aggression because it's considered a normal punishment in those culture. It wasn't treated as a "you did something SO bad/you are such a bad kid, that you are getting spanked!"

As for the "educational" programs, I've had to limit my daughter's exposure to Ni Hao Kilan and Little Bill and some others. I noticed that she was only imitating the "wrong" thing to do, and either not sticking around to the end to see the "right" thing to do or was just not as interested in what the "right" thing was. But some programs like Dora or Little Einstens have been pretty benign in that area, so they are still regulars for us.

After some thought, I'm pretty sure I'd rather my daughter not be popular than be a "mean girl." Too bad kids can't be both. Personally, I was generally liked, not popular, and I was liked because I'm generally nice to people. It wasn't so bad.

Ditto @Cloud about the bullying.

[murphy]

I was quite interested in the bit about spanking. I was spanked as a child (part of the conservative protestant group) and totally 'got' how it was considered a normal punishment. I think it can be part of the toolkit of effective discipline for children. I had thought I wouldn't use it on my child, but after seeing the research here maybe I will. It depends on what she needs.

I thought this chapter was very interesting, and of a piece with the book. The whole point of the book is to challenge our assumptions. And this certainl added ambiguity to a topic (aggression) that is increasingly narrow-minded.

The trend to zero-tolerance of X in schools is showing laziness and rigidity on the part of said schools. Kicking a kid out of school for bullying does not solve the problem. These social interactions should be used as a way to teach and instruct in proper behavior.

Moxie, I can see how it would be frustrating to read this chapter because there are not conclusions about the issues. I think that was the point, though. That sometimes we cannot be certain and have to keep a flexible stance.

[grrrr]

I would prefer my children to be kind and non-aggressive, even at the expense of being somewhat less popular and successful. After all, I'd be richer if I cheated on my taxes, but I don't do that either. "success" isn't everything.

[Stephanie]

I haven't read this chapter (or the book) but from Moxie's summary, I can certainly see the frustration with it. Research (and common sense) repeatedly shows that children who are exposed to aggression act aggressively themselves. Sure, you might be able to find studies here and there that show unexpected findings, but this is true of almost any issue.

[Alexicographer]

I work (at a university) with, or at least in proximity to, a researcher whose work (not reading Nurture Shock, don't know if she's cited or not) has found what you describe re: spanking. Basically what I understand is this -- if spanking is a routine and consistent part of the approach to discipline in the community of which you're a part (as a kid/adult) then it's just a disciplinary tool. And it's just seen as one of the normal, loving things parents do as they teach children the rules by which we live. Whereas if you're part of a community (as I am) where spanking is seen as problematic, inappropriate, bad, etc. then it's perceived as something parents shouldn't be doing and kids shouldn't be exposed to -- so if you are a kid who gets spanked in that context either that means you've got really bad/incompetent parents and/or you're a really bad kid.

All of which honestly makes perfectly good sense to me. Until I became a parent I was all about the "don't use physical force to make your kid do something (and therefore don't spank)" logic. But I've administered enough unwanted diaper changes / hair brushings / puttings of shoes on feet / holding of hands in parking lots using my superior size and strength at this point that I think, honestly, that's a bit of a silly distinction. Of course I use my physical size to force my kid to do stuff he doesn't want to (and may at that moment find physically abhorent); don't we all?

[the milliner]

It's been a while since I read the book, but I would say that this chapter didn't leave me hanging any more than the other chapters did. I would agree that it was a bit more all over the place, and I can remember processing thoughts as I was reading the book while simultaneously trying to understand exactly what they were saying.

Regarding TV watching, my thoughts are along the same lines as @Cloud. I'm pretty comfortable with the TV that we are letting DS watch. And way before reading the book, we had already cut out some shows (I'm looking at you Max & Ruby) directed at his age group that we didn't find were a good influence. It was interesting to read that they may actually be increasing the relational aggressiveness in kids. And like @Cloud, I pretty much came to the conclusion that not all shows could be treated equally. Viewer beware.

Regarding arguing/making up in front of the kid(s), I found this topic to be the most useful for us, if only because I don't think we're the best at arguing. It's a work in progress, and we are getting better. And thankfully, we don't argue all of the time. But I do worry that we don't set as good as an example as we could for DS. The discussion on this topic was good to push me to dig a little further on this in our lives and to be a little more conscious about how we handle things in front of DS.

Regarding the idea of aggression being bad or not, to be honest, I don't really remember this topic in the chapter that well. Or remember it rubbing me the wrong way. There were some insights that seemed plausible to me. But that was about it. I'm with @Cloud and @caramama in that I want to raise a kind, unagressive kid. I want to raise DS to channel feelings that make you want to act aggressively into other expressions of those feelings (either ways of communicating your frustration, anger, annoyance etc. or ways of diffusing it, depending on the situation).

As for spanking, the info on this was the most shocking in the chapter. My take on it is that while it may not be viewed the same in other cultures, and that in other cultures it may have reduced aggressivness, I can't help but think that this is happening at the cost of self esteem. Or at bare minimum, even if it's not hurting them, it's not helping them either. Of course, this is only my hunch. And I have no proof that this is the reality. But I really can't accept the idea that hitting someone (especially a child) is OK. Even if it is culturally acceptable. No surprise that this chapter didn't change my viewpoint on the subject.

Regarding bullying, same thoughts again as @Cloud. I have no idea how it's handled in schools around us. We're not there yet. But this is a topic that DH & I have discussed, in terms of how to handle it and what to do should some situations arise (DH in particular is afraid of a 'Kick a ginger' day incident (makes me sick just writing that) that have been showing up in the paper in the last few years. I'm less afraid of this in particular, but still, I feel like it's something we should be prepared for just in case. And how the hell do you prepare yourself or your kid for something like that potentially happening? Anyhow, topic for another day...). They could probably write a whole book on bullying.

[Wilhelmina]

After all my moaning I liked this chapter and found it interesting.

It ties in with a lot of things I've observed myself over the years.

I personally have no difficulty accepting that human beings are aggressive. Homo Sapiens is violent, just ask any Neanderthal.

All social species like dogs and chimpanzees are similarly aggressive. Not verbally of course. Our brains are sophisticated and so are the many forms of aggression we have at our disposal. So we have our kinder social abilities like empathy and sympathy.

That doesn't mean that I feel that I have the right to beat, shun or slander my fellow man, but I don't expect children not to experiment with those behaviours growing up.

On the educational telly, it's perfectly true that some missionaries found that telling the story of Judas betraying Christ led to admiration of Judas instead often.

Children are bright and draw their own conclusions and may get very different messages than some programmes intend.

And on the anti-authoritarian dads I've seen a lot of that in teachers and other kids' parents growing up. If you had a violent authoritarian parent growing up you can't just be their opposite.

There was much more bullying in those teachers' classes for instance.

I'm not convinced that spanking in Conservative Protestant homes doesn't often lead to more violence in the form of children grown up to be parents themselves taking the belt to their own children later.

Or learn to associate pain with love. Freud used to say the most frequent sexual fantasy in Germany began with " a child is being beaten" and I know it's supposed to be this happy lifestyle choice but I'm not convinced on bondage and sado-masochism. A lot of that where I grew up.

Which is also why we had so many anti-authoritarians. Who got so open minded about childrens' behaviour that their brain fell out. I tend to be that way myself it must be said and working on it.

Actually of my two parents my father's cold shoulder of a punishment, not talking to you for days was harsh but effective but he believed it to be much kinder than the violence he grew up with.
He also abandoned the religion.

My mother had learned a wide range of treatments she meted out in secret. Learned at home from a father she idolised and who was a judge by day. And an elder in a very strict church.

She water-boarded me for instance in a bucket of cold water, head-first. You can't drown as your lungs are higher than your head. Yes it's torture. It all made me scared of her but it taught me nothing really.

I do love both my late parents but not as role models.

The Montessori/Froebel Kindergarten I attended was actually the making of me and the best years of my childhood. They were authoritative and I do my best to emulate them.

So I'll be sending my daughter to such a Montessori pre-school and I am confident she will not be more or less aggressive than other toddlers. And that she'll be in good hands.

[Jill in Atlanta]

I began to notice the aggressiveness from Arthur shows and books when my son was a tot. He learned words like "stupid" and ideas like hitting first from media. We immediately cut it all off. Once we exposed him to the 3 Stooges. Oh my. "Mama, why is he laughing that the other man got a booboo when he got hit by the piano?" So, no tv at our house. But it continues to come in. We try to discuss it.

When my son was being bossed around (I don't think bullied) we talked about how true friends want you to be happy and maybe this child wasn't his only choice for a friend. He took it to heart and invited two other children for his birthday, leaving the first two behind.

I feel like the sibling chapter and this chapter blend. My boys wrestle and fight all the time. It gets out of control and someone gets hurt (feelings or body) and I call a stop to it. And it happens again. When I try to rule this type of "play" out entirely, or try to encourage them to "turn the other cheek" I worry that they'll be unprepared for bullies in school. Sometimes boys have to fight back, as much as this idea bothers me. (I'm just relieved to not have girls- all the relational backstabbing I received as a girl is more than I can relive as a parent of a girl.)

[the milliner]

@Jill in Atlanta, the fighting back discussion is exactly what DH and I discuss about bullying. I agree that sometimes you can't just turn your back. You don't need to start something. But sometimes you need to stand up for yourself, which may include doing so physically.

DH was definitely told by his father to strike back and to not back down. This goes way too far for me. And I know DH doesn't want to raise DS this way. But he (and I) struggle with how exactly to coach DS on this topic, when/if the time comes.

The only thing I've (theoretically) come up with so far is that I think that self confidence and being self assured can help prevent or at least minimize the chance of being bullied. (Well, that, and maybe being really big for your age).

Dealing with it once it happens is a whole other ball game. I think physical bullying scares the me the most. I feel much more prepared to coach DS regarding verbal bullying. For physical bullying, it's all fine and good to say 'just walk away' or 'go tell an adult', but in the heat of the moment, what if there's no escape? Or it's 2,3 or 4 against one? OK, freaking myself out now. Anyhow, you get the picture.

[thenarcissistswife]

I didn't read the book/chapter, so I don't know if this was ever noted: People with high levels of narcissism/self-centeredness, including those with full blown personality disorders (and many normal teenagers), often have surprisingly high levels of social skills, at least upon first impression. But that doesn't mean you want them as a lover, parent, child, family member or close friend. After living with one up close & personal, I understand zero-tolerance - their actions are like moth-holes in fabric, small but devastating - but I also think there is something to be said for _how_ you go about addressing any mis-behavior that has to be part of the puzzle. Like, I know losing my patience & trying to elicit guilt/shame are a part of my discipline repertoire, even if spanking isn't, and I don't think it models non-aggression particularly well. (& mine is an educational program watcher).

Thus, I agree with you, Moxie, that this is not a subject that lends itself to being covered in a chapter, though maybe my cynicism that nothing in parenting does & that so much of the research out there doesn't do their subjects justice is why I haven't read the book/chapter. And as far as being at a loss about what to do with this info...well...you are the best parent for your child :). Please follow your own wise intuition with respect to your child's aggression (and also with respect to how and whether your conflicts with your spouse get resolved.) Wise intuition meaning: Don't dismiss/minimize it, don't freak out about it, and reach out for help/insight if you think y'all need it.

[BlueBirdMama]

This would be the chapter where I stopped reading the book the first time around. Like Moxie, I just threw up my hands and felt like, "What the hell am I supposed to do with this information?" First and foremost, I think that the premise that all aggression in kids is something to be terrified of and obsessively concerned about is false. As Wilhelmina said, a certain amount of aggression is just natural human behavior that the kids are experimenting with. A lot of it is developmental. Of course you have to steer and guide your child, just as you do with any other behavior you want to eventually socialize your kid out of (be it throwing food, tantrums, misbehaving in public, etc.) but I don't find it as scary as Bronson and Merriman are trying to make it-- frankly, I'm just not worried my kid is going to grow up to be some sort of violent thug. I kind of resented the "see, you thought you were doing the right thing but really your ruining your child" tone of this chapter.

IMHO, the best nugget in the chapter was the bit about letting your kids see you resolve your disagreements, not just start them.

As for violence on t.v., well, duh. No news there. It's incredibly pervasive in American programs, including those for children and, often shockingly, in commercials. I'm continually amazed that people freak out of their child sees a breast on t.v. but incredible levels of casual violence just to sell Cheetos is apparently fine. Don't even get me started on the violence and sexism in Disney films (my husband and I disagree on that-- he thinks I'm a bit of a killjoy in that respect). Anyway, for now we limit t.v. to small amounts of videos that are very non-violent and also don't include a lot of meanness/sarcasm. We'll see how it goes as he gets older...

IME, the parents of the really aggressive kids either completely ignore the behavior ("boys will be boys" or "oh, well, it's just testosterone" or "my kid is just 'high spirited'") or completely wig out when they see their child being aggressive (e.g. getting in their face and saying really loudly "NO! WE DO NOT HIT! THAT IS NOT OK!!!"), clearly because they don't know what else to do other than be completely harsh about it (this may be driven by their need to show they're being tough in front of the other parents, too). I'm disappointed the chapter didn't give more actual tools for how best to handle aggression in children.

As for us, we've had our ups and downs with toddler aggression. E. sometimes goes through hitting phases, and through phases where he's more on the receiving end. I've had many conversations with E. about bullying/aggression, as the older boys at pre-school were very aggressive this year toward the younger kids (though I wouldn't characterize it as hard core bullying and I didn't feel my son was singled out). We had a lot of discussion about how to stand your ground, say "No, I don't like it! STOP!", tell a teacher, etc. Now that E. is older and bigger, we've had conversations about being nice to the younger kids, helping them, remembering how he didn't like it when the big kids pushed him around, etc. Time will tell if he's internalizing it.

I also think that progressive dad thing is a bunch of b.s.; who says all progressive dads are the way they are b/c they had strict authoritarian fathers? And what does "progressive dad" even mean? Not a lazy-ass, retro, checked out father? My DH is a "progressive dad" I suppose in that he spends a ton of time with our son and pulls his weight at home. His discipline style is different from mine, but he's pretty consistent about enforcing rules and boundaries. He's a hell of a lot less neurotic about his parenting, more calm and confident, which I think is great for our kid. I think E.'s confident, easy going nature is due in large part the amount of time he spends with his Dad; I can't believe he'd be better off with Dad in the background. I also don't see any correlation at pre-school between more 'progressive' (again, whatever that means) Dads and more aggressive kids.

BTW, I totally get that emotionally neutral spanking meted out in a calm, consistent manner is totally different from wailing on your kid's ass in a fury (that's the kind of spanking I got). That being said, I grew in the South where spanking was the norm, and I know for a fact it hid a lot of abuse and overly aggressive parenting. Sure it makes kids behave; but how is being driven by fear of "The Belt" a desirable long term motivator for good behavior?

[Irene]

I agree that this chapter was confusing. But I think part of the lesson here might be exactly that: aggressive behavior has complicated roots and reasons.

[Irene]

Oh, and my husband's comment when I read NurtureShock and told him about the "high social skills bully"? He said "oh, so those are the ones who grow up to be the lawyers, politicians, and CEO's." Successful, yes, but maybe not so well-loved.

[sarah]

I haven't read the book Moxie, but you synopsis freaks me out. DS watches Sesame Street and no other educational programming because I find them annoying (I can't stand all the rudeness and such so I don't let him watch it). Is that really supposed to be as bad as watching a violent movie?

And I absolutely go out of my way to teach him that aggression with others is not a way to behave. I am totally that mom that says, "It is not ok to hit. We do not hit. Hands are for gentle touching. blah blah blah." I don't care if he is 2, it's not okay to hit someone and I'm working on teaching him that now. Am I insane? Am I dooming him to be bullied by kids whose parents thing it is okay to hit?

Suppose this means I need to read this book.

As for resolving conflicts in front of kids, I think it's right on. My in-laws brag that they never fought in 40 years of marriage. YOu know what that tought their kids? That married people don't argue. So when conflict arrises, my hubby still has trouble processing it and even admitting it, instead he avoids it, hoping it will go away.

[Lucy]

I haven't been able to read the chapter, but dealing with aggression is high on our agenda these days.

Our 4.5 year old and 2 year old boys interact in a highly physical way, and learning to set boundaries around it is hard for me. So far we've settled on 'Both people have to enjoy the game, or it needs to stop.' And we're working on 'use your words' if you're angry.

The 4.5 year old is now one of the oldest in his pre-school/childcare, and seems to be clashing with another older boy. My kid is hitting, the other kid is biting. The school is 'monitoring' the situation, as are we. Isn't 4.5 a bit old to still be biting?

Dealing with physical bullying is also a topic of discussion as my husband was badly bullied, and it only stopped when he hit one of the kids with a metal pipe. This is horrifying for me, but I was never, ever around the physical bullying that he dealt with. So far we've decided that both kids will learn a marshal art, to instill a physical confidence and discipline--we hope.

So, all in all, I'll be reading today's discussion with interest.

[wealhtheow]

Our guy is pretty tiny, so we're definitely going to enroll him in martial arts. My mother always taught us NEVER to hit first, but to definitely hit back. It was advice we never needed to use, but I think it's good advice regardless. My big hope with enrolling the boy in martial arts is not so much that he'll learn the skills to finish any fight he gets involved in, but that he'll develop the kind of confidence that makes bullies leave him alone. I've known several black belts, and none of them are particularly aggressive, because they know they don't need to prove anything to themselves. That's the kind of quiet, strong energy I want for my son. I hope that taking that path helps him channel any aggression into positive energy, whether that aggression comes from him or from others.

[Leanne - Momcast]

It was a while ago that I read this chapter but it made a lot of sense to me. I agree that it seemed to lack some guidance around best practices, but then this book isn't a parenting guide but a collection of information parents should know, in my estimation.

One thing I have a problem with is the misunderstanding of what bullying is. The zero tolerance era has ended up obscuring the actual meaning so that now, aggressive children are bullies instead of just plain old aggressive.

Bullying is a systematic pattern of abuse. It doesn't always include physical violence and always has a high degree of relational aggression. The kid A, who hits kid B on the head for playing with the bus toy when kid A wanted to play with it is not a bully. Kid A isn't even a bully when these sorts of incidents happen every day, many times a day. Kid A is a bully, however, when they choose a particular child or group of children and consistently acts aggressively towards them in order to achieve emotional satisfaction or achieve a social goal.

I think the big take away from this chapter is that we have to stop micromanaging children's aggressions so that they can learn to not be aggressive. How do you learn to not hurt others, the authors seem to be saying, you hurt peers and get hurt by peers and observe and process the personal physical and emotional consequences.

There was A LOT more schoolyard scuffles when I was a kid in the 70s. I always observed that boys fought and then were friends because they were tradionally allowed to be physical (boys will be boys) in a culture that accepted this.

Girls were never supposed to act aggressively so they tended to "hold grudges". Their fights would go on an on because they were less savvy at fighting than the boys, who were able to leave their conflicts in the schoolyard, so to speak, and be fine friends afterwards.

In today's era, because of the fear of childhood aggression, a zero tolerance culture and the micromanaging of our children's emotional lives, attempting to let "boys will be boys", whether girls or boys, so that they can learn conflict resolution first hand, is doomed to failure because we have neutered many children's ability to manage these "ugly" emotions and behaviours. We have to run around protecting all the delicate little children whose parents and our institutionalized culture have forbidden aggressive physical contact.

Anyway, I've gone on far too long. But these were all my thoughts when I read this chapter.

[marci]

interesting point, leanne.

i've read somewhere something similar, that boys are more socialized to be able to work with people they don't necessarily like because of team sports - you don't have to like the first baseman, you just have to throw him the ball to help the team - and girls haven't traditionally had much of that background, so liking your coworkers is perhaps overly important to women.

but the getting in a physical fight & making up might not necessarily mean you don't like someone, in the same way that a teenager snarking with a parent might not mean 'fight' to the teenager. hmm. don't know what to do with the info, but interesting insight.

i like the idea of martial arts for my small guy. i'll remember that for later.

[Alisha]

I'm thinking about my eighth grade students and all the programs aimed at taming their aggression and preventing bullying. Nothing works, no matter how hard I try to stress tolerance above all in the classroom. It occurs to me that rather than try to fix what we perceive as bullying, however it is defined, we might instead work on giving kids tools to practice responding to such bullying--a sort of cognitive therapy toolkit. As others noted, aggression will be there no matter what we do. It's how we react to this and how deeply it wounds us (or, in a better case, doesn't affect is) that might be what matters. I'm not talking about actual ass-kicking, though--not sure what to do when the threat is physical. But I more often see the emotional bullying (daily, sadly) and the toll it takes on kids. I want to teach those bullied to care less, to learn that they can actually choose how to feel, in some ways. It took until my 30's to be able to see this myself. Instead of trying to fix how other people behave, I've learned to fix how I am affected by them. I'm so zen, right? It's a constant effort.

[caramama]

As for fighting in front of the kids... what if I don't want to make up yet? What if I want to pout and be pissy with him the whole day? How bad is that for the kids? We always make up eventually...

;-)

[caramama]

Ignore my last comment. Thank goodness my husband is a bigger person than I am. heh.

[Leanne - Momcast]

Alisha, that is a fantastic strategy: you can't choose your circumstances, just how you react to them.

I try to do this with my son, who usually expresses his emotional wounds with physical aggression in the school setting. It's incredibly frustrating to have to retrieve a 5 year old (he's now 7 and much better at managing his emotional response at school) from the principle's office because he went bonkers and hit someone after they told him he was stupid and wasn't allowed to play "star wars" with them in the playground. Hitting back is so not appropriate, but the emotional response to the relational aggression is totally understandable. We have spent the last 3 years in formal schooling having a lot of talk about how to respond to different stimulii :)

[Shandra]

This book is still not in at the library for me but this discussion will be great to refer to.

On bullying, I really do like Barbara Coloroso's book on it which includes the role of the bystander. I have seen a tendency to frame one bad interaction or a conflict in young (<6) kids as "bullying" and I'm not comfortable with it. So I think information is good.

For spanking I guess I will always be with Alice Miller on this one. Just because people adhere to societal norms around aggression or even self-report that their childhood was fine does not make them okay.

I wanted to respond to the idea of physical force above. Although I also tried to minimize the "hold down while strapping into carseat" model as well, I agree that at certain stages parents do leverage their discipline with physical follow-through.

But to me this is still fundamentally different than using pain (spanking) as negative reinforcement. When you click the straps shut, it's clear your goal was to get the carseat fastened. But when you spank, your goal is to control some completely different situation with the fear of that punishment being repeated. It's just not the same, for me.

[Raia]

Shandra, I agree completely with the difference in using your size/superior strength to spank vs. using your size/strength to fasten safety belts.

LOL @ Caramama! Hope it got better quickly! And hey, hopefully the kids will learn how to deal with someone who is pissy all day.

[Katherine]

I know I'm late on this one (and I don't have the book in front of me) but regarding the spanking, my understanding wasn't that the kids who were spanked (african american or conservative) were less aggressive than other kids, but that it wasn't as detrimental because it was seen as something "normal" instead of something "really really bad", so when they were spanked it didn't hold the same amount of psychological trauma that it might for someone else.

I am vehemently anti-spanking, but this sort of made sense. Even if you take it to something else, for example, if you are a kid and everyone you know has divorced parents, it will still be sad and hard, but perhaps not as hard if almost everyone you know has divorced parents. So, I think it would be more accurate to say that the negative effects of spanking weren't as bad in those groups, but I don't think there was evidence that the spanking was actually beneficial.

[Pippi]

Leanne -- I really like your comment about micromanaging kids' disagreements. I saw this as a teacher a lot this year. I had a class of lovely students, but they couldn't play soccer or kickball together without me constantly solving every. single. problem. Even the parents would come to school expecting us to solve problems between students that occurred on the weekend. I wonder if we add to the bullying by never letting kids play by themselves and work things out on their own even if it gets a bit messy sometimes. Can a class really teach conflict resolution skills as effectively as navigating experiences by themselves?

I really struggle, both as a parent and as a teacher, with when to let go and when to get involved. I certainly don't want any child, my own or one my students, to be tormented physically, verbally, or emotionally. I also don't want to interfere so much that they never get to develop and practice skills that they'll need throughout their life.

Now if someone would do some research on that I will run out to the bookstore for the book!

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