Transcription:

Melanie Cole (Host): I’m a parent of a child who was bullied, and I say that in this episode to let the listeners know that I am coming to this segment from a place of a parent that has been there. To talk to us about bullying in the schools today is Michele Krantz. She’s the principal of La Mesa Junior High School in the Heart School District in the Santa Clarita Valley. Michele, I know that we’re not just talking about bullying in the schools because bullying takes so many forms. Tell us a little bit about the prevalence. What are you seeing today?

Michele Krantz (Guest): Well obviously we’ve got the traditional bullying that probably those of us who are a little older recall where just kids are mean over and over again, but generally speaking the epidemic honestly that we’re in right now it’s happening through electronics. The electronic and social media bullying that turns into physical altercations and even harassment at school has really taken our situation of how kids treat each other to a new level.

Host: It certainly has, and you know it’s scary for a parent these days, and as you say it’s electronic now, it’s physical, it’s mental, it’s verbal; what’s the difference Michele between conflict and harassment or bullying or peer pressure? How do we know that it’s not just normal kid stuff?

Michele: Well we definitely overuse the word bullying for sure, which I think does a disservice to the real bullying that does exist, that’s very prevalent. We’ve gotten to the point where any time a child is unkind to another child, we are starting to label it bullying, and I think that does do a disservice to those bigger issues. So the word is kind of overused now, and so that’s problematic isn’t it? How do you tell the difference? I would say when somebody’s unkind to someone, and it’s kind of a one time thing, that’s not bullying. That’s just someone not being nice. It’s not okay, but it’s not bullying. Bullying is that ongoing harassment. There’s usually some kind of power differential. You know, someone has a social power or economic status power over somebody. That’s where you really see the bullying. Where someone is truly a target and somebody is consistently and pervasively harassing them.

Host: Certainly, I assume that that’s how it’s happening, and sometimes as you say it’s more subtle and it’s not even recognizable and maybe we are overusing that word bullying a little bit too much, but can you even be bullied by a friend?

Michele: I think you can be because I think even the word friend can be loosely used. Right? We all have certain definitions. I’m surprised sometimes by when somebody refers to someone as their friend, and then you hear the stories of how they’re treated. I think you absolutely can. I think a boyfriend can bully a girlfriend. A girlfriend can bully a boyfriend. Absolutely because those are relationships. I think any relationship runs the risk of a power differentiate and that there could be bullying for sure.

Host: And as you mentioned that it can be electronic today, and we hear so much in the media Michele about you know horrific things happening to kids that have been bullied on the internet, how do you feel that’s changed, and social media changing the landscape from – you’re a principal, so you know, school yard bullying, but now it’s taken on this whole new life, and it’s downright frightening.

Michele: Well, I think one visit to anybody’s Facebook interactions, and I think adults are modeling really bad behavior. If you look at Twitter feeds and the way people attack one another that are complete strangers. We’re certainly not modeling good behavior of how people should treat one another. Parents, we’re not monitoring as parents our kids on social media. Kids are basically free to roam the world on the world wide web. I always ask parents, you know, would you go to New York City and leave your child in the middle of Times Square and say, hey your dad and I are going to go catch a show, we’ll see you back here about 9:30. Probably not, right? Because they would have access to all sorts of questionable influences and the danger of strangers, but when we give our kids as young as 3^rd and 4^th grade even, let alone middle school and even high school, free access to the world wide web, we’re giving them access to those same questionable influences, and so it’s that lack of monitoring that I think is also causing us to have this epidemic on our hands with social media and the way kids treat one another.

Host: What an amazing analogy, Michele, really, because that puts it in – I mean that puts it into perfect perspective.

Michele: It does.

Host: As we let our children roam the world via the internet, they can really get themselves into trouble. So as parents, give us your best tips on how we can identify a child that’s being bullied because even it might be hard for teachers or parents or principals to identify it sometimes because kids don’t always show the outward signs.

Michele: Well I think we need to be taking a look at their online interactions. You can see it in text messages. In my family, my daughter, I have an 8^th grader; I have a 6^th grader. They both at this point do have cell phones. Neither are on social media. Fortunately for me it’s their choice. So I think, one thing is monitoring them. My kids know if the FBI can see it, so can mom, and we do phone checks, and I don’t do the phone checks to catch them being wrong. I look for text message interactions that I can celebrate and commend them on the positive way they’re interacting with their peers. So I think just being present in their internet presence whether they just have text messaging or they do have social media. A lot of kids are creating spam accounts. So they have the one that the parents know about, and then they have this extra one. So really looking at the phone and being aware of what their actions are, and there’s lots of online services that can assist parents in better monitoring of their kids online activity, and I know that’s a trust issue in some places for parents, but I think we owe it to our kids to be vigilant. Like my analogy earlier, we wouldn’t leave in the middle of Times Square without some level of supervision I hope. The other thing is any change in behavior in a child. You know, if your once happy go lucky child who’s excited about going to school, doesn’t want to go to school. There’s mysterious illness, increase in stomachaches, headaches, anything that’s giving them an excuse not to go to school. Those should be red flags. Anything with grades, a grade drop that’s out of nowhere. Those are all sort of – they’re symptoms of potentially a greater problem and it could be happening at school or outside of home. So those are just some of the things you can look for. I think as parents, we have to build resilience in our kids, and I think we’ve got to also teach them to let some things roll. Now we never want to victim blame when a child is being harassed or bullied, we need to address that, but there are certain things that our children can do to become more resilient to kids who are not being kind. One is not respond. When somebody posts something that’s mean, the second they respond they’re basically – they’re being a puppet. That person wrote that because they want a reaction, and if they give the reaction, those kids are going to keep on writing those, so silence is such a powerful took with online bullying and just doing role plays with our kids. I started role plays with my daughters when they were very, very young, and we would talk what would you do if, how would you handle if? And they got to really think through some problem solving situations, and when those situations happened, they were prepared. You know, the soccer coach doesn’t talk about soccer practice. They don’t talk about it, talk about dribbling, talk about making the goal, they actually get out on the field and they do it, and we have to do the same thing with our children. We’ve got to practice those scenarios that they may face, and we do a lot of telling to kids. Don’t do this, and you need to do this, and you should. We don’t really ask them how would they handle it and then talk through that, empower them in a sense.

Host: That’s so important Michele, and as I said in my intro, when my daughter was bullied, I recognized it by school avoidance, and that was definitely something and that was how I found out, you know. We really talked about it, but then I didn’t know what to do because I asked her, should I call the school? No, no, no, let’s not do that yet. We did end up making a report, but what do you want parents to do? If they recognize some of the red flags that you’ve said? Do they call the school? Do they call the parents of the kid who’s doing the bullying? What do they do?

Michele: Well I think one of the things that we want to, we’re so afraid that the behavior and the treatment is going to escalate, and I think that’s a valid fear. If I report this, and the kid finds out my kid snitched, now it’s going to be worse.

Host: That’s right.

Michele: But here’s what I can guarantee you, if we say nothing and we do nothing, that bully is home free. They are free. They have carte blanche to do whatever they want on an ongoing basis because no one’s going to stop them, and by working with the school to stop the behavior, it might escalate for a small while, but it will eventually go away, and that’s been my experience. Every time a parent has brought be a bullying case, I would say pretty much every time, once we got on top of it, it stopped, but unfortunately they waited so long that it just made it harder. Had we kind of got towards the beginning of it, we would have had a better shot of peace on earth for everybody. The one thing I think is important for parents to know when their child is being bullied, is when they come home and they share what’s going on, I know our initial inclination is to run in and solve it for them, we need to, we’re going to, you should, I’m going to, instead we need to ask our child, how do you want to handle this? What is your plan? And they may come back to you and say I just want to do nothing. That is not an option, but we need to make a plan and I want you to be the person who comes up with how we’re going to handle it. So empowering our kids to have a voice in what we do next when we are being bullied is a great way to help them through this.

Host: As you mentioned, you know ignoring and those kids of things, do you want our kids to stand up to the bullies or to not fight back as it were, back in the 50s they were told to fight back, but what are some survival tips besides ignoring? You know, is there a way to, you know, for them ot defend themselves, or shouldn’t they even really try?

Michele: Well I find that, especially if there’s an audience, anytime students have a negative, verbal altercation, it escalates, and it’s sort of like, if somebody’s going to start pushing you, right? If you can walk away, you should walk away, right? Because you don’t want to stand there and be a bully to it, be a victim to it, sorry, but it’s sort of like not letting it escalate. We’ve practiced with my own girls. So we’ve done the scenario, okay somebody walks up to you and they say you’re really ugly, and I know your initial reaction is to go well you’re uglier, well that escalates it, right? And so we’ve practiced the okay, and they’ll walk away and it’s very empowering. It’s not a walk away like you’re whimpering away out of fear, it’s a okay, walk away because you’re not going to stand there and take it from that person, and if you do it with some confidence and you practice that, the person’s sort of left going, huh? What just happened here because they’re expecting a reaction, and if you don’t get the reaction, your in control, so I think that’s one posture that somebody can take. Now you can’t always walk away. There’s another school of thought where when you engage with a person, if they say something mean to you, you actually say something nice back, sincerely, not sarcastically, and again, it’s sort of a reaction they’re not expecting and they really just don’t know what to do with it. They say, my gosh you’re really ugly. You say, well I actually think you have the coolest hair ever, I wish I had hair like yours, and the person’s kind of left with, huh? And then they might try again. Well you wear those, those are lame shoes. Yeah, I’ve been bugging my mom about that, yours are cool, where’d you get them? If it’s practiced and said with confidence, the person becomes in control of the situation. That’s a hard thing to do. It takes a lot of practice. It takes a lot of confidence, but that’s what we can do to prepare our kids by role playing and practicing ahead of time.

Host: That’s amazing advice, and when you were doing that, I actually was making that mental picture in my head, and picturing somebody doing that. Of course, I fly off the handle easily, you know much more easily so I’d be somebody who’d be more willing to swear at the person and walk away, but you know, yeah you know it just doesn’t really supposed to work that way. What as an educator, do you want parents to know that the schools are doing? Is it all about assemblies and anti-bullying? What are the schools doing to help recognize, identify, and stop bullying in the schools? Well we’re doing a lot of things, and assemblies are definitely one of them, and that’s a great avenue to kind of teach large scale. Here at La Mesa and many of our schools in the Heart District, we have all been trained, the Junior Highs and a couple of our high schools have been trained in a program called capturing kid’s heart. It’s from the Flipping Group, they’re out of Texas, and what it is, it’s processes that we employ in the classroom to build relationships between adults and students and maybe even more importantly among students. So we do affirmations on campus. We facilitate kids giving positive compliments to one another. We do get to know you activities. We start, most of our classes start out with something called good things. This is an opportunity where kids can share good things that are going on in their lives. So if I were to share as a kid, we just won our soccer tournament today! The kid across the room who doesn’t know me, also plays soccer, the next time we work together, we have something in common, and building relationships when you find you have more in common with people than not, that decreases bullying and misbehavior on campus because they’re invested in each other. You’re not just this stranger anymore. So we do activities such as that. We have social contracts in the classroom that the students create on how they’re going to treat one another. Basically how do you want to be treated by the teacher? How does the teacher want to be treated by you? How do we treat each other? How do we treat each other when there’s conflict? And they put up the words, respect, kindness, patience, no put downs. So all of those things create a culture at school where nobody accepts put downs. It’s not part of our culture. Now does that mean it doesn’t happen? No, but we reach a lot more kids that way through that positivity.

Host: Wow, what an amazing educator I imagine you are, and I can hear the passion and I can hear how wonderful you are as a principal. I am sure that your kids absolutely love you. I’d love you to wrap it up, Michele with your best advice about bullying and what you want other parents, and if they’re going to play this segment, because kids are into podcasts these days – play this segment for their kids, what do you want the kids to hear about bullying?

Michele: Well for the parents, we have to intentionally teach our children to be kind. I think sometimes as parents we think, I’m a nice person, my husband’s a nice person, therefore, we must have nice kids, but kindness isn’t really rooted in our DNA. We have to model it, and we have to overtly teach it. In my family we have a Krantz family motto, Krantz people are nice people, but I’ll tell you we’re not pushovers. It just means that we have our standard and no one is going to take us away from that standard. So someone can be mean to us, we can hold them accountable for it, but we can’t treat them badly. It’s just not who we are. Students, I just want them to realize that life’s a lot easier when you go through it being kind and you want to – and we ask kids a lot of times what do you want to be when you grow up? And I think the more important question is who do you want to be when you grow up and how do you want to be remembered? And we need to expect it and we need to teach it, and it is possible.

Host: Well it certainly is, and I want to applaud you, and I have tears in my eyes just because I know the effects that this has on children all over the country and we’re seeing so much horrific details in the media and so I thank you so much, Michele, for coming on today and explaining to parents and to their children what to look for, and what the schools can do about it, and how parents and children, communicating is really the key to all of this in helping our children if they are getting bullied. Thank you again for joining us. You’re listening to It’s Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. For more information, please visit henrymayo.com, that’s henrymayo.com. This is Melanie Cole, thanks so much for tuning in.