Helping Your Child Learn Responsible Behavior - continued

Bully

Children should learn not to allow others to mistreat them. At the same time, we want them to learn how to reach understandings peacefully, whenever possible.

What to do

1. Listen to your child and find out if others are not treating your child as they should. This will encourage your child to trust you and come to you when there is a problem.
2. Help your child consider various ways of dealing with a particular problem.
3. If the problem is the way another child is behaving, suggest working out the problem by talking with the other child, or a responsible adult.
4. If the problem is another adult, however, or if your child is seriously threatened by other children, you will need to intervene directly.

A part of self-respect is not tolerating mistreatment by others. Finding appropriate ways to deal with unpleasant behavior by others is an important, if sometimes difficult, part of growing up.