Sunday, January 18, 2009

DVD teaches autistic kids what a smile means

DVD teaches autistic kids what a smile means is an article about using technology to further social learning. The DVD mentioned in the article teaches autistic children how to recognize emotions like happiness, anger and sadness through the exploits of vehicles including a train, a ferry, and a cable car. Has anyone else found technology or software to further social learning?

A Sisterhood of Workplace Infighting

An interesting article concerning women and workplace bullying can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/jobs/11pre.html?_r=1&em. It is called A Sisterhood of Workplace Infighting.

I thought this was an interesting section:

But while women have come a long way in removing workplace barriers, one of the last remaining obstacles is how they treat one another.
Instead of helping to build one another’s careers, they sometimes derail them for example, by limiting access to important meetings and committees; withholding information, assignments and promotions; or blocking the way to mentors and higher-ups.

And if you are a woman and happen to have a female co-worker who is a bully, watch out. A recent study by the Workplace Bullying Institute examining office behaviors like verbal abuse, job sabotage, misuse of authority and destroying of relationships found that female bullies aim at other women more than 70 percent of the time. Bullies who are men, by contrast, tend to be equal-opportunity tormentors when it comes to the gender of their target.

I am interested in hearing if others agree that females tend to bully other females while males bully both male and female. What has been your experience?

You can get more information about workplace bullying at Bnet.com. Go to http://resources.bnet.com/index.php?q=How+to+Handle+a+Workplace+Bully

Monday, January 12, 2009

Movie: An American Girl: Chrissa Stands Strong -- My thoughts

I recently viewed the movie An American Girl: Chrissa Stands Strong. It’s about a fourth grader and her friends who deal with bullying from a more popular girl in their class. I recommend it for kids between 2nd and 5th grade. Older kids might enjoy it, too, and I’m sure can relate to some of the bullying issues and how easily some adults just ‘miss’ the aggressive behaviors that is right in front of their face. Children, parents and educators can all learn good bully prevention strategies which is the strong point of this movie.

The bullying was realistic and showed examples of physical, verbal, social and cyber bullying. Some of the bullying was more sophisticated than average 4th graders might express, but then again, some bullies are way above average. Chrissa, the main victim, and other victims were typical 4th grade girls who, realistically, didn’t know how to deal with the situation. The bullying continued until situations had risen to a level whereby parents and teachers had to be involved. Often, the kids themselves made some very good choices, too, to stop the bullying.

The adults didn’t handle the situations very well at first. For instance, trying to find out who the main culprit was in a given situation, the principal and classroom teacher asked the students for information while all the students - victims, aggressors, and bystanders - were all together. Of course, no one was willing to risk speaking up. Separate discussions would be much more effective. Also, some of the consequences imparted on the aggressors had nothing to do with the bullying. I would have liked to see consequences that would teach pro-social behaviors and empathy instead of suspension and ‘towel clean-up’ that had nothing to do with the offense. Changing behavior and/or teaching replacement skills is a lot more effective in stopping a bully from bullying again. Of course, if the adults had taught all the students how to react to bullying before bullying began, and/or had ‘nipped’ the bullying in the bud before it got severe, this would have been a very short movie.

The movie accurately expressed how confusing a bullying situation can be for any young child. Without information and strategies to deal with bullying, the children in this movie used trial and error solutions such as hiding in toilet stalls, staying home from school, and avoiding after school activities. They were also hesitant to talk to adults. Fortunately, it addressed these realistic responses with ultimately having the children learn that talking to an adult is not tattling, but asking for help. Ultimately, the adults were very helpful. To move the story along, the writer had them be somewhat clueless and naïve at first, but they were always supportive and came through in the end to help the victims.

The movie is enjoyable to watch and many youngsters will be able to relate to the storyline. I recommend the movie as an opportunity to discuss bullying with children and strategies they can implement if they are bullied or witness bullying. In real life, we want kids and adults to know how to stop bullying before it becomes an abusive situation that last for weeks. At the risk of being self-serving, using the lessons and activities in our book How to Stop Bullying and Social Aggression would help children learn the skills the characters in the movie would have appreciated, such as how to stand up to a bully, how to stop a peer from bullying another, and how to determine when talking to an adult is telling and not tattling.

Check out the table of contents of our book to get idea of what skills kids need to develop to stop bullying. Or, for sample lessons go to http://balanceeducationalservices.com/resources.html

If you saw the movie, share your thoughts.

Steve

Friday, January 2, 2009

Radio Interview Posted

Happy New Year everyone!

We have a new 20 minute radio interview posted to our website. It’s a clear, concise and interesting (even if I say so myself) interview by veteran radio man Rich Ryder of WBTN in Vermont, USA. On our "media page" click on the link under "Hear Mike and Steve" that reads "Radio Interview - WBTN."

Feel free to share the interview with any friends, or friends who have children or students, who are having issues with bullying.

We wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous 2009

Steve