Resilience: The Anti-Bully

When I was growing up, we had mean kids on the playground, some of whom would meet contemporary definitions of bullies. They were the kids who stole lunch money. They were the kids who offered to play on the teeter totter with the smallest kid in class, only to strand the child at the top, wiggling those twig-like legs and crying. And, the mean girls of junior high are certainly nothing new.

As a pediatrician and mother, I hear people use the term bully a lot. I see kindergarteners so afraid of what goes on in the girls’ bathroom that they withhold pee and start having accidents after years of staying dry. I see kids who run home at full-speed, hoping to get in the door before they are jumped by a crowd of hormone-hyped teens.  I see kids who – after being harassed for months – lurk in the shadows at school plotting their revenge on either themselves or those who’ve hurt them.

Since October is national Bullying Prevention month, I thought this might be a good time to discuss bullying – what it is, what it isn’t, how to teach our children kindness and resilience, and to take a look at a few of the resources out there for youth, parents, and teachers about preventing and reporting bullying.

What is bullying?

We’ve become a society that’s quick to apply labels. My kids have learned about bullies through storybooks and the elementary school experience. They are quick to say they were bullied any time someone is mean to them. I’m not saying that bullying isn’t a serious problem. It certainly is. But bullying is more than just being mean. Bullying involves the intent to willfully and repeatedly cause harm, creating a sense of terror and self-loathing in its victims. It’s like the difference between teasing and taunting. When we tease, it’s lighthearted and innocent. If the person we’re teasing is upset, we stop. Taunting, however, is intentionally humiliating. It tends to become incrementally worse as the victim gets upset.

Apps: Encouraging confidence or revenge?

With Google and the App Store at my fingertips, I took a look at some of the resources available to teach children and caregivers about bullying. What I found at the App Store was alarming: app after app in which the bullied gets revenge. In some, like Playground Bully – No Mercy in the Park, the player becomes the bully by throwing anything from baseballs to grenades and cockroaches around the playground. You can play a wack-a-mole-like game with a bully’s head in Bully Busters Revenge. You can take the Ultimate Slingshot challenge, pelting rocks at athletes, bullies, popular kids, etc. Revenge is the wrong message to be sending kids.

Source: Lee Reynolds (Flickr: CC)

If you’re interested in making the most of your child’s screen-time and think it’s a good way for them to learn, there are a handful of apps out there that teach our kids to identify bullying, and how to ask for help. The Beat THAT Bully app contains a series of videos that teach self-affirming visualizations. Cute cyber-monsters teach kids about cyber-bullying and encourage kindness in Bully Stoppers. Bully 911 is an award-winning app that teaches children the fundamentals of self-defense and addresses the challenges of coping with school bullies. I’m also looking forward to using Kindr, an app that helps you craft and send affirming messages to your friends’ smartphones and tablets. While killing em with kindness might not keep lunch money in your kid’s pocket, it just might teach them to see the good in themselves and others, to name and encourage it. What if the whole world were just a little Kindr every day?

Bully-proofing

We can teach our children to be bully-proof. According to Barbara Coloroso, author of The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander, while we can’t eliminate bullies altogether, we can buffer their effects.

Self-esteem is huge here: the better our children feel about themselves, the less likely they are to succumb to bullying. Self-esteem and resilience go hand in hand. Resilient kids are like rubber balls that bounce from surface to surface without losing their shapes. These are the kids who fall down and get back up again, who fail and try again. Their feelings may be hurt by others, but they know who they are, and aren’t afraid to ask for help when they need it.

 

New study shows SOME video game time can be good for your kids

Smart Baby Tech Makes for Helicopter Parents

Parents: The original baby monitors

Saturday morning my spouse and I had a kid-free (!) picnic breakfast at a lake near our house. We sat about 10 feet away from a pair of geese with their new goslings, just watching. For a while, the adult geese kept a close eye on us – but when we didn’t make any sounds or sudden movements, they went about their business of pecking at their food in the grass.

I’m always fascinated by watching how other species interact with their young. These geese had Spidey sense for sure. They heard sounds long before we did, be it the red-winged blackbird leaving its nest, a hawk flying overhead, or just a guy walking his dog. With one small grunt, they alerted their babies of impending danger and every one of them scuttled to safety in a straight line.

As a mom, I often feel like those geese, exhausting all my senses trying to steer my kids away from all potential dangers. When they were babies, my spouse (who was particularly nervous about SIDS having lost a brother at three months) ordered what was then (a decade ago) much more rare – a baby monitor that senses movements in the crib (aka breathing) and alerts parents when more than 30 seconds go by without a movement.

Did this monitor stop me from opening the nursery door to listen to my sleeping infant? Not a chance. It also gave us a few terrifying nights when the baby had rolled to the edge of the crib and, though she was still breathing, the monitor couldn’t pick up the movements.

New smart baby technologies may breed more anxiety

Recently, I was at a conference about data and healthcare. All the techies and younger parents were excited to hear about the latest baby monitors that alert parents to babies’ needs (i.e., the baby is awake, has rolled over, or requires a diaper change) and also track data like heart rate, oxygen levels, the number of wet diapers, feedings per day, etc. There are even diapers that tell you if your baby has a urinary tract infection. If you’re lucky enough to speak Portuguese, your baby’s diaper will Tweet you when it’s wet.

So, 21st century parents can use their smart phones and wifi connections to monitor and track their babies’ inputs and outputs. Is all this information helpful? Just because we can track this data – should we? Does having more information really relieve our anxieties? Or does it reinforce our worries, stripping away our sense of parenting efficacy?

If your child has special needs, discuss your concerns with her pediatrician and ask about what technologies might be helpful. If you’re the type of mom who checks on her sleeping children multiple times before turning in for the night, chances are, you’ll be even more glued to your smartphone, but instead of waiting for a message from a friend or checking Facebook, you’ll be waiting for your baby to take her next breath. And the one after that. All this smart baby technology can increase parental anxiety, which can actually have a negative effect on kids.

No amount of technology can protect our kids from life. Nor can parenting. Life happens. We can prepare our kids for it: by teaching them to trust us by caring for their needs, by reading to them (don’t even get me started on pajamas that read to your kids). We can try to keep them safe by putting them to sleep on their backs, removing blankets and stuffed animals from cribs, baby “proofing” when they get mobile, and teaching them to be street-wise. But, if we monitor them like crazy, we’re not doing anyone any favors.

Take the money you’d spend on these smart baby technologies and start a college fund. Some day, your baby will be smart all by herself – no sensors attached.

 

Dr. Lonzer’s fussy baby tips

 

It’s 5:00pm and your baby won’t stop crying. You’re exhausted, you’re overwhelmed, and your spouse won’t be home for another 30-40 minutes. You’re not alone.

Ditching the pacifier: One mom recounts her stages of grief

In this guest post, one of Dr. Lonzer’s patients shares her struggle for a good night’s sleep and how she eventually weaned her son from his pacifier.

Photo courtesy of Creative Commons

I’ll never forget the night I knew when it was time to wean my son from his pacifier. It was the middle of the night, well into his second year. He was a great baby, happy, healthy, and a good sleeper – if he had his pacifier. Before he became mobile, all I had to do was pop that pacifier in his mouth, put him in his crib, and off to sleep he’d go.

In case your Facebook feed excluded some of this great content…

Here’s a summary of what we’ve been talking about on the blog and in social media this month:

When peer pressure goes viral. Dr. Lonzer discusses a new study that looks at the impact of peer pressure through social media on behavior and decision making.

The Effects of Multi-tasking on Family Life

Put down that smartphone (after you read this!)

Over time, multi-tasking has become the norm for most of us in our daily lives. Whether in work, school, or even at home, we’ve become so busy that we rarely devote our full attention to one task. We work out while we catch up on our favorite television shows; we supervise our playing kids while checking our email; we cook dinner while helping our kids with their homework; we take business calls from the hockey rink on Saturday mornings, etc. Multi-tasking, a skill intended to make people’s lives more efficient does seem to have its advantages. Dr. Deb Lonzer notes that multi-tasking helps us to maintains connections and allows us to collate more and more information; but she also notes that studies looking at the effectiveness of multi-tasking shows that it doesn’t improve long-term productivity…and all of the unnecessary information it allows us to cram into our brains may take up space we could better utilize for important memories.

Teething symptoms: Dr. Lonzer sorts fact and fiction

Flickr (CC)

 

 

Perhaps no milestone is as anticipated as the day your child’s first tooth breaks through. Chances are, your baby has been a drooly, cranky mess for months before the first specks of white appear on that gum line. Parents often wonder if their baby is sick when they are teething, and, whether it’s your first baby or your fifth, some of the symptoms can be confusing.

The importance of bedtime routines: Are later high school start times really the answer to sleepy teens?

A New York Times article documenting the benefits of later high school start times is circulating in social media. While I spend my mornings (especially on the weekends) wishing my young children would start sleeping past 6:00am, as  a pediatrician, I know that as soon as they do, our weekday mornings will become a whole different kind of crazy.

Children exposed to second-hand smoke have thicker arteries

Courtesy of Flickr (CC).

It’s fairly common knowledge that exposure to second-hand (or passive) smoke can cause a slew of respiratory problems in children, including asthma, upper respiratory infections, and lung cancer. But did you know exposure to second-hand smoke can also lead to artery thickening and heart disease?