Part 4: How to Handle the Bully at School
Posted: November 06, 2019
A Parent’s Guide by Christopher Rappold
It’s OK to Ask for Help
Everyone needs help from time to time. Though it’s awesome to feel like you can slay the dragon on your own, often it’s much easier and quicker to ask for assistance. The game is safety and personal happiness. To get there and stay there, your child must value that over the desire to handle it on his own.
Oftentimes society feeds the myth of "self-made" portrayed on TV and in the press. When you have a chance to read deeper into the story, you will see that there are tremendous amounts of people not listed in the headlines.
In football, it’s the quarterback not the team; in baseball, often it’s that pitcher or the home run hitter not the other players that made the win possible. Even in an individual sport like golf, very rarely is the trainer of the player or the caddy given the credit for the win, it is only the winning player that gets the headlines. In business, it’s names like Trump or Gates that make the news, not the thousands of people that are working day and night for the company’s success. Certainly, when you look at the modern day Walt Disney movies that we all know and love, most are based on the hero rising up and facing the evil foe alone. All of this creates an impression that makes asking for help difficult. It almost implies a level of deficiency or weakness for a person to admit that they don’t have the answer for a challenge from a bully.
Well, if all you do is dispel the myth of needing to "go it alone," then your time reading this was well spent. When is the best time to engage help? As close to the very beginning as possible. When a spouse comes home from work, it’s commonplace for him or her to go through all that happened during the day, both good and bad. As a result, the person feels better and gets some clarity through feedback from their spouse. When a child comes home and the parent asks, "How was your day?" and the child gives the standard answer, "Good." and the parent lets it go as acceptable, then as parents you are missing a phenomenal opportunity to help your child solve the inevitable challenges that will occur in a typical day.
A parent should know the good and the bad of their child’s day. A parent should be keenly aware of what their child is going through, including the challenges and how they plan to resolve problems, whether academic or social in nature. In a quest for good grades, it is important to keep in mind that emotional growth and development, including the ability to handle conflict appropriately, will determine success as much, if not more than, academic knowledge.
