J. E. DiMarco - When Your Child Is Being Bullied: Real Solutions for Parents, Educators & Other Professionals

When Your Child Is Being Bullied

By J.E. DiMarco and M.K. Newman

Copyright 2011 by J.E. DiMarco and M.K. Newman

Cover Copyright 2011 by Vivisphere Publishing and Untreed Reads Publishing

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WHEN YOUR CHILD IS BEING BULLIED

REAL SOLUTIONS

For Parents, Educators & Other Professionals

By J.E. DiMarco and M.K. Newman

SPECIAL THANKS AND LOTS OF LOVE TO

Our husbands, whose amazing love, strength and support made this project possible.

Our children, who teach us new things every day about resilience, optimism, love, compassion, empathy and respect.

Our parents and siblings, who helped us become who we are today and taught us to do the right thing, even when it was the most difficult and most unpopular thing to do.

All our friends, who were there for us in thick, thin and everything in between.

The law offices of Katten Muchin Rosenman, LLP for their expertise, counsel, support and generosity.

CONTENTS

This book is precisely what many parents ask for when I am touring the country raising awareness about the devastation that results from bullying. While there are many experts and advocates who can tell you how to prevent bullying or how pervasive it is, there are not any manuals on how to stop your childs torment at the hands of a bully and get back to happiness.

Until you are a parent of a bullied child, it is hard to imagine the humiliation, frustration and utter sadness bullying brings on a child as well as the childs family. Not only do the authors understand this issue, they lived it.

Whenever I need a recommendation on anything, I find someone who has experienced it and had great success. The authors of When Your Child Is Being Bullied: Real Solutions are those someones you should turn to for answers.

The following pages will walk you through how to solve your childs issues in an easy-to-understand and practical way.

My best to you and your families,

John Halligan

Ryans Story

Ryanpatrickhalligan.org

The majority of parents with children who have been bullied for an extended length of time tell us that the bully stole their sons or daughters childhood.

After experiencing the tragedy of bullying with our own children, and finding a way back to happiness, we felt we needed to offer some solutions to others facing the same situation.

Time not only heals all wounds, it also provides clarity and perspective. We started writing this book with the goal of providing families with a systematic guide to stop their childrens torment and get beyond the challenges. What we did not know was that many other interested parties were looking for a similar resource. While we were conducting research and meeting with experts, parents and schools, we learned that educators, therapists, pediatricians, social workers, community leaders and faith leaders were also interested in using the same information and recommendations.

To that end, it is our sincere hope that this manual will help anyone who wants to eliminate any and all types of bullying for a child, and help them get back to just being a child.

A note to our readers: Statistics today indicate bullying occurs 55% against boys and 45% against girls. In this text whenever we refer to he or she, it is intended to apply to both girls and boys.

Our Stories: We Understand Your Frustration

Believe us when we say we understand how frustrating it is to try and solve your childs victimization when he is being bullied. We really do. We lived it. We made mistakes and we succeeded in stopping the bullying and restoring happiness in our childrens lives against some pretty big odds.

Our families stories are shared here to help other families learn how to avoid key mistakes along the journey to stop the bullying and get beyond a childs torment.

There are 25 million families in the United States today with similar stories. If you take nothing else away from our book, please know:

There are solutions that work and will move you beyond the torment.

You are not alone.

At the end of both stories, we list our lessons learned as a result of our experiences. Lessons learned will be shared at the end of each chapter and will hopefully help each of you.

The Newman Family Story

Our bullying story begins when my son, Tim, was in fifth grade. Tim is very bright, kind, a bit sensitive, and a rule-follower. The bullying played out over about 18 months. At the end of this time, we had a happy ending with a dramatic and very effective solution, but it was challenging getting there. Know this: happy endings happen all the time!

Tim was taunted for all the same reasons every child is teased. Typically, boys in fourth and fifth grade like to do things, such as repeating something over and over again, until the taunted child gets very upset. Even when a child sees the other upset, 10- and 11-year-old boys have trouble stopping. We were forgiving of this type of behavior even though it was frequent. My husband and I thought it was truly benign and felt our son should simply ignore it.

Other motivations for taunting Tim stemmed from the fact that he was well liked by teachers because he was respectful and worked hard. This irritated beginner bullies in the class because it made them look and feel less important in some way.

Frequently, between the ages of 10 and 11 years old, all children have a hard time making small talk and revert to teasing to get attention and fill dead air. Other common things children do at these ages is to mock others in a voice resembling someone who is developmentally or speech challenged. A few boys mocked Tim in this way on a regular basis. In another common event, children would talk about embarrassing events from earlier grades, embellish them and retell the story over and over. Note: up until this point I never refer to any of this as bullying because my husband and I viewed it as immaturity and teasing. This picked up steam in fifth grade, but it was nothing like what was to come in sixth grade. Tim finished fifth grade with some wounds to his ego from the excessive teasing, but he seemed to manage it well. He felt like sixth grade was going to be a great fresh start. Unfortunately, he was quite wrong.

Tims first few weeks at middle school went without incident, we thought. Then, it all started. My husband and I had no idea he was being ridiculed constantly for the first month and a half. We actually were feeling good. Further, almost foolishly, we would say things like, He seems really happy and Tim is very big and strong. He is a very capable defensive lineman on the football team; nobody would want to mess around with him. Wrong. They may not have physically tormented him (they would not be so obvious or foolish); instead, the sixth grade bullies had a much worse plan than physical bullying. It is called full and utter humiliation. Constantly.

At this point you are probably asking yourself, Why Tim? We have many theories. Tim did not fit in a specific bucket in sixth grade. He was not a super-athlete. He was not a