Bullying is Not a Joke: A Teacher's Perspective with Rivka Fishman

In this episode, Rivka Fishman, a master teacher, author and expert in fighting bullying, discusses dealing with bullying from the trenches, as a teacher and mother. We refer to an earlier episode with Izzy Kalman, her teacher. That episode is linked below.
Rivka  Fishman grew up in Pittsburgh and graduated from Touro College with an undergraduate degree in Psychology. She has taught students of all ages, from elementary school children to adults, for over 25 years. She currently teaches middle school and serves as the Special Programming Coordinator at Torah Day School of Houston. Rivka is a recipient of the Irving L. Samuels Outstanding Teacher Award for Judaic Studies and the Grinspoon–Steinhardt Award for Excellence in Jewish Education.
She has spent many years researching and implementing effective ways to minimize conflict between children and now coaches parents and leads workshops on how to “bullyproof” their children. To reach even the youngest learners, she authored “Sara the Bucket Filler,” which teaches children—and the adults who read with them—how to be kind and stay happy even when someone says mean things to them; “Benny the Bucket Filler,” which helps children stay resilient even when excluded; and “My Bucket Filling Journal,” which guides children in building empathy and resilience.

Email: sarathebucketfiller@gmail.com

Website: https://thebucketfillers.com

Instagram: @the_bucketfillers

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sarathebucketfiller/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PromEPyN7QU

Other: Podcasts, articles and more: https://thebucketfillers.com/blog

Preview YouTube video Sara the Bucket Filler meets the Izzy Kalman GamePreview YouTube video Sara the Bucket Filler meets the Izzy Kalman Game
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2570205/episodes/1869901

Transcript

0:06

Welcome to Kids Matter. I'm Dr. Elisa Minkin. As a pediatrician, mom and grandma, I understand how challenging it can be to help our kids grow into their best selves. We are so much more powerful together. Here I will be sharing the knowledge and wisdom of a wide range of people who understand and care deeply about children. I'm hoping for your input as well because kids really do matter. They are our future.

Alisa Minkin 0:37

Welcome back. I'm here today with Rifka Fishman. Hi Rifka.

Rivka 0:41

Hi. Thanks for having me.

Alisa Minkin 0:43

you. Thank you so much for joining me. Rka grew up in Pittsburgh and graduated from Touro College with an undergraduate degree in psychology. has taught students of all ages from elementary school children to adults. For over 25 years. currently teaches middle school and serves as the special programming coordinator at Torah Day School of Houston. Rivka is a recipient of the Irving l Samuel's Outstanding Teacher Award for Judaic Studies and the Grinspoon Steinhardt Award for Excellence in Jewish Education. has spent many years researching and implementing effective ways to minimize conflict between children and now coaches, parents. Leads workshops on how to bully proof their children. I'm putting that in quotation marks. We'll get to that later.

Rivka 1:34

I'm good with that.

Alisa Minkin 1:35

To reach even the youngest learner, she authored, Sarah, the bucket filler, which teaches children and the adults who read it with them, how to be kind and stay happy even when someone says mean things to them, the bucket filler, which helps children stay resilient even when excluded. And my bucket filling journal, which guides children in building empathy and resilience. So I'm gonna link all these things that you gave me in the show notes, and I'm so, so excited to be doing this with you. I do wanna start by saying that this is a follow up to the interview I did with Izzy Coleman on bullying, who you learned from, and we're going to take it from a different perspective, the perspective of a teacher who's also a mom. So thank you so much for joining me today.

Rivka 2:26

Okay.

Alisa Minkin 2:27

I'm gonna start with did you get interested in the field of bullying, prevention and intervention? Which by the way, are two different things.

Rivka 2:35

I agree. So when I've, as you mentioned, I've been a teacher for 25 years and for the first bunch of years that I was a teacher. I really thought that when kids were not being nice, it was because they were raised wrong. And then after a few years, maybe 10 years of teaching, I got my own children and my close friend's children as my students. And I said, one minute here, these kids are not being nice all of the time. It definitely did not meet the definition of bullying, but they definitely were not being nice in the way that we wanted to see. And I said, these kids are raised by nice parents who parent. Effectively that do nice things for people all of the time, and they're still not being nice. How can I make kids be nice all of the time? So I really set out a, a search to find the best program to bring to our school to make kids be nice all of the time. So spoiler alert, it's not possible to make kids be nice all of the time, even though I'm still on a search to try to figure out how to do that. And in the process, I found a whole bunch of programs that really just didn't sit well with me. It involved a lot of tattling. It felt like bully hunting, and we're talking about children here. And then I came across Izzy Cowman. I went to a workshop of his, and what he said just made so much sense and it fit with everything that. I was already feeling about the anti-bullying world. And so after taking his workshop, I continued to learn from him at various times, read things that he wrote, and I also kind of developed my own perspective on it based on my other teacher training, my teacher experience, and other training that I had in love and logic, conscious discipline. And I've constantly been learning about. Bully proofing, as he says, rather than anti-bullying for almost 20 years now. So that's how I got started in all of this.

Alisa Minkin 4:32

It's a great summary, but I didn't hear the story about your daughter who was five took you a different place, so I wanna hear that part too. Please.

Rivka 4:40

Oh, sure. Okay. So I had been doing this for a while when my youngest daughter entered kindergarten, and when she got into kindergarten, there was another kid in her class that made her life really miserable. She was crying most of the day and. I said, okay, well, I can handle this because I have been doing bully proofing for a long time. I fixed all of my fourth graders, you know, and, and this, this is an easy fix and nothing that I was trying to use to help her was working. And I realized she's too young to use these things. And around this time, I came across the bucket books. The bucket filling concept is a concept introduced by Donald Clifton. He's been talking about it since the fifties. And there are a lot of different bucket books by lots of different authors. So I bought all of them. Figuring some of them is gonna help, would help me deal with my daughter's bullying situation because it's such a fantastic analogy. And just to give a quick synopsis, if anybody's not familiar with it, the idea is that we all walk around with an invisible bucket, and this bucket holds our good thoughts and feelings about ourselves. And when we feel good, our bucket is full. When we're sad, angry, lonely, even tired, our bucket is emptier. And people who don't. Feel good about themselves. People who have an empty bucket sometimes can try to make their own bucket feel, feel more full by dipping into somebody else's bucket. So I figured this was really the poss, the perfect way to teach it to her. But there was nothing that really worked. So I made up a bedtime story telling her about how she could go through her day focusing on fi, filling other people's buckets rather than focusing on the mean things that this kid was saying to her. And it worked so beautifully. We added a little bit onto the story every night, and then one night she said, you know, mommy, this really helped me. You should write this down so it could help other kids too. And that's how Sarah the Bucket filler was born.

Alisa Minkin 6:32

Sarah is your daughter's name, right?

Rivka 6:34

That's her middle name. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Alisa Minkin 6:36

her some privacy.

Rivka 6:38

Yeah. Yes.

Alisa Minkin 6:39

I love that. I wanna just mention a few things. Number one there is a woman, one of the bucket filler book writers, has an entire curriculum. Her name is Carol McLeod, and she's working with, I think a woman named Dina Brown, I think, who's a motivational speaker. And they have programming, about, bucket filling. But I wanna point out that that is not an anti-bullying or bullying proof curriculum. It is a social emotional learning curriculum.

Rivka 7:04

Yes, it, it bucket filling is helpful for a lot of different concepts and

Alisa Minkin 7:09

exactly. Because I'm, I'm gonna link both in the show notes and people shouldn't be confused'cause the website names sound pretty similar. Yours is the bucket fillers.com and hers is bucket fillers one oh one.com. So it's similar.

Rivka 7:21

Yes.

Alisa Minkin 7:22

So I'm gonna point that out. And also we mentioned, is he common relatively briefly with the concept of bully proofing? What do you mean by bully proofing?

Rivka 7:31

So anti-bullying would be, let's find the bullies and have zero tolerance for them and kick them out of school and not listen to their side of the story. That's what. I see as anti-bullying. Bully proofing means that the only person we can ultimately control is ourselves. We can't actually make anybody else do anything else. So the biggest gift we can give ourselves for our own selves and to give our children and students is to help them learn to become bully proof. There's a really, skin thing right now. A male Robbins let them theory. I don't know if you've heard of that.

Alisa Minkin 8:08

Absolutely

Rivka 8:09

when I came across it about a year ago, I said, this is what I've been saying. Imagine if every adult can learn, let them when they're five years old, and work through it though all of their elementary, middle school and high school years, this would be a much more pleasant world to be in. So this, that's kind of how I see bully proofing as opposed to anti-bullying.

Alisa Minkin 8:31

That's a great explanation, but again, the proofing where it makes me sound, sounds like waterproofing, like it's watertight and you, you are giving your child more resilience. With this, but it's definitely not the sole piece of, you know, helping reduce bullying or reduce the impact of bullying. And I just wanna go back to the definition of bullying. I, I'm gonna recommend that people go and listen to the talk that I'm linking with Izzy Kaman, because I don't wanna go through all the same topics. But I do want you to, in this talk, give a definition of bullying, the standard definition please.

Rivka 9:03

Sure. So the standard definition for bullying is that includes an intent to harm. An imbalance of power, meaning the other person has a higher social status or is older, bigger, something like that. And that it is repeated in most cases. It, it's gonna be something that's repeated on purpose and the other person has a higher social status.

Alisa Minkin 9:24

It's interesting because you mentioned before that what your daughter was dealing with, you didn't call that bullying. You said it was different.

Rivka 9:31

I feel like the word bullying is overused, and when we're talking about a five-year-old. Being annoying all the time. I don't know that I would use the bird bullying for that. I feel like bullying is, is a strong word. I think there's absolutely bullying that goes on and takes place. I, I it Was there an imbalance of power because he's a boy and she was a girl? You could say that. Was it an intent to harm or was it an attempt to be annoying or was it an attempt to get attention? It was definitely a child who had a lot of. Hard things going on at home. I know that actually when I asked her why I thought he had such an empty bucket, she said, I think it's because he doesn't have any sisters.

Alisa Minkin 10:15

Oh, he needs a sister.

Rivka 10:19

Yeah. So I, I used the bull. I, I really try to save the word bullying for. Very serious situations. And of course, from her perspective, this was a terrible thing. She was miserable, and I don't wanna undermine what any 5-year-old is going through. But I do wanna save that word, bullying for other things. Now, that doesn't mean we like to be fine with kids, annoying other kids being mean to other kids, or being rude to other kids, or being overly bossy to other kids. But I, I, I kind of wanna save the word bullying for more intense situations.

Alisa Minkin 10:55

I really like that a lot because I think part of building resilience is not overreacting.

Rivka 11:00

Yes. So I always tell parents my line is empathize without overreacting. And I say it to teachers too, but parents are much more likely to jump into the overreacting category. When your kid comes home and they tells you, tell you about something that happened at school. Our motherly response or any parent really, fathers two is gonna be what they did that to you. I'm calling the principal right this minute. That is not acceptable. And what we're doing here is, let's say our kid came home and they thought this was a small deal and we just. Flipped out about it. We've now taught the child that this is a much bigger deal than they might have thought that it was, and we're turning it into a bigger deal for them. So we have to be careful about this. We have to empathize. You can't just be like, oh, just ignore them. Oh, just man up. It's very important to empathize, to let them know that we've heard them, to see if they want some tips or tools, but overreacting turns it into a bigger deal for the child within themselves, and that's what we wanna avoid.

Alisa Minkin 12:02

Absolutely, and I feel like a broken record because at pretty much every episode I say, mom or dad, put your oxygen emotional oxygen mask on first because know it's natural. Our children's pain can be greater to us than to them. That's, that's, that's normal. That's understandable. But a whole concept of coagulation, right in psychology is that they're looking to us for how to react. If we're freaking out, however un understandable that is,

Rivka 12:32

Yes. It, it's, it's really, it's a really hard thing to do as a parent. I, I, I, making it sound easy, but really biting our tongue, honestly. Biting your tongue is good practice for being a mother-in-law, so

Alisa Minkin 12:43

yes.

Rivka 12:44

as well practice now. So,

Alisa Minkin 12:47

so true.

Rivka 12:48

yeah.

Alisa Minkin 12:50

But this reminds me of a social skills writer. I'm sorry, I don't remember his name, who said, don't interview for pain, right? Your kid comes home from school. Who did that to you? Why did they do to? What else did they do to you? That's part of, of the same idea, right? So,

Rivka 13:06

You wanna ask questions, but the tone of voice is very important, right? You wanna say, do you, can you tell me more? Can you tell me a little bit about what happened? You definitely don't wanna help make your child feel as if it's their fault, even if you know. Sometimes there are definitely things that kids can do to avoid being a victim, but we have to, you do wanna gather information, but your tone of voice is super important to how it's done. So it's not quite an interview or an interrogation, but you need a bigger picture for when you're going to be speaking to the school, if that's necessary.

Alisa Minkin 13:43

And you need to be calm,

Rivka 13:45

Yes,

Alisa Minkin 13:47

said than done.

Rivka 13:48

yes, yes, for sure. Sometimes you can put it off to a little bit later, you do the empathizing and you, you know, you can, you can really fake that and act that empathy when all you wanna do is overreact. But you can say, I, I wanna think about this a little bit while I'm co talk. While I'm cooking dinner. While we're eating dinner. I want, and, and then I wanna talk to you a little bit more about this

Alisa Minkin 14:12

And

Rivka 14:12

come back when you're in a calm space.

Alisa Minkin 14:14

right? I'm sorry. You're modeling regulation for your child when you do that. It's okay for us to have emotions,

Rivka 14:20

For.

Alisa Minkin 14:21

right? So I love that. I love that so much. Do you think we're seeing more bullying or different kinds of bullying nowadays than in the past?

Rivka 14:31

I don't know that it's more bullying. Obviously cyber bullying didn't use to be a thing. I think there's more awareness about bullying in general, but I think that bullying itself is kind of as old as time. I mean, there's biblical stories where there's bullying and people being mean to each other, so, I just think there's probably more awareness.

Alisa Minkin 14:53

I think that's true, but I think there's also a sensitivity, the concept of no zero tolerance and also the, the knowledge of how bad bullying can be. Maybe we could talk about that for just a few minutes. I don't wanna talk about it too much because I'd rather focus on the positive aspect and what you can do. It is serious. That's why this topic is this talk is called bullying is no joke because it is serious. And that's hard by the way. Right? If your child is a victim or you're told your child is the bully,

Rivka 15:21

Yeah, it, I wanna say maybe it's harder if you're told that your child is the bully and you're somebody who's not a bully. But let's just talk for, just briefly, because I think most people know how horrible bullying is.

Alisa Minkin 15:32

Right.

Rivka 15:32

But it, it, it leads to a low self-worth if it's not mitigated, if it's not dealt with, if it's not reframed, it can really lead to a low self worth in a child. And if that goes untreated or unchecked, or. Non intervene. It can lead to things as bad as self-harm and suicide. We hear stories like this all the time, unfortunately, and it's just not acceptable. We have to be able to help people before they get to that step. We have to help them build spouse self-worth in other ways and build resilience and also intervene sometimes when we are the adult in the in the room.

Alisa Minkin 16:14

Yeah, we need to talk about it from the school's perspective. I feel like the schools are kind of between a rock and a hard place here in terms of trying to be a, a no no bullying zone and something that happens no matter what you do.

Rivka 16:28

For sure. So the concept of zero tolerance is a really difficult policy to try to enforce, and I. I don't, I don't believe that there's been success in schools that have zero tolerance policies. I don't think things have been better overall. I would guess, I don't think there's statistics to say this, but I would guess that very often schools throw out the wrong child. I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case. True bullies can be very manipulative. They can be very, very smart, and they can. Figure their way out of a lot of different situations, and I think that every single case has to be looked at individually. Conscious discipline says that behavior is a form of communication. So if a child doesn't know how to tie their shoes, we teach them how to tie their shoes. If a child doesn't know how to cross the street safely, we teach them how to cross the street. But if a child doesn't know how to behave, usually what happens is we.

Alisa Minkin 17:24

Finish.

Rivka 17:25

Of course we punish them. But really what we need to do is if a child is missing skills in their behavior, we need to teach them the right way to behave. So when we say there's zero tolerance for bullies, does that really leave space for us to teach somebody the proper way to behave? Obviously a school has to be involved. A school has to stay on top of things. The school has to stay on top of the other parent, the parent of the bully. Again, I'm using air quotes. But in these situations where a school's involved to this level, if the child probably is bullying, even though I. Hesitate to label a child. The other child needs to have a tight leash. The parent of the other child needs to be involved in a healthy way. Very often the other kid needs counseling or other ways to find to build their own empathy. Every case is so different that it's, you know, I probably speak to 10 parents a month, or either parents, teachers or principals a month to help them in bully with bullying situations. And I don't think I've ever given the same advice twice because every situation and every child and every school has a different dynamic and it has to be dealt with differently. So just to say. We have zero tolerance for bullies is just such a non not practical policy that I'm not understanding really why some schools still have that.

Alisa Minkin 18:49

Right. And, and evidence that we do have about bullying shows that that is counterproductive if you look it up. What we do know is that no tolerance and also suspensions can also be counterproductive. But I'm putting that aside for now. But, what surprised me when I was trying to help a friend of mine whose son was being bullied, was I did find that. We don't have really effective programs. We just don't. And I talk more about that in my talk with Izzy, so I don't want to go over it now. But I do wanna, I do wanna talk more about what schools can do that is effective and what maybe a little bit more about things that they shouldn't do besides this no tolerance policy.

Rivka 19:33

Sure. Okay, so I wanna first say that in anything I'm about to say, I don't wanna blame teachers.

Alisa Minkin 19:39

Right.

Rivka 19:39

I, I'm a teacher myself and I believe that teachers these days have it harder than ever. We're teaching children whose parents do the gentle without the parenting, and we are, and, and it's tough. It's really hard these days. My friends who are my age, who are teaching in all different cities, say, and, and, and I'm not even 50 yet, say, I don't know how much longer I can do this for. These kids are really just challenging every nerve that I have. So, it's teachers have a hard work, have a hard job. Often they have more students in their class than they can possibly really undertake and really care for individually the way we would want to as teachers. But it's still important for teachers to know that they hold a giant heavy key to helping children who might be being bullied. So the first thing that I say to teachers is that they need to be present. If you are a teacher in a classroom, in a lunchroom or on recess duty, you have to be present. You need to be aware of what is going on around you. If something happens to a child and an adult is standing there. And doesn't do anything. That child loses faith in that adult. We don't want children losing faith, faith in their safe adults because this is a world in which children need to be able to rely on safe adults. So if something happens to a child and the teacher does nothing, even if the teacher didn't hear it, that child now has the message, I can't trust this person. And that's a horrible thing. So when a teacher does hear something, they should be present. When they should hear something, they need to intervene carefully. And I say carefully because we don't wanna turn the child who's being victimized. Into a victim. We don't want them to feel like a loser who needs to be rescued by the teacher. That's really not good for them at all. So what we do want to do as an adult who sees something happen is correct the behavior of the person who needs to learn the skill to fix their behavior. So if somebody calls somebody else a name, you say to that person, we don't call people losers in this school, if somebody won't let somebody sit at their lunch table, you can say. We make space for everybody at the table. Do you wanna bring over a chair or should she bring over a chair? And in this way, we're not rescuing the other child. We're simply teaching the child what is and is not acceptable behavior in our eyes. Then there's also the social exclusion piece that teachers can help with as well. And in this situation, you need to know your class and figure out which kid might be lonely and which kid needs. To have some friends and the way that you can help these children, I always say that we need to create safety in numbers. So if there's this one kid that everybody ignores or everybody picks on, whatever it might be, you, the teacher should pick a few kids maybe three kids. If possible, who are friends with each other, who they know are nice kids who have it in them to do this and say, you know, this girl doesn't seem like she really has a lot of friends. Do you think you could invite her to sit with you at recess? And I really believe in you guys, and I think that you're the right kids to choose to be able to really help her and really just give those kids a pep talk so that they feel empowered to then reach out to somebody else. Kids are really trying to survive the social atmosphere of school. The entire time they're in school. It doesn't change that much when we're adults, honestly, there's still so many social dynamics that we have to deal with as an adult, and we don't always notice what's going on with somebody else, but a teacher can point it out and create a plan. To help them. But again, we have to make sure that this girl who doesn't have any friends, isn't turned into a loser by the way. The teacher has the conversation. We wanna empower the other kids rather than be like, oh, this poor girl, she's by herself every day. Can't somebody help her? So it's, it's, everything I'm saying is a fine line.

Alisa Minkin 23:40

And I would phrase it more like find something that's her strength and say, did you know she knows all about blah, blah, blah, rather than point out that she's friendless and alone. Because that's

Rivka 23:50

That's fine.

Alisa Minkin 23:51

thinking when

Rivka 23:52

Again, every, it depends. Every situation's gonna be different, and in some cases, that's definitely the right thing to do. So.

Alisa Minkin 23:58

is if you see something as a teacher and you know you can do something about it, a lot of these things are happening outside of the teacher's eyes, obviously. Mm-hmm.

Rivka 24:08

So a lot of things are happening. I used to say these things almost always happen when there's no teacher around, but as I'm seeing more and more things happen, sometimes the teacher is around, but just not paying enough attention. I don't wanna say that they see it and they ignore it, although sometimes that's the case, but very often. Maybe they're stretched too thin, they're supervising too many kids at the same time, but they might actually be there when this is going on and they just don't pick up on it to do anything. And the kid doesn't know whether the teacher stretched too thin or whether the teacher was spaced out because she has her own issues or whatever it might be. What they see is there is an adult in the room who's doing nothing to help me, and that's really sad. So. As a parent, if you know that something's going on with your child at any point in the school day, or even if it's out of school, but the same kids are in the class, it's very important to have a good relationship with the teacher. And to be able to say to the teacher, listen, here's what's going on with my child. I don't want you to get the other kids in trouble. I don't want you to punish the other kids or really deal with it head on at this point. I just want you to know what's going on so that when you're putting the kids in partners, or whether you're watching the kids at recess, just know that this is happening so that you can help correct the other kids' behaviors if you have the opportunity. And a parent can say, I, I don't want my kid to come out as the loser here, but just know that this is going on in the class, and sometimes that's all the teacher needs. Most teachers will be so grateful to hear it communicated to them in that kind of way. When I hear about a situation that I didn't know about. My, I mean, I teach middle school girls, so there's lots of social dynamics. So when I don't know about every single one of them, especially because when I'm in the classroom, we're busy for the entire class period. So when I know what's going on, it's super helpful. I'm always grateful to have a heads up about what's going on.

Alisa Minkin 26:09

It's so tricky though because there's the balance of not being a tatler, you know, if you're a child, going to get an adult

Rivka 26:17

It is tricky.

Alisa Minkin 26:18

trying to get the teacher involved between your child and somebody else's child.

Rivka 26:22

So it's actually pretty simple that even young kids can understand, but sometimes they have to be, it has to be explained to them several times. Tattling. Is telling on somebody else to get them in trouble. Tattling, sorry. Telling is telling an adult to help get somebody out of trouble. So tattling, you wanna get somebody in trouble. Oh, he's cheating on his test. Really doesn't hurt anybody except for that own kid. You know, it doesn't matter. That doesn't need to be told. Telling is the kid's climbing to the top of the flagpole right now. It doesn't seem safe. And those are the times when you tell an adult. Now you also tell an adult if you need help. If you, if you, you know, if, if you need help yourself, this is what's going on. Can you help me? Please don't go get the other kid in trouble. That's just gonna make it worse for me. But here's the situation. So I think when parents can understand it in that way, they can communicate it to the teachers that way, and then the kids can get the help they need knowing that if they tell an adult it's not gonna, can I say, blow up in their faces, you know? So

Alisa Minkin 27:22

Yeah. Again, it's, it's gonna all be back to that parent putting their emotional oxygen mask on first and not freaking out themselves

Rivka 27:29

definitely

Alisa Minkin 27:30

you get this gut reaction, right. That that's normal.

Rivka 27:33

for sure.

Alisa Minkin 27:33

hearing from you is it's, it's not the telling, it's the how you, how you say it, how you frame it, which is, it's tricky, I think.

Rivka 27:42

As in on the adult level, on the child level. You want them to come and tell you, you're gonna thank them for letting you know. But on the adult level, the way you communicate it to the teacher or to the school is very, very important. You kind of do wanna tell the school, because not all schools have all the skills. I'm not saying this so that you can call the other kids' parents right away. I'm not saying this so that you can do it. Just keep your eye on the situation for the time being. Sometimes it does need to escalate beyond that initial conversation, but so many times just the awareness is enough. To help, like really.

Alisa Minkin 28:16

That that, that's excellent. I'm thinking though, back to Izzy Coleman's method of building resilience in the children. I think it's also, you don't want that kid coming to you every time somebody teases them a little bit. You don't want them to be so sensitive to tea and they're always coming. So and so said something to me. You know, even if they say it in a nice way, can you help me? Right.

Rivka 28:34

Yes. So that gets into a, a much deeper level of bully proofing than just these initial kinds of things. So there are a few things that I teach kids, and it really depends on how old they are. And so until about third grade, I, I used to say fourth grade, but post COVID, really it's third grade. You wanna teach kids assertiveness skills, so assertiveness ki skills. Work very well for young kids and that's if somebody calls them a baby, you turn to them in a calm voice that you practice with them ahead of time and you want the kid to say, please don't call me a baby. That's that. It's enough. You want to say a kid runs and bumps into them in line. You want to teach them to say. Please, when you come into line, don't bump into me. I like to have my personal space that works really well until about third grade. Then there's this point where it switches and where if you are assertive in that way, it's going to turn it into a much bigger deal. The other kids can be like, please don't bump into me in line, that kind of thing, or, oh, you don't like it when I call you a baby. Okay, baby, I won't call you a baby, baby. And so that, that, that flip happens third, fourth grade, something, something along those lines. It really depends on the child, the class, the maturity level, where that point is. And for older kids, what we wanna do is a few things. The first thing we really wanna help kids do so that we take something that could be a temporary hurt and we keep it as a temporary hurt rather than it be something that follows them into adulthood. We wanna help them understand why the bullying is happening to them. So we can use the bucket analogy when they're younger and as they're older and as adults, we cannot help understand hurt people, hurt people. So one thing that I teach is called the translating tool. So if somebody says to them oh, you're the teacher's pet, we tell them to translate that into saying, I think the teacher likes you better than me. And that's really hard for me. So when a kid can hear things in a different way, like, this isn't about me, this is about what's going on with that person and their empty bucket, it might still not be fun to hear. It might still hurt my feelings, but I'm not still having. I'm gonna use the word trauma, even though I think that's also an overused word, trauma from it as an adult. So that's, that's why that's so important. And then Izzy Coleman's method can be used for high school boys using it as a game and saying, you wanna be the winner or not. The loser can be very effective for other kids, whether it's younger boys or girls. I I've adapted it a little bit to say that you wanna use a respond like a friend tool, so that when they say something to you, you respond to them the way you would respond to a friend. So if they call you a baby, you could say, thanks for your opinion. And you don't need to put yourself down in the process. You just respond in a healthy way. And what happens is it takes this and it just deescalates everything that's going on. And you feel better about yourself because you've said something. You're not ignoring them, you are not turning it into a bigger fight. And very often when you can teach this to kids. This, this resilience that Izzy Common talks about a lot. It is giving them a skill for life. So one of my students called me when she started ninth grade in a different city, and she said. You know what happened to me? I, I, sorry. I called her to check in to see what was, you know, how ninth grade was going. And she said, you know, the first day we had a class gathering at the pizza shop, and there was no seat for me by the time I got there. So I pulled the chair from the other table into the thing it, I, I pulled the chair from the other table to sit with everybody at the table, and one girl turned to me and she goes, Ooh, look who's trying to fit herself in where she doesn't belong? And my first thought was, ouch. That hurts. And she goes, you know, she probably thinks I'm just gonna take a lot of her friends and that must make her feel really insecure. And I said, yay. Success. Isn't this what we want all kids to be able to do, to understand this isn't about me. I belong at this table. She probably feels insecure. So it takes a lot of maturity and it takes a lot of work, but it's very possible for us all to get to this place.

Alisa Minkin 33:02

Okay, though, how many adults can't do that?

Rivka 33:05

I know, that's why I'm telling you the Let Them theory needs to be taught from the time kids are young, which is really what I'm doing. So it's, it, it, it's something that if we can work, when I, when I give a workshop, whether it's to adults or for sure to camp counselors, I say, I want you to practice this yourself. Find opportunities to practice this yourself so that when you teach it to a child, you could say, you know, this is something that worked for me.

Alisa Minkin 33:30

I love it. Now, is this something you teach to whole school groups?

Rivka 33:34

I prefer to train parents and teachers either together or separately. I like it. Not that I like when parents and teachers are the same on the same page. This works so much better when parents and teachers are on the same page and everybody's speaking the same language. I also train camp counselors. I have found that. I do book reads for kids and question and answers on my, about the book and about, you know, they wanna ask about writing, being a writer and publishing a book. But giving a talk to kids with these skills, I find actually to be ineffective because we really want the kids who need these skills to have the skills and for it to be not as familiar to the other kids because we don't want them to know all these tricks that the kid is gonna come to them with.

Alisa Minkin 34:20

the wizard behind that screen.

Rivka 34:22

That's it. Right.

Alisa Minkin 34:23

I get it.

Rivka 34:25

And also for kids to hear things in a 45 minute workshop or whatever it might be. It kind of comes in one year and out the other. So if the parents and the teachers aren't there by their side to coach them, not to solve their problems, for them, not to rescue them, but to coach them through it and to be their consultant and their cheerleader, it's, it's kind of a waste of time. So that's, that's really what I, I, training camp counselors is fantastic because you almost. Trick older teens into learning something they wouldn't otherwise take from a workshop.

Alisa Minkin 34:57

I

Rivka 34:57

So

Alisa Minkin 34:58

While they're learning how to help the little kids, they're learning to help themselves.

Rivka 35:01

yes, I've had camp directors tell me that their staff gets along so much better after taking my workshop. So

Alisa Minkin 35:07

I

Rivka 35:07

that's a I.

Alisa Minkin 35:08

So I just wanna speak for just a minute about social emotional learning, because I think a, a part of, you know, combating the bullying problem is to have better climate in schools. we have any information about the component of social emotional learning and fighting bullying?

Rivka 35:25

So yes, studies have shown that schools that have strong social emotional learning curriculums built in and programs that the overall atmosphere is more pleasant. It's, but it's not just, yeah, sure. We have an SEL program. This is the program we use. It has to become a part of the entire culture. Every classroom needs to absorb it. The school social worker can go into each classroom to teach it, but if the teacher is not there to reinforce it through the day, if the recess teachers don't have the same skills to help. Talk about whatever it might be as it goes, it's just gonna be a program. It's just gonna be a sticker chart. It's just going to be a nice talk with some stories and inspirational messages. So social emotional learning is super important. We want the parents on the same page to know what the kids are learning in school so that they can reinforce it at home and, and that's. That's the way that social emotional learning can be effective. A bunch of years back I was teaching a social emotional learning curriculum to my class and I sent an email home to parents explaining all the different pieces of, here's what we're doing, here's what you could do at home, here's what your kids are working on. And it was a difficult parent body of the class. You know, certain classes have parents that are. Less cooperative than others, especially in small community schools. That's kind of that dynamic, and I got a response from that email from one parent. Thank you. This is great. I'm going to work on it, and I bet you'll believe me if I tell you that that is the child with the best social skills in the class.

Alisa Minkin 37:04

The rich get richer.

Rivka 37:06

So yes.

Alisa Minkin 37:08

Yeah. So. I, I think of bullying as, as on a spectrum, all the way from teasing to, to very, very serious bullying. And we are not going to talk about the most serious of it because that's clearly already in the legal domain and, you know, we have to keep kids safe. But what are some things you could tell us about helping in the more moderate zone? Like I think we've talked more about teasing and the mildest end and social emotional learning and building resilience. What about something that's sort of in a moderate end? It's not yet in the legal zone. Nobody's physically getting hurt or at risk, but it's pretty persistent and it's, it's ongoing despite everything else we've tried.

Rivka 37:50

Continue all the things that we've already tried. That's first of all, it doesn't go away. And on top of that, am I speaking to a parent, a child, a teacher? All of the above. A school.

Alisa Minkin 38:02

I wanna know how you would handle this from the, from the school's end and the different pieces. All those

Rivka 38:07

Okay, from the school's end, sometimes a school needs to put more supervision on the ground when there is a more serious situation, and especially if the teacher is, is not necessarily equipped to handle it. And I know that's not always easy because schools are understaffed as it is in most cases. But if there's a situation, the child needs to have safe adults. Present, and so that's the first thing that a school really needs to take care of. The second thing is they need to meet with a child and then meet with the parents, and then meet with the child and the parents of the kids who are acting like bullies and they need to help them understand. That there's zero tolerance for this behavior. So I'm using the word zero tolerance carefully here because we need that child and the parents to know that this behavior is absolutely not acceptable. And therefore they need to work on ways for it to stop. If we can recommend a specific therapist to help the child from the school's end, that is a great thing to do for the teachers to continue to make sure that the children who are being victimized are taken care of. Are supervised, are not being partnered with the people who are being mean to them, don't, aren't forced to play with them or whatever it might be. You know, maybe they have different groups. The school has to be on top of it. And in rare situations, sometimes children do need to be asked to leave school at least until they have learned. The way that the school expects them to behave. So we need to see small improvements for the child to stay in school in the first place, but sometimes the improvements are too slow and parents need to be told Your child is welcome back when they can come to school without making other kids go home crying.

Alisa Minkin 40:12

That's a really good explanation.'cause it, you know, it really is so important. To, to keep kids safe and that, that can be, that can be a hard thing to do because we understand that all the methods we have right now are not working. I'm thinking of what I read was the newest method is restorative justice. I saw that happen with a friend of mine's kid, where they brought the bully together with son, the the victim. And they had to, I don't know, talk about it, their feelings or say sorry or whatever it was. And no, it's happening all over again. Complete recidivism here just saying.

Rivka 40:49

Yeah, I am sorry. I was like smirking as you said, that that might work with kindergartners and it might work with second graders. And the concept sounds really nice and fluffy and beautiful, but I. It's just gonna make it a, it's just gonna make it worse. I'll give you another example of something that makes it worse. When, as a parent, you call the other parent to let them know what their child is doing to your child. It is going to blow up in your faces almost every single time. I had a parent, I was speaking to a parent a few months ago, and she's like, no, I know the mother really well. She's really sweet. I had a conversation with her. She took it seriously, and I know she had a really good conversation with her daughter. The next day in school, this 8-year-old girl, 10-year-old girl, went to the girl that she had been bothering all along, kicked her in the leg and said, there, now you have something to go tell your mommy.

Alisa Minkin 41:41

Oh,

Rivka 41:41

I. So we, we really do want, yes, it's almost always a fail. I have never heard an end of the story where it was not a fail. You do want this to be dealt with through the school. You do wanna be dealt the, the teachers, the principal, the school social worker. They need to be the ones to speak to the other parent. Don't do it yourself, and for sure don't speak to the kid, because when we talk about imbalance of power, if you're going to speak to the other kids, that makes you the bully. So that's, that's something else to put in there. And, and I do wanna continue to emphasize that when we communi, when as parents we communicate with the school, we must do it in a productive way. We wanna have a partnership with the school. It's not us against you. The best thing is that we are a team. We're all here on team. David, you know, if David's, the kid's being victimized, we're all here to help him together. I don't, I haven't met a teacher or a principal who said, nah, it's totally fine with me. Our kids are bullied. Just let whatever happens happen. That's not my business. I haven't seen that. I'm not saying that doesn't exist. We're in education because we deeply care about children. There are many more things that we could do with our lives if that wasn't our main goal When we are in education.

Alisa Minkin 42:56

Absolutely. But it's hard though because a lot of, yes, some bullying happens right in front of the teacher. A certain percentage, right? More than you would think, right? Told

Rivka 43:05

Yes. Mm-hmm.

Alisa Minkin 43:07

especially in the era of the digital world, a lot is happening in the digital domain that's not visible

Rivka 43:14

Yes.

Alisa Minkin 43:14

as a teacher. Right. And in other settings, like the bathroom, the, you know, the bus, right? Where there aren't teacher eyes. I, I do see that as a problem. Like, who's who said what to who, who did what? It's a he said, she said thing.

Rivka 43:30

Right. Often when these things are happening, when they're, when an adult doesn't see it, if an adult can be. Queued to look out for it. They can catch the situations themselves as well. If, you know this is happening at the bathroom every time right before recess, have somebody stationed kind of outside of the bathroom with the doors propped open, which most schools need to do for safety purposes anyway. And, and, and hear it if it's happening at the lunch table. Have somebody stand closer to that table and keep an eye on what's going on and catch it yourself so that. The kid doesn't have to be the one to tattle, even if the kid is the one who you know, clued in, the adults involved. The adult sees it themself, and then it's not, you got me in trouble, it's, I got in trouble because I did this.

Alisa Minkin 44:21

Right. That's a really good explanation and I wish we had more staffing because I think that that's a piece, a practical piece

Rivka 44:27

Yeah.

Alisa Minkin 44:28

Right.

Rivka 44:28

Mm-hmm.

Alisa Minkin 44:29

also in terms of having a culture, I've heard that, you know, schools that have a culture that include everybody, including the bus driver. Right. That the bus doesn't become like a no man's land. Right. Where there's still an adult on that. The bus driver who's aware and can be, you know, part of the solution.

Rivka 44:48

That would be so ideal. I, I wish we could, I wish we could have capable adults in every single corner of a school, and that's not because I believe that we need to rescue kids or be helicopter parents or anything else. It's that. Kids don't have the skills to help themself in every situation. And the more supervised kids are, the more we can teach them how to behave like the kinds of people we want to be producing in our schools.

Alisa Minkin 45:16

Absolutely. And what about the upstander or bystander effect? I've heard about that too, that we should be training the other kids to help. What do we know about that?

Rivka 45:24

Okay. That's another one that sounds nice in theory, but let's be real here. If you are in a grocery store and the person in front of you in line is being really rude to the cashier, are you going to say, why are you speaking to the cashier that way?

Alisa Minkin 45:41

Nope.

Rivka 45:42

Probably not. Most adults are not going to, it catches us off guard or it feels uncomfortable and then you take it a step further and you talk about. In the adult world, you have you're invited to somebody's birthday party and you know that there are a couple other people who are friends with you that were not invited that really should have been, you're in a really tough spot. Do I tell them they should be inviting these people or are they gonna not invite me next time because of it? So when we have these insecurities as an adult, we are. At the same time, telling 10 year olds, if you hear somebody being mean, you need to stop them, or you need to come and tell me whatever it might be. What we're requiring of children should be something that most adults are capable of doing. And when a bystander steps in and says something, what happens is they can make the situation into a much bigger deal. It becomes a bigger class fight. Now there's another kid who's being victimized, but there are definitely things that other kids can be taught to do. First of all. Do let an adult know if something like this is going on. That's another good way that adults can understand what the dynamics are. Do it carefully because you don't want the other kids to know that you're going to tell. It is telling not tattling. If you're going to tell a teacher to help somebody else who's in trouble you also sometimes wanna can tell a bystander, you know, you can say something afterwards when the bully quote unquote, is not there. You could say, oh, just don't listen to him. That's how he talks to everybody. Or here you need a pencil. Like, you know, he grabs somebody's pencil. You can turn and say, here, you could borrow my pencil. There's so many ways that a kid can be there for somebody else. Let them know that they're there for them without being an upstander, bystander or whatever that might be in a way that. Compromises themselves socially, but more than that doesn't help anything in the long term. And you can still, they can still be there for the other kid. They can still let the other kid know that they support them. They can say, you know, do you want me to come with you to the teacher to tell you about the situation? But what the piece of the bystander that I really wanna caution people against is making a child feel responsible. For what somebody else is doing to someone else. It's not their responsibility. Yeah. They feel bad. There's research that shows that bystanders in these situations also can develop low self-esteem because it's, it's tough to hear. It's tough to see. We want to help them understand the ways that they can help without it becoming a bigger deal, because most kids and most adults are just not equipped to step in and diffuse a situation.

Alisa Minkin 48:24

That's a great explanation and I'm also thinking about just, you can't get away from the adults. You, you need those adults there. Kids are learning, and I'm thinking also about learning the skills of conflict resolution modeled by adults. Here, I'm thinking about the role, the role of the teacher or whoever else is there supervising in, in conflict resolution. I think that's a separate social emotional skill.

Rivka 48:47

So that skill is in a lot of social emotional learning curriculums. Conflict of res resolution is absolutely a part of those, which is why we want the teacher, the recess duty teachers to be aware of what. You know, what it looks like and to be able to get involved, step into a game and say, okay, we're gonna pick these teams. We're gonna make fair teams, and these are gonna be the teams at recess for the next two weeks, so that we don't have to be involved in it. Sometimes we can, instead of conflict relu resolution, we can preempt it by avoiding a conflict in the first place in a lot of situations and. If a teacher does not feel equipped to handle these kinds of situations, they need to ask the principal, who's the right person to help with this? I just, I don't feel like this is my forte. I'm not great at this, but if I see this situation, who can help me with it?

Alisa Minkin 49:36

I love that. I'm also thinking though, that there's a balance between adults helping with conflict resolution, say on the playground and, and, and overdoing it. You know, inserting themselves where kids need to be kids. What are your thoughts on that?

Rivka 49:50

So, I mean, helicopter parenting and helicopter teaching is something that we want to avoid and at the same time we wanna be present. So again, this is one of the situations where it is a fine line. And, and I'm, I. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm going to say that I, I know I'm asking you to do something difficult. What I'm saying, don't be a helicopter teacher and be present. So it's all in how you are intervening. Let the, you know, ask the kids, how can we solve the situation? What can we do so that the teams are fair? What would make this, an easier way to make groups of people to do a project. What, what are some ideas? And maybe you wanna talk to kids privately if you're afraid that they're gonna say, well, nobody wants to be on on Laura's team. So we're gonna have Laura just be by herself anytime we do a project. So we have to be careful with it. We wanna brainstorm with kids. That could really help a lot in conflict resolution. You don't wanna just solve the problems for them. You wanna give them the opportunity to problem solve, but they need you to be. Their guide. The same way that, you know, we might want kids to learn to make their lunches, but we have to have the ingredients in the house for them to make the lunches with. We want kids to learn to eat in nutritious ways, and so therefore we need to provide nutritious food for them. So we're not enabling them, we're not rescuing them, we're giving them the tools that they need to be able to succeed.

Alisa Minkin 51:14

We're scaffolding them, right? That's a big difference.

Rivka 51:17

Yes.

Alisa Minkin 51:18

tricky and it's hard and I feel like, you know, I dunno if you. The, the, the Barbie movie where there was a monologue with America Ferrara about how hard it is to be a woman. Nowadays

Rivka 51:27

No,

Alisa Minkin 51:27

one for teachers. Okay. I did one for parents on my Instagram

Rivka 51:32

I could, I could do that monologue. I'll be there.

Alisa Minkin 51:35

you should totally do that, and I wanna thank you because we could just talk about this all day. But I think we've done a lot and I respect your time and I wanna thank you so, so much for doing this with me. This is amazing.

Rivka 51:48

Thank you so much for all the great work that you're doing for kids, and I look forward to continuing to listen to all the great things you're putting out there.

Alisa Minkin 51:55

Thank you again.

51:58

Thank you for listening to Kids Matter. Raising Healthy, happy Children Takes a village, and I'm grateful you are part of ours. If today's conversation resonated with you, please share this episode with another parent, grandparent, teacher, or anyone who cares about kids. Together we can build a supportive community our children deserve. I'd love to hear from you. Share your thoughts, questions, or suggestions for future topics at Kids Matter podcast@gmail.com. With no explanation for your voice truly matters. Until next time, keep advocating for the children in your life because kids really do matter. They are our future. I'm Dr. Elisa Minkin and this has been Kids Matter. Please note that while I am a pediatrician, I am not your child's ped. This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical. For any medical concerns or decisions. Reach out to your child's healthcare professional.