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Family Professionals:
If you work with parents around bullying and social relationships,
the following books may be helpful. The reviews were written by Susan
Hoch from Oleanna Books and appeared in Family Information Services.
*********************************************** From the recent spate of good new books about bullying, this one stands out as exceptionally helpful, compassionate and wise. Parents, educators, and possibly interested highschoolers can learn from it how to recognize and deal with verbal, physical, and relational bullying. Barbara Coloroso, author of Kids Are Worth It and Parenting Through Crisis, presents hostile bullying and hazing as serious learned behavior, similar to any dramatic performance. She explains her use of the terms " bully," "the bullied," and"bystander" is intended to identify only roles that children perform at a particular moment, in one scene of one act in a longer play. Because roles can change, the terms are not intended to define or permanently label a child. Her goal is to help readers gain a clearer understanding of those roles. She analyzes the three types of characters in the drama, bullies, bullied, and bystanders, and describes how they play out the roles they've learned. She explains that, "bullying will always include these three elements:
She points out many reasons kids choose not to not confide in adults
about a bullying situation: She identifies, defines, and explains examples of bullying and its effects, describes warning sign indicators, and discusses, from a systems point of view, how to help alter scripts and change tragic plots and behavior for safer outcomes. The insights in Coloroso's thoughtful, readable consideration of bullying can help us understand what's going on, and possibly, help.
This remarkably helpful preschool curriculum guide, which includes a small section about elementary level application, can be adapted for different ages. It helps childcare people handle potential squabbles well and teach young children to make a habit of taking responsibility to work out problems with peers. Evans, an experienced teacher, uses research and experience to describes children's strong feelings, their need for autonomy, and their developing abilities, and suggests ways adults can assist in problem solving and mediation. Inspiring and easy to understand, she presents a broad view of how adults can, not only help them choose ways to control their violent tendencies, but also support their general growth and potential. Evans shares her enlightened ideas about teaching children separately and in groups, and her techniques for establishing a healthy environment setting routines, arranging transitions and separations, and using discussions. She describes emotional conflicts in the lives of children as young as one and a half years, transcribes or tells their stories , and recounts choices and outcomes, and the roles adults play. She shows how to break down confusing altercations into manageable parts and help children discuss and figure them out responsibly. The numerous real childhood upsets recalled here are the strength of the book and are helpfully indexed in the back. They illustrate how teachers not only can achieve order, but also productively assist children's learning. Nurturing children's emerging awareness and skills by facilitating this learning process, as opportunities arise, requires neutrality, respectful listening, a great deal of empathy, and a certain restraint. Helping them work through their tense situations may take greater effort than managing by adult dicta, but this manner of teaching increases children's communication ability, awareness of feelings, and ultimately their independent conflict resolution skills. It enhances their general attitude about how to live with other people so they become gradually less dependent and more responsible. Exploring their options in everyday interactions strengthens their resources for times they will have to negotiate serious matters. Children who learn these skills don't feel so powerless they resort to violence to assert themselves; they expect to be caring problem solvers. The more we adopt these methods in early childhood, the fewer tragedies will be enacted later by children who think they are at the end of their rope because they lack experience and skills. Betsy Evans's useful book sets a positive tone and shows it can be done. It deserves a wide readership.
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