Teasing and CyberbullyingChildren with Special Needs often make social mistakes, and over-react to negative comments made by other children. Often these children mishear a communication, interrupt, or answer out of turn, change the subject, misuse tone, misperceive the meaning of tone, intrude into another's personal space or not differentiate between friendly versus non friendly teasing. Because they make social errors and often don’t hear it when they are told to stop, children tease them. Because they over-react to teasing, they get teased more often than children who do not react. Children tease each other for a variety of reasons which include trying: to gain attention, to increase their status, to make themselves feel superior, to be funny, to deal with their jealousy or to get to get back at someone who has bullied them. This topic is covered more extensively in my book, Socially ADDept (2010), "The Hidden Rules of Humor." Handling teasing can be difficult as it either requires that they ignore or agree with the teasing. The children need to be taught the basic skills such as learning to NOT:
But children need to learn how to handle teasing. The ADDept Curriculum works with children to learn all these basic skills and particularly, defines a simple method of how to handle teasing. Click here to view a movie clip: "From Acting Out to Fitting In" CyberbullyingCyberbullying: is the new form of teasing which can be very harmful and insidious. Children from eight to eighteen, spend hours a day communicating in a virtual world. Whether they are on-line, on MySpace, Facebook or are using instant messaging (IMing) to communicate with each other, they socialize in this virtual world, and use it to set up dates while experimenting with their identity. Their use of cyberspace is unprecedented. Along with the increased use of cyberspace, there is a new form of bullying, perhaps more powerful than the old form because the perpetrator may or may not be identified. The scope of influence of the teasing is much larger than the crowd a bully in the playground could amass. Cyberbullying as defined by cyber psychology expert, Larry Rosen author of Me, My Space and I: Parenting the Net Generation (2007), MacMillian includes:
The two things that make this form of teasing or bullying dangerous are that the perpetrator can be disguised or unknown, and the number of people who can get drawn into to the circle of perpetrator/victim is huge. Children used to be able to escape teasing by going home. Internet bullying stays with them 24/7. Parents need to be aware if their children are victims or the perpetrators of cyberbullying. Here are some web sites that are very informative. Wired Safety Group. The site is written by the attorney, Parry Aftab. She covers the topic well and lists some interventions for parents and schools than use. For classroom teachers, it is useful to design some lessons on this topic. Since victims can also become the perpetrators, here is a useful list of questions to use in a classroom context to help educate children on these issues. The PBS documentary that aired January 20, 2008 can be viewed on their web site. Of particular interest, is the section on Cyberbullying. Web site for educators lots of resources for dealing with bullying at school << back to top |