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I know! I'm usually the one dolling them out but this time I need your help!
How do you stop your child from being a bully? I know! Mine are only five, three, and 20 months. How in the world am I facing bullying? I don't know but I know I want to stop it IMMEDIATELY!!
Here's the deal. The Rhino feels the need to rule the roost and he will do it anyway he can. He loves to just get in someone's (anyone will do!) face and just push every possible button until Mom is tweaked. He is especially effective at getting the Orangutan going. And even more effective if he is in the livestock trailer where she has no escape and I can't reach him.
I should probably define what he is doing too. He loves to use his "pinchies" (full hand pinch - much like a claw) to grab things and then when you aren't expecting it suddenly he pinches your arm. Or he'll suddenly just reach out and snargle your hair into a huge mess getting his fingers tangled in the process so that when you tell him to let go he has no choice but to pull. Oh, and my favorite. He plants his head in the middle of your chest or belly and he just "bulldogs" you away from wherever you are or whatever you are doing/playing with.
I have given the Orangutan permission to bully back if we are in the trailer and he starts this nonsense but I would rather break him of it all together. He heads to school in the fall and if I don't get rid of it by summer I'm in for a rough start to our school experience.
So tell me - how do you handle it when YOUR child is the bully?
2 comments:
We've just used timeouts. There is certainly a level of bullying that will always occur between siblings but we have tried hard to make sure that there really isn't a dominant child here. They seem to take turns at it but they are only 13 months apart. They both know they will never see the light of day if they're mean to the baby. But the other thing was to watch and learn what the real cause is and to address that issue often, outside of when they are actively bullying. Like one of the boys had issue with the other getting one on one attention. Once we figured this out, I could specifically say: Ok your brother and I are going to do this activity right now but if you behave while we do, you and I can do XX when we're done. If I waited until we had started the activity and he was jealous no amount of bargaining worked but if we addressed it first it was easy.
Is this going on with kids other than his sisters? If its just with his sisters, he may be feeling left out. If its with other kids also, then time out, take away a favorite toy/ or outing (only him, no sense punishing the good ones). It took us a long time to get the kids to understand that there are no favorites, that we love them equally. We do still have some teaseing between the kids, but its mostly because they are bored.
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