Dr. Jennifer Fraser's blog https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/blogs/dr-jennifer-fraser en The Puppy and the Teacher https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/blogs/dr-jennifer-fraser/the-puppy-and-the-teacher <div class="field field-name-field-article-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/sites/default/files/how_to_make_your_pet_your_babys_best_friend_0.jpg" width="600" height="400" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>When I found myself on the street wailing at my puppy as she lunged at passersby in order to greet them and adore them, “but you don’t even know those people!”, I knew it was time to get help.</p> <p>I have taught for over twenty years. I’ve taught at university, college, and high-school level. I know a thing or two about teaching. But confronted with a six month old, curly haired, black as soot standard poodle, I was a wreck. So I called up a dog trainer to save me.</p> <p>I was amazed that everything I learned applies in powerful ways to teaching.</p> <p>The reason we got “Duchess” in the first place was because our fifteen year old suffers from serious health issues, but even more challenging this year, he needed to undergo two corrective surgeries on his legs. He is in a great deal of pain on a daily basis and it cannot be managed because his health issues stop him from being able to take any kind of effective painkiller.</p> <p>Every morning, Duchess hurtles into his room, stands on her hind legs and leans as far as she can onto his bed shaking with happiness and wriggling with delight. Her whole body hums with the joy of seeing him wakeup. During those brief moments, I know getting a puppy was the right thing to do, but then as the day unfolds I forget as she whips things off the counter, lunges at people, pulls my arm out of its socket on paths if she sees a bird, barks relentlessly if she isn’t getting her way or wants attention.</p> <p>And I talk to her. I really do. I tell her “No” and “Stop” and “Sshhh”. In fact, these are things I say to students too and what I learned from the dog trainer is that I’m wasting my breath. Puppies, like kids, are ruled by instinct. So the first rule is: encourage them to do what you want in such a way that it is makes bypassing instinct worthwhile.</p> <p>If a person is there that Duchess wants to jump all over, I now meet her eyes and get her attention. Just like the dog trainer taught me, I put a treat in my hand and hold it in front of her nose while we walk calmly past the person. Then after we’ve gotten past, I let her have the treat. As the dog walker said, she is much more scent oriented than sound. So for me to “talk” at her, just sounds like “blah blah blah.” There are definitely days in the classroom when I know that’s what my students hear. Those are the times to shift it up. Appeal to their desire to move. Send them up to the board to write or to the window to look or down the hall to energize them. Instead of insisting teens be quiet or put their phones away, let them talk, let them use their phones for accessing information. Work with their impulse rather than curb it.</p> <p>Another key lesson I learned: if you tell a puppy “stop” or “leave it”, they’re keen to please, but then they need direction so you have to follow it with “forward.” Same with kids I realized. It’s one thing to give a negative command, but the goal is to switch it instantly into a positive. “Be quiet” or “ssshhh” needs to be followed with “let’s get your work done so you don’t have homework!”</p> <p>The dog trainer said that puppies respond much more to hand signals and body movement. They are what we call kinesthetic learners in the classroom. All the endless speaking at them falls on deaf ears, but use your hands and they tune right in. Our older son, who is away at university, is an amazing kinesthetic learner. He can watch an athlete do a particular movement on Youtube just once and recreate it himself without thinking. It’s vital for us as teachers to remember to differentiate our teaching so that the textual learner sees the words, the auditory learner hears them, and the kinesthetic learner matches the physicality of our movements to the information being presented.</p> <p>The most important lesson I learned from the dog trainer was that my energy impacts Duchess. She said dogs mirror their owners. If you’re aggressive, your dog will be too. If you’re someone always praising them in a high-pitched voice, they’ll become immune to striving for proper conduct as everything they do is praised. How similar puppies are to kids.</p> <p>Duchess was picking up on my anxiety. I’m worried that she’ll bark and bother our neighbours. I’m worried that she’ll lunge at someone and scare them. And deep down, as dogs can sense, I’m worried about my son and the pain he’s in and the pending surgery. So the dog trainer said to let go of it. Shoulders back, deep breath, make being out for a walk a relaxing interlude and with a few small lessons and practice I’ve done just that. Letting go of anxiety makes me a better dog owner and a better teacher.</p> </div></div></div> Wed, 10 Feb 2016 19:20:59 +0000 Dr. Jennifer Fraser 49537 at https://www.kidsinthehouse.com https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/blogs/dr-jennifer-fraser/the-puppy-and-the-teacher#comments Why We Must Refuse to Submit to Bullying https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/blogs/dr-jennifer-fraser/why-we-must-refuse-to-submit-to-bullying <div class="field field-name-field-article-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/sites/default/files/480294317.jpg" width="529" height="323" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>Say, ‘F--- A Duck,’ and I’ll let you back up on the dock.</p> <p>Say, ‘F--- A Duck!’</p> <p>Although up to his shoulders in icy ocean water, Dave would not say the words.</p> <p>Everyone liked Dave. He was a year older than me and just a good guy, thoughtful and kind. At sixteen, he was tall and athletic, street smart and cool. He was cursed in high-school with bad skin, but we all suffered the indignity of blemishes.</p> <p>Dave was surely freezing to death and Tom wouldn’t let him back up on the dock. Tom was forcing him to stay in an ocean that given more minutes could kill him.</p> <p>We stood and watched in a small anxious circle. Teenagers dressed in Adidas pants, t-shirts and hoodies. Our runners gripping the slippery damp dock. Looking back, I imagine us like dogs pacing fretfully when their owner is out of reach, but visible. Perhaps we let out those little cries of distress that dogs do.</p> <p>I doubt it though.</p> <p>The possibility of attracting Tom’s attention, his cruelty, and being thrown into the freezing ocean must have silenced even an instinctual desire to emit high-pitched sounds of pain. The thought that Tom’s focus might shift from Dave to one of us must have been too terrifying to contemplate. Tom was tall and classically handsome. He had suffered a football injury so the story went and so he walked with a bit of a stoop. He had thick, messy blond hair complimented by a square jaw and serious eyes. While he often smiled, he was judgmental and his teasing was far more likely to be humiliating and hurtful to sensitive teens. I was afraid of him and stayed as clear as much as possible. </p> <p>Dave had somehow come up against him and was now paying a terrible price. We were on a biking and camping trip in the Gulf Islands.</p> <p>During the days we would pedal up the islands’ winding roads lined with cedar and arbutus. At night, we put up tents and cooked over fires at the side of the ocean on grassy fields. We were a mix of grade 10s and 11s having the time of our lives, part of the Quest Program in Vancouver, BC in the 1980s. Quest took us far away from the classrooms that had structured our learning for the past ten or eleven years. It felt like heaven.</p> <p>As kids, we didn’t realize we were not only learning about wilderness travel. We were learning about dominance and submission. We were being taught a lesson in power. And I should have known better because there was a warning, a clear warning that Dave was in Tom’s gun sights. He was going to be the bully’s target.</p> <p>The night before, we were having a sing-a-long. We walked down from our campsite to the dock where Tom’s big sailboat was moored. A group of fifteen or twenty kids, we gathered in the sailboat’s cozy hold for an evening of fun. Dean was playing guitar and we were all singing with red binders on our laps that held the songs. I loved the folk songs, environmental protest songs, and romantic songs. Everyone’s voice in unison created an intense camaraderie.</p> <p>That night, berry pie was being served and handed out to all the kids. Dave reached out his hands to accept a slice of pie and Tom said, “I guess you have to feed those things” in reference to Dave’s blemishes. For me, the comment was searing; if I could open up my skull, I’m sure I could show the scar on my brain left by that comment. The cruel insult should have been all it took for us to speak up to tell Tom to shut-up and leave Dave alone. But no one did. We bowed our heads. We sang with smiles on our faces. We laughed at the teachers’ jokes. We ate the pie they served.</p> <p>Looking back, I regret being that weak person, that bystander. </p> <p>Shaming Dave about having teenaged skin was not enough. Tom needed to exact a greater punishment. Dave hadn’t done anything wrong, but he still had to pay a price for being an athletic boy, strong and kind, cool and street smart. Tom must have seen him as a rival.</p> <p>The next day, in the late afternoon, Tom held Dave, fully clothed, down in the ocean. It was February and the water must have been as cold as a blue flame. Down on one knee, reaching over to keep Dave submerged, Tom towered over him. I can still see Dave’s fingers gripping the edge of the dock, clinging to the wood. Only his head and shoulders were above the black water.</p> <p>“Say ‘F--- A Duck,’ Say It!”</p> <p>Even though he must have been burning with cold, Dave would not say the words.</p> <p>I feel like the other students, at least one, maybe even me, said Tom had to stop and pull Dave up on the dock. But I also feel like no one had the guts to say anything. My memories are gone. Some moments are too painful to remember.</p> <p>What I do remember is a feeling of squeezing, pressing fear and I also remember not wanting Dave to say the stupid words. I wanted him to resist.</p> <p>And he did.</p> <p>Tom was forced to haul Dave up on the dock or surely kill him. Tom, a teacher in his late thirties or early forties, who had authority over us, had to submit to Dave, a sixteen year old boy. A student.</p> <p>I realize now that for Tom, being a teacher, it was a complicated situation. Now that I’m a teacher, I look at the whole moment differently from when I<br /> was a fifteen year old girl.</p> <p>It was a classic bully moment. Dave must have threatened Tom’s power in some way and so Dave needed to be exposed publicly. The boy had to submit to the man’s will in front of a group of witnesses. The teacher needed the student to demonstrate weakness in a humiliating way. But, if Dave died or even became ill, it must have crossed Tom’s mind that he’d have trouble explaining what happened. He also must have wondered if this might just be the tipping point for students to speak to their parents and tell what they witnessed, if Tom returned to school and lied about what happened to Dave. These are mere guesses as it’s hard to know what goes on in the head of a bully while he tortures and torments someone.</p> <p>Here I am, more than thirty years later, wondering how it was possible that Dave found something within him that made him refuse to say the words. I mean, the string of words really are stupid.</p> <p>“F--- A Duck.”</p> <p>These words are not worth suffering extreme pain for or dying for, but Dave would not say them.</p> <p>I think I understand now why Dave refused to say those stupid words. He must have known that the lie is that those words are silly or meaningless and it wouldn’t hurt to say them to please Tom, to flatter the teacher and make him look powerful.</p> <p>What Dave must have known was that those words, “F--- A Duck” were, in fact, an incantation. They held the magic power to take Dave’s sense of self away, transform him from a strong, healthy, confident kid into an anxious, depressed, maybe even suicidal kid. I and the other bystanders thought we were protecting ourselves by maintaining silence, but actually we were putting ourselves in harm’s way. Serves us right.</p> <p>If I could relive that moment, I’d cast myself in the hero’s role. I’d be the girl that confronts the bully even though it’s a teacher. I would shove Tom away. I would take whatever blows he delivered. I’d remain standing and pull Dave up out of the killing waters and onto the dock with the rest of us. I’d put my arm around Dave and someone would throw a towel over his shaking shoulders and we’d walk away. We’d leave Tom alone, defeated and rejected for being so hateful and cruel. His authority would collapse and he would never be able to hurt anyone again using his physical strength, his humiliating comments or his sexual manipulations. He used all three of these techniques for years at Prince of Wales school and countless kids suffered. I wasn’t the hero and Tom’s abuses continued year after year until he was taken to court by some of his victims many years later.</p> <p>I protected myself from Tom’s hate in that one brief moment of time, but opened myself up to self-hate for decades. His incantation became a mantra of self-loathing.</p> <p>That’s the bully’s magic trick: the more you keep quiet, the more you submit, the more you turn on yourself. You become the bully with your own self as the victim. And for some that leads to bullycide. They want to kill the bully in their own head.</p> <p>There’s no safety in keeping quiet.</p> <p>Although in the moment it doesn’t feel like it, safety actually comes from speaking up, pushing back, refusing to submit.</p> </div></div></div> Thu, 07 Jan 2016 18:23:21 +0000 Dr. Jennifer Fraser 49446 at https://www.kidsinthehouse.com https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/blogs/dr-jennifer-fraser/why-we-must-refuse-to-submit-to-bullying#comments Posture of the Abused Child https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/blogs/dr-jennifer-fraser/posture-of-the-abused-child <div class="field field-name-field-article-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/sites/default/files/dg46jq7mfugazeuwnjufv8ic4z7xkmrmeklxihncyiq.jpg" width="497" height="344" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>When I was little, my dad used to laugh at my shoulder blades. He said they stuck out like a couple of chicken wings, but by the time I finished high-school, my back was rounded, my wings were gone.</p> <p>Along with year after year of teenage girls, I was emotionally and sexually abused by teachers in the Quest program at Prince of Wales school in Vancouver. Our teachers disguised their <a href="https://www.personalinjurylawcal.com/boy-scout-sexual-abuse-molestation/">abuse under the cloak of an outdoor education program</a> that was all about health, wilderness travel, hugs and massages. Not understanding, as a naïve fifteen year old that I was meant to submit to sexual advances from my teachers, I resisted and thereby became a target of humiliation. While the girls that did the teachers’ bidding got rewards, probably the best one being ‘exemption from shaming,’ I was not so lucky.</p> <p>They made fun of my body commenting on it in sexually humiliating ways. They would punish the whole group of kids on the trip if I didn’t let my hair down or didn’t go for one on one photo sessions with one of the teachers. And they commented about me when I was pressured along with other sixteen year old boys and girls to swim with them naked while on a month long canoe trip in the Yukon far from our parents. It’s amazing to me now just how much control a teacher has over a kid.</p> <p>I look back at them as a middle-aged woman and I am filled with scorn, but as a child? They were so powerful.</p> <p>They made fun of presentations I gave by throwing food at me. It’s quite something as a teenager to speak up in front of the class, but to speak up while the teacher publicly humiliates you is a whole other experience. I was punished that particular time for having missed a day or two of school because I was on a trip with my family. I realize now that time away from their mind-games was a big risk that we might actually speak to our parents, tell them what was happening. They needed us with them as much as possible in order to exert full control.</p> <p>I always shake my head when adults are shocked and amazed that kids don’t report abuse. Anyone who has ever been abused knows the impossibility of speaking up. I saw a psychologist for several years in my early twenties and then attended a therapy group with two psychiatrists while at grad school. My issues were eating disorder and cutting. It’s absolutely amazing to me when I look back that I never told the psychologist or the psychiatrists I was emotionally and sexually abused by my teachers. It’s like I didn’t know it. For a long time, it was a hazy out of body experience. I now know that it’s the only way I survived it. I retreated into a safe place that required not remembering in any kind of clear or detailed way what happened. I made myself almost convinced that it happened to someone else. And it worked, because although I am scarred, and I lost a great deal over the course of my life from being abused, I did survive.<br /> Sometimes I imagine confronting the teachers. I’d like to tell them in violent terms that what they did to me and so many other kids was sick. I want them to know that taking the trust a student places in a teacher and perverting it, is disgusting.</p> <p>But when I was a teenager, I believed a good portion of the time that they were mentors, that they cared about me, that they could show me things. My body began to revolt against this lie first, but it’s taken a long time for my mind to come clear.</p> <p>Last year, I started working with a personal trainer. The first issue he addressed was my posture, but it wasn’t a single session problem to fix. It’s being almost a year and I’m still working on my posture. I have to consciously pull my shoulders back and raise my head. The trainer will say “be proud” or “don’t be timid.” These words of encouragement make me feel a little like crying because the girl I once was stopped holding her head high. She stopped being proud and instead, became afraid, timid, hunching over hoping not to be targeted either for sexual contact she didn’t desire or scenes of public humiliation that eroded her self-esteem.</p> <p>The trainer has shown me in the mirror on multiple occasions the way in which my natural stance is rounded shoulders, my head held down. My muscles are all in disarray. While I lack muscle strength that would naturally keep me erect---my shoulders in line with my ears---my upper trapezius muscles are so overused they are shortened and tight. The painful remedy requires hundreds and hundreds of repetitions so that my back straightening muscles---rhomboids, latissimus dorsi, lower trapezius---become stronger. I must also stretch my upper “traps” everyday so that they relax enough to allow me to work the other muscles. It’s frustrating and when I do the stretch, the muscles are so tight it feels as if they will snap.<br /> I have next to no muscle memory in my back as it’s used to functioning as a cowardly shell, protective and hunched. My shoulders are not aligned, strong and supple. Instead, they are more like muscular armour. As a teenager, I knew I was in danger and my body still holds those traumatic memories. But now, I want to stand tall and so I go to the gym and trust my personal trainer that I can indeed get better and build confidence in how I present myself to the outside world.</p> <p>Joe Navarro, author of <em>Louder than Words </em>and <em>What Every Body is Saying,</em> writes about the eloquence of shoulders and the way in which they can convey the whole spectrum from curiosity to depression.</p> <p>As a teacher, p<span style="line-height: 1.538em;">arents ask me what to watch for in their teenage children, what signs might indicate that something’s wrong since adolescents are well-known for being quiet and withdrawn. I think it’s not a bad idea to watch their posture and worry if they aren’t standing head up, shoulders back in a stance of confidence and trust.</span></p> <p>My wings have been clipped and that can never be repaired. My teachers in the Quest program did not give me the education promised; instead, they hurt me. But they also underestimated me. It took me a long time, but I’m doing the most dangerous thing for them. I’m speaking up. I’m speaking up on behalf of myself and every child out there who is being manipulated by an adult, feels confused and is starting to float away from a healthy, natural bond with their body and mind. I wish I could grab those kids by the shoulders and tell them to speak up: “tell your parents, tell your grandparents, tell your coach. Tell other teachers or the principal or anyone who will step in and protect you.”</p> <p>Every time I speak up and write about those teachers who abused me, my shoulders move back and my head rises.</p> <p>No more flight.</p> <p>It’s a fighting stance.</p> </div></div></div> Tue, 10 Nov 2015 18:42:59 +0000 Dr. Jennifer Fraser 49327 at https://www.kidsinthehouse.com https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/blogs/dr-jennifer-fraser/posture-of-the-abused-child#comments The Chronically Ill Child and the Puppy https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/blogs/dr-jennifer-fraser/the-chronically-ill-child-and-the-puppy <div class="field field-name-field-article-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/sites/default/files/thinkstockphotos-465245459.jpg" width="3867" height="2578" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>When I told colleagues, friends and family that we were getting a puppy, they all said I was crazy. And I’ll admit, now that the puppy’s arrived, I walk around thinking mournfully to myself “What have I done? What have I done?”</p> <p>“Dutch” is a black standard poodle and she’s eight weeks old. I’m quite convinced she was raised by servants so I no longer worry she’s missing her siblings or her mother. I’m quite sure she’s missing the standard of living she’d grown accustomed to. It’s been twenty-four hours and what I’ve learned is that if I am not showering attention upon her, she barks in a high-pitched bossy way. If I play with her, she barks in delight. If I sit, she wants up on my lap and barks until that happens. If I take her for a walk, she barks until I pick her up and carry her while walking. This morning when she woke up at 4:30, she started barking, apparently just at the joy of a new day. Honestly, I am worried about the neighbors almost as much as myself. I wonder if there’s a mental illness that begins with the barking of a puppy and ends in a straightjacket.</p> <p>What would possess a woman who’s working more than full time on major projects and who has a very busy husband, a son at university, and a fifteen year old in high-school, to get a puppy?</p> <p>The short answer is: the fifteen year old has stage two kidney disease. There are five stages before one needs a transplant to survive. Angus has one functioning kidney; it’s at 70% and degenerating.</p> <p>The long answer, as to what would possess me to get a puppy, is that dogs are healers just as much as the amazing doctors and teachers out there who we’ve had the privilege of working with to care for our son through the years. The long answer requires several entwined backstories.</p> <p>Last June, just as the school year was ending, our eleven year old dog “Shadow” became ill with cancer.  My husband was out of town picking up our older son from university so it was up to Angus and me to go to the animal hospital and be with Shadow as she was put to sleep. It was an extremely painful experience for us to watch a beloved creature, absolutely a part of our family---who such a short time before had been full of energy and life---drift into death.</p> <p>It was particularly painful because Angus lives with an acute sense of his own frail mortality. While other teenagers worry about having blemished skin or not getting an A on an assignment or not knowing if someone will ask them to dance, Angus worries about dying.</p> <p>The last time he had an infection that put his kidney at risk and we were driving to the hospital for another round of IV antibiotics, he turned to me and asked point blank: “Am I going to die?” I assured him that he was not going to die. But the question hung in the car between us. We spend a lot of time in doctors’ offices and hospital rooms. And when he undergoes a kidney transplant, this question will be raised again.</p> <p>We brought Shadow into our lives when Angus was four years old so he couldn’t remember a time when we didn’t have a dog. Then she had to be put to sleep and suddenly, our house was empty. Arrivals were a humdrum affair where keys were put down, bags stowed, people slipped off to their respective rooms. It was a tough adjustment because we were used to coming home to a dog that would leap, cavort, bustle about with pure joy that we had arrived at the door and so we were all together again.</p> <p>Coming home had become painfully quiet.</p> <p>It was okay to coast through the summer without a dog, but I knew well enough that for the chronically-ill child school had particular added element of suffering and the only antidote would be a puppy.</p> <p>People can’t see kidney disease and although they’ve been informed and in that moment express sympathy and care, it can sometimes be short-lived. I can understand this in children whose experiences are limited and memories short, but I have higher expectations for teachers. One teacher who worked closely with our son told me that she thought he should put his laptop away, disdainful of his passion for videogames, and get out to “play soccer” with the other boys. I was dumbfounded and didn’t even reply.</p> <p>It’s so important for educators to understand that children, who live in bodies that are exhausted and/ or in pain, withdraw into videogames because they are so distracting. When kids have chronic diseases, a videogame character becomes a welcome alternate self: as a player the child can run, leap, drop from a height and triumph over enemies. This is an imaginative world that replaces a limited, oftentimes pain-infused, physical reality completely out of their control.</p> <p>The teacher gave the “soccer advice” in grade 8 when Angus was finding it harder and harder to walk and numerous specialists were examining his legs. In grade 9 as his walking became more painful, another teacher got close up to his face, when he withdrew from PE class saying he couldn’t handle it, and she told him “you’re not trying.” Teachers need to know that the kid with a chronic disease, with an added medical problem in his legs, is trying so much harder than all the comfortable, pain-free kids playing soccer and getting kudos from teachers. Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t real.</p> <p>Later when Angus told me the story of the teacher saying he wasn’t trying, he started to cry.  He’s a kid that almost never sheds a tear or complains about his pain. So to see this teacher bring him so much hurt, was an unforgettable experience and this is why I write about it.</p> <p>As Angus was going through an adolescent growth spurt, he was even more exhausted as was to be expected with kidney disease, but the doctors discovered that his bones were growing and his leg tendons were not. Endless specialist appointments confirmed that the only remedy would be surgery to lengthen each tendon and hope that after he would be able to walk without pain and a hobbled gait. </p> <p>With two surgeries on the horizon, we planned to transform our home into a place where imagination and affection were the rule, not unjust criticism. The leader in the realm of imagination and affection is none other than a puppy.</p> <p>Puppies are bumbling, clumsy symbols of spirited life force. They are as close to birth as chronically-ill kids are to death. They are full of rule-breaking, playful, joyful, affectionate behavior that are constant reminders to the frail child that life is essentially funny, imaginative and unpredictable.</p> <p>Our puppy “Dutch” growls at her reflection in the mirror; she pounces on inanimate objects; she cries to be picked up and held. She snuggles into the crook of our sons’ arms for a safe place to sleep. Her affection already knows no bounds and her expectation that we will drop to our knees and play tug of war with a toy is a good lesson in family assertiveness: home is the place where people meet you on your level and are delighted at your every effort because they never forget what it’s like to be little and needy like a puppy or suffering like a teenager with some unseen, but nonetheless, painfully difficult issue.</p> <p>Maybe a kid with chronic illness should be allowed to bring a puppy to school like a visually impaired person can have a guide dog. The guide dog is a perpetual reminder to the privileged ones who can see, just how hard it must be to get through the day without vision.</p> </div></div></div> Wed, 23 Sep 2015 18:05:50 +0000 Dr. Jennifer Fraser 49166 at https://www.kidsinthehouse.com https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/blogs/dr-jennifer-fraser/the-chronically-ill-child-and-the-puppy#comments Students with Learning Disabilities at Risk for Teacher Bullying https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/blogs/dr-jennifer-fraser/students-with-learning-disabilities-at-risk-for-teacher-bullying <div class="field field-name-field-article-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/sites/default/files/learning_imagine.jpg" width="2125" height="1413" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p><span style="font-size: 13.008px; line-height: 1.538em;">We learned from other students’ testimonies that our son was regularly hauled up in front of the basketball team for one-on-one sessions with the coach who would yell rhetorical questions in his face along the lines of “Do you even like basketball? Do you even deserve to play? You’re the best player out there, you’re not trying!” According to student reports, when our son tried to get away, the coach would restrain him for more in-the-face humiliation. The other coach would watch. Students reported that they wanted to stop what was happening, but they felt powerless because the bully was a teacher and he was their coach.</span></p> <p>Our son has a Learning Disability and according to the experts, as recorded in government documents on bullying and child abuse, he is more vulnerable and at risk because of it. He’s less likely to speak up and defend himself [1]. However, when we submitted the students’ reports to the Commissioner for Teacher Regulation, the teacher’s conduct was not publicly addressed, nor were future students seen as needing protection. This kind of teacher conduct was condoned.</p> <p>Our son has Dysgraphia. It was identified when he was finishing grade 6 and he was so relieved because it meant that his learning frustrations could be remedied with access to a computer and extra time on tests. Dysgraphia means in layman’s terms that the student has no problem reading, but finds it challenging to put ideas into words especially under time pressure. Our son also discovered that he was more of an auditory learner. So when he listens to a book, his recall is almost perfect; whereas when he textually absorbs material, the recall is more challenging. His auditory learning style may have made him more sensitive to adults’ yelling.</p> <p>As an eleven year old, he informed the Educational Psychologist who did the testing for his learning disability that he felt very anxious about his basketball coaches because they were constantly yelling. The Educational Psychologist was concerned and said that I should speak to the coaches about their approach about how it was negatively impacting our son. I wrote an email to them and touched base with the Athletic Director at the school to see if they could accommodate our son’s sensitivity to yelling as a coaching method. Neither coach responded to my email, but when I encountered one of them in passing, he yelled at me in a fury that I would dare ask for our son to be shielded from their way of coaching. I was new at the school as a teacher and felt confused as if I had done something wrong. I kept quiet after that.</p> <p>Our son started doing fabulously in his academics. He earned major awards for his learning in grades seven and eight. He set as a goal getting onto the Headmaster’s Honor Roll and achieved it.</p> <p>As a fifteen year old, our son had to have the Learning Disabilities assessment done again so it would carry his accommodations---computer use and extra time---into his university courses. This time he did not say anything to the Educational Psychologist about his experiences playing basketball for coaches who screamed incoherently, repeatedly expressed disgust at players’ performances, muttered obscenities, swore, shunned and ostracized certain players. We only learned about this conduct from detailed student testimonies a year later. However, our son’s learning assessment should have been a red flag because he had gone into serious decline as a student: “his spelling skills and skills of reading comprehension are significantly weaker now than in 2007 (when compared to age expectations). Moreover, [he] now experiences mild attentional challenges.”</p> <p>We could not understand how our bright child, previously focused and confident was in decline. The key lesson in this is an eleven year old might speak up about teacher abuse, but a fifteen year old who hopes to play basketball at college knows that if he reports the coach is abusive, he might lose his chance for playing time, scholarship opportunities, letters of reference, phone calls made to university coaches. Teachers and coaches are in a significant power imbalance with students.</p> <p>The teenager knows that far too often victims are held responsible for the actions of bullies. Teens know well enough that the system has a bad habit of flipping it around so that students who report are seen as a problem because their speaking up will affect the reputation of the teacher or coach and therefore the school, so they learn it’s best to put their heads down and suffer. It’s best to look the other way when they witness teachers or coaches bullying certain targeted students.</p> <p>However, it wasn’t just our son, there were many parents and many students reporting. Students across five years were describing the same bullying conduct done by their teachers under the auspices of coaching. We believed the system, namely the Headmaster, the Chaplain, the Director of the Senior School and certainly the Commissioner for Teacher Regulation would step in and stop what multiple students were describing as a clearly abusive situation in the basketball programs.</p> <p>We were wrong.</p> <p>Student reports of teachers calling players “f----- retards, f---- pussies, f----- pathetic, f---- embarrassments” and so on were minimized and dismissed as part of a sports culture with the help of lawyers and the Commissioner for Teacher Regulation.</p> <p>Scientists at McMaster University refer to this kind of attack on a child as relational bullying: “Many parents, educators, and health professionals are familiar with physical and verbal forms of bullying. However, it also is bullying when a child uses ostracism, rumour spreading, or gossip to sabotage another child's peer relationships and isolate him or her from the peer group. This type of bullying, called relational bullying, can be just as harmful to a child as being physically harassed or attacked.” [1] Like the vast majority of studies, this one is focused on peer bullying. One can only imagine that the harmful impact caused by bullying is exponentially intensified when the bullying comes from an adult in a powerful position such as coach, teacher, or Headmaster.</p> <p>Our son nearly collapsed as a student and as a person. With the claims of anonymous students, published widely by the Headmaster, that he had told “nasty lies” and had “manufactured evidence,” he started having panic attacks if he needed to simply write a math test. Our son would avoid going to classes if he had to present something. He was diagnosed with PTSD by an experienced sports psychology expert. He was exempted from exams in grade 11 and 12. His reaction to bullying is typical and well-documented by researchers. “Research shows that bullying can negatively impact a child’s access to education and lead to:</p> <p>• School avoidance and higher rates of absenteeism<br /> • Decrease in grades<br /> • Inability to concentrate<br /> • Loss of interest in academic achievement<br /> • Increase in dropout rates” [2]</p> <p>When our son went off to university, we had no hope that he would survive. We were sure within a month or two he’d have to come back home.</p> <p>We were wrong.</p> <p>In an environment where he wasn’t being bullied by teachers, administrators and then peers---who were modeling their conduct on the adults---our son flourished. In first year, he slowly but surely learned again to trust his own abilities, to concentrate, to handle anxiety. In second year, he fought his way onto the Dean’s List. Only one thousand students out of twenty thousand have a high enough GPA to get on the list at his university. He is exceptionally bright and strong-minded to not let a learning disability or previous educational bullying hold him back.</p> <p>Learning Disabilities may actually be Learning Exceptionalities. We might be losing some of our top students and top athletes by simply expecting them to submit to whatever teaching style we deem best. A cookie cutter method for teaching is not only outdated, but it has the power to significantly harm certain learners who don’t fit with the herd. These exceptional learners have many gifts that get squandered by an education system when it is rigid and formulaic [4].</p> <p>Teachers and Coaches who bully can cause serious harm to student learning on the court and in the classroom and therefore should never be tolerated. Forty years of psychological, psychiatric, and neuroscientific research says bullying harms all students, not just the exceptional ones.</p> <p><strong>Notes</strong> 1. <a href="http://www.mcf.gov.bc.ca/child_protection/pdf/handbook_action_child_abuse.pdf">http://www.mcf.gov.bc.ca/child_protection/pdf/handbook_action_child_abuse.pdf</a> 2. Wenonah Campbell and Cheryl Missiuna, “Bullying Risk in Children with Disabilities: A Review of the Literature,” CanChild: Centre for Childhood Disability Research, 2011: <a href="https://www.canchild.ca/en/canchildresources/bullying_risk_children_disabilities.asp">https://www.canchild.ca/en/canchildresources/bullying_risk_children_disabilities.asp</a> 3. Pacer’s National Bullying Prevention Centre, “Bullying and Harassment of Students with Disabilities,” <a href="http://www.pacer.org/bullying/resources/students-with-disabilities/">http://www.pacer.org/bullying/resources/students-with-disabilities/</a> 4. Sean Price, “Ending Child Abuse at School,” 2009: “According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, over the last 20 years there have been hundreds of allegations of school personnel using restraint and seclusion in abusive ways on children. It's happening disproportionately to students with disabilities, often at the hands of untrained staff. Many of these students bear haunting physical and emotional scars.” <a href="http://www.tolerance.org/blog/ending-child-abuse-school">http://www.tolerance.org/blog/ending-child-abuse-school</a></p> </div></div></div> Thu, 10 Sep 2015 19:11:09 +0000 Dr. Jennifer Fraser 49090 at https://www.kidsinthehouse.com https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/blogs/dr-jennifer-fraser/students-with-learning-disabilities-at-risk-for-teacher-bullying#comments Are We Genetically Programmed to Bully? https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/blogs/dr-jennifer-fraser/are-we-genetically-programmed-to-bully <div class="field field-name-field-article-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/sites/default/files/thinkstockphotos-470553983.jpg" width="3000" height="2000" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>In my opinion, the short answer is “no.”</p> <p>However, like all things, this is debatable and a recent article in The National Post newspaper in Canada raises some intriguing questions and supplies thought-provoking research (1).  Recent studies showed that “bullies have highest self-esteem, social status, lowest rates of depression.” This is confirmed in previous studies that foreground the popularity and status of bullies (2).  However, what’s new is the conclusion reached. Journalist Tom Blackwell writes:</p> <ul> <li>A just-published Canadian study has added heft to a provocative new theory about bullying: that the behaviour is literally in the genes, an inherited trait that actually helps build social rank and sex appeal. If accepted, the hypothesis rooted in evolutionary psychology could transform how schools confront the persistent and often-shattering problem.</li> </ul> <p>Blackwell looks at a study done by Jennifer Wong, a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University. Wong studied high-school students with an eye to examining the way in which bullying can “establish rank” and assist in “climbing the social ladder.” Rather than simply condemn bullying, she looked at the way bullying might actually work as a “tool.” Wong comments: “Most anti-bullying programs try to change the behaviour of bullies — and they usually don’t work, says Wong, who reviewed the literature on program outcomes for her PhD thesis. That’s probably because the behaviour is biologically hard-wired, not learned.” I would like to take the results of Wong’s study and put them under a different lens in order to consider an alternative conclusion.</p> <p>I would argue that Wong’s research potentially supports a more disturbing conclusion and that is: Our society privileges bullies.</p> <p>But before we examine that idea, let us look at one more important study that raises the question about whether or not we’re genetically programmed to bully:</p> <p>Further supporting Wong’s position is separate research done by Professor Anthony Volk in the Social Sciences Faculty at Brock University. In his study done with colleagues, they found that the bullies among 178 surveyed teenagers “got more sex than everyone else.” Professor Volk reaches the insightful conclusion that “The average bully isn’t particularly sadistic or even deeply argumentative,” rather, “What they really are is people driven for status.”</p> <p>To my mind, this does not confirm genetic programming necessarily; instead, it confirms for me that we are a society built on a bullying foundation.</p> <p>How is that possible? We have so many government issued documents, school statements, codes of conduct, rules in place, initiatives, foundations and they all say: Bullying is bad and will be punished. They even say: Don’t be a bystander. However, it doesn’t take long for children in school to realize that this is a rule only for children. It’s a rule like the one about drinking alcohol: not allowed in childhood, celebrated in adulthood. Same with bullying. And this is why we have laws for children who bully, but we do not have the same laws for adults.</p> <p>My July 14th “<a href="http://www.kidsinthehouse.com/blogs/jenmfrasershawca/rewarding-adults-who-bully">Rewarding Adults Who Bully</a>” offers examples of exactly how this hypocritical dynamic works whereby we tell children an emphatic “no bullying,” at the same time we increase the status of adult bullies in society. And even more powerful, when children heed our directive to not be bystanders and speak up about adult bullies, they can pay a terrible price: be questioned about their perceptions and their motivations, be positioned as liars, be seen as hurting the adult’s reputation. Children learn very quickly that being a bystander, when it comes to adult bullies, is a key “tool” for social survival.</p> <p>Let’s consider an analogy. In a racist society, a child quickly learns that showing empathy to bullies’ targets is socially unacceptable. Whereas, if the child participates in racist conduct then she will belong to the group that has status, power, privilege and probably more sex. This child is less likely to be depressed or have low self-esteem or low social status. Survival in a racist society may well require behaving like a racist. Survival in a bullying society may well require behaving like a bully.</p> <p>The problem with a genetic theory is it does not account for why bullies are in the minority if we are all programmed to behave this way for status. At the same time, our shocking failure to contain bullying despite our many, many documents and initiatives, so that is on the rise, supports the ugly truth that when adults bully, we actually condone and enable it. Furthermore, in the adult world, research done by the Workplace Bullying Institute provides extensive data on how the bully’s target often loses or leaves his job, not the bully (3).   Bullies are more likely to be promoted (3). </p> <p>The admission that we are a society that privileges bullies, although a bitter pill to swallow, gives us the remarkable opportunity to change, just like we changed from a racist society with the Civil Rights Movement.<br /> Now it’s time for Civil Rights Movement for Children. If they were raised in a society that protected them from adult bullying, maybe they would grow up and learn that fairness and compassion were the ways to succeed, gain status, and have healthy self-esteem.</p> <p>Bibliography:</p> <p>1 Tom Blackwell, “Provocative new study finds bullies have highest self esteem, social status, lowest rates of depression,” The National Post, July: 2015. <a href="http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com%2F%2Fhealth%2Fprovocative-new-study-finds-bullies-have-highest-self-esteem-social-status-lowest-rates-of-depression">http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com%2F%2Fhealth%2Fprovocative-new-study-finds-bullies-have-highest-self-esteem-social-status-lowest-rates-of-depression</a><br /> 2 John Schinnerer, Ph.D, “‘Help, My Coach is a Bully!’: The Consequences of Verbally Abusive Coaching”: <a href="http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Help_My_Coach_is_a_Bully_The_Consequences_of_Verbally_Abusive_Coaching.html">http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Help_My_Coach_is_a_Bully_The_Consequences_of_Verbally_Abusive_Coaching.html</a>; Devyne Lloyd, “What Happens when Bullies Become Adults?,” Michigan State University, School of Journalism blog “The New Bullying,” April 2012: <a href="http://news.jrn.msu.edu/bullying/2012/04/01/bullies-as-adults/">http://news.jrn.msu.edu/bullying/2012/04/01/bullies-as-adults/</a><br /> <span style="font-size: 13.0080003738403px; line-height: 1.538em;">3 <a href="http://workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2014-US-Survey.pdf">http://workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2014-US-Survey.pdf</a></span><br /> <span style="font-size: 13.0080003738403px; line-height: 1.538em;">4 Peggy Drexler, “Are Workplace Bullies Rewarded for Their Behavior,” Forbes, July 2013: <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/peggydrexler/2013/07/10/are-workplace-bullies-rewarded-for-their-behavior/">http://www.forbes.com/sites/peggydrexler/2013/07/10/are-workplace-bullies-rewarded-for-their-behavior/</a></span></p> </div></div></div> Wed, 05 Aug 2015 19:56:35 +0000 Dr. Jennifer Fraser 48854 at https://www.kidsinthehouse.com https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/blogs/dr-jennifer-fraser/are-we-genetically-programmed-to-bully#comments Rewarding Adults Who Bully https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/blogs/jenmfrasershawca/rewarding-adults-who-bully <div class="field field-name-field-article-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/sites/default/files/coach-athlete-10-21.jpg" width="1000" height="667" alt="coach athlete" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>If a coach is successful and wins championships, does it excuse bullying conduct?</p> <p>The best way to answer this question is to ask it first about kids: if reports come in from multiple sources that a child is bullying and hurting others, should a school principal factor in whether or not the child won a spelling bee or hit a home run? Granted, it might make the principal’s decision more difficult, especially if the child is at a private school that depends on its reputation and achievements to encourage attendees. The principal might feel conflicted and not want to suspend or discipline his star academic or athlete, but most would agree: bullying conduct does not get erased by the child’s successes. Furthermore, it would be difficult for the principal to argue that because the child won the spelling bee or hit the home run, it meant he was not a bully. That kind of logic is faulty.</p> <p>If this is the way we handle bullying done by children, why do we change the rules when we are dealing with adults? Surely, we hold adults to a higher code of conduct than children. Yes, It could be a personal liability and a risk for an organization responsible for the staff conduct, but what if the ORG is a limited liability corporation? You could find the answer on <a href="https://moneybrighter.com/" target="_blank">moneybrighter</a> but in general, when it comes to bullying, we should hold adults to a much higher code of conduct than children since child bullies do not have control over their target’s physical or psychological health or future like adults do who may be in the powerful position of teacher or coach. We can’t really even compare the severity of child bullying to adult bullying.</p> <p>Nonetheless, just like the principal might feel conflicted about disciplining the star student, when it comes to adult bullies, the decision may be even more difficult for administrators. Steve Eder in an April 2013 article in the New York Times notes that Rutgers officials knew about basketball coach Mike Rice’s abusive conduct, but did not fire him. Think of the inner turmoil when Rutgers Athletic Director, Tim Pernetti, heard a report from a student-athlete who felt bullied by Mike Rice. We can well imagine the thought process. This coach is so talented; he’s pulling in a multi-million dollar salary because he’s so skilled. Worse, the university’s reputation could be tainted if the Athletic Director suspends or fires him. But, the bottom line is: this coach is hurting his players.</p> <p>A coach has significant control over his or her player’s physical and psychological health and their future. The coach is empowered by the right to say who plays, who gets scholarships, who gets positions. He also has the power to tell an athlete to play even though they are sick or injured. By means of his position, his words and gestures carry far more weight than any of those said by a peer. In a March 2009 article for Sport and Society, professors Ashley Stirling and Gretchen Kerr’ research shows that some athletes imagine the coach’s position, even when abusive, as comparable to a priest or a cult leader. Some athletes even imagine that their abusive coach is omniscient.</p> <p>Considering how powerful these coaches are, it must take great mental toughness and courage for athletes, especially if they are teenagers, to come forward and report on coach bullying. There was only one upperclassman on Mike Rice’s university team who was able to do it. There are enormous risks to breaking the silence: athletes know that speaking up could cost them position, playing time, scholarships, and a much needed letter of reference if they want to play at the next level. It puts the sport they love, and a future playing it, on the line. There are also major obstacles in the inner psychological world. When an athlete has been exposed to messaging from a bully---from even a child bully let alone a coach---especially for an extended period of time, they come to believe the harmful words. Many of us have heard or read about the demeaning litany of terms coaches who bully use: waste of a player, pussy, soft, embarrassment, pathetic, retard, all reinforced by yelling and swearing. No wonder so few speak up about being bullied.</p> <p>On teams where abuse occurs, the majority of student-athletes come to believe they deserve to be humiliated and berated. They actually reach a point where they are brainwashed into thinking it’s for their own good. But there are also the few athletes who hit a breaking point and they do speak up. As discussed in an article by Bob Hohler in The Boston Globe in April 2014, for some players, like those on basketball coach Kelly Greenberg’s team, they have to be suicidal before they quit the sport they love and give up their scholarships. Only then do they speak up. That gives us an idea just how hard it is to report coaches who bully.</p> <p>Basketball coaches Shann Hart, Kelly Greenberg, Doug Wojcik, Mike Rice and others were fired for bullying their student-athletes in the US. Likewise, in British Columbia a legendary rowing coach, Mike Spracklen, did not have his contract renewed by Rowing Canada after adult athletes reported on his bullying conduct. In an August 2012 article by Teddy Katz for CBC Sports, some of the athletes described Spracklen’s culture of favoritism, humiliation and fear. Comparable to high-level coaches like those fired in the US, it must have been a difficult decision for Rowing Canada to not renew Spracklen’s contract because he was so talented and had secured so many Olympic medals with his rowers. He had staunch supporters.</p> <p>What is surprising is that it has recently been announced that Coach Spracklen is going to be inducted into the Greater Victoria Sports Hall of Fame. He is being celebrated not only as a winner of multiple Olympic medals with his athletes, but according to staff writers of a June 2015 article in Victoria News, he is also being celebrated as a “true role model.”</p> <p>No one can argue that any of these coaches whose contracts are not renewed aren’t highly skilled and don’t know the sport inside out, but how do we explain to our children that a coach like Mike Spracklen is being given an award for being a role model? Athletes coached by Spracklen walked away from their Olympic dream rather than be exposed any further to his “verbal abuse” and favoritism (1).  Brian Richardson was Rowing Canada’s head coach at the 1996 Olympics where the team won six medals and he coached alongside Spracklen during the 2004 games in Athens. Richardson praises Spracklen but also offers a caution:</p> <p>“As a coach he is second to none if you want to win the gold medal ... [in the men’s eight] there is probably no one better in the world to do that for you,” Richardson says. But he adds: “You have to be aware there will be a lot of destruction and fallout because of it.” He says Spracklen’s tactics have had the Canadian team close to self-destructing over the years." (2)</p> <p>When we induct a coach like this into a Sports Hall of Fame as a “true role model”, we give our children mixed messages. We say to children out one side of our mouths: bullying is not tolerated; it’s extremely harmful, don’t be a bystander. We say out the other side of our mouths: bullying gets results; it makes teams win; it gets you medals and honors. Essentially what we are saying to children is: if you hurt people but win, it’s okay. In fact, people will look the other way. In fact, your winning status may well erase the harm you’ve done.</p> <p>Again in British Columbia, it is equally interesting to look at the awards and honors given to a high-school teacher and basketball coach, who according to investigative journalist Robert Cribb’s March 2015 article, “Teachers’ bullying scarred us say Student Athletes,” in the Toronto Star had multiple athletes report that he was bullying them (3). The eight students that gave testimonies ranged from first year university to grade 10 and all told the same story of incoherent yelling, conveying disgust and contempt, swearing, personal attacks, humiliating and demeaning conduct. Like the university and Olympic athletes who reported on coach bullying, the teenagers described playing their sport within a culture of fear, humiliation, and favoritism. However, there was one notable difference. When these teenagers reported on the coach’s bullying, the school could not point to his winning status to justify keeping him in position. For over twenty years, the coach had failed to win even a third or fourth tier championship in basketball. In fact, the only time he ever won a top Division Provincial Championship was when he had a player on the team who went on to be a superstar in the NBA. Nonetheless, after students reported on his abusive conduct, the sports community began giving him awards. It almost seemed as if the adults were honoring this coach because he had been exposed as a bully.</p> <p>How do we explain this to our children?</p> <p>No player nominated this teacher for a local newspaper’s coaching award. Instead, the assistant coach made the nomination. The Headmaster, who had personally read testimonies and interviewed students about the bullying, did not put a stop to it when someone offered a cash incentive on the school website for people to cast their vote in order to bump up numbers for the coach so that he could get the award. Surprisingly, the contest appears to run on number of votes, as opposed to player testimonies, so that anyone’s vote counts. It wasn’t necessary to have been coached by this high-school teacher. And he won (4).</p> <p>Although promised confidentiality, the student-athletes who reported on the coach’s bullying, had already been exposed by the Headmaster to the coach himself. Then word appeared to get out so that these student-athletes were bullied and cyber-bullied by peers as if their request to play in a healthy and safe environment was wrong or shameful. When the coach received the award, it was used against the athletes who spoke up to discredit them as if to say: he won this award so he can’t be a bully. Just like with children, this is faulty logic.</p> <p>On the day this coach was discussed in Robert Cribb’s Toronto Star article as a bully according to multiple student testimonies, the BC Boys Basketball Association gave him another award. On that same night he won, for the first time in over twenty years, a C Division Provincial Championship title (5).  As the award was being handed to him, a reporter asked if the Basketball Association thought calling players obscenities was acceptable, the representative said “no” it was not okay, while at the same time he handed the award to the coach who used obscenities (6).  A sport psychology expert weighed in to say giving an award to this coach “further traumatizes” athletes who spoke up about his bullying (7).  The messaging for child and adult alike is clear: if you refuse to be a bystander, if you speak up about bullying, you will become more of a target. You will be exposed and further humiliated, while the bully will be honored and given awards. You will be further traumatized.</p> <p>Bullying has reached epidemic proportions and, according to at least forty years of psychological, psychiatric, sport, and neuroscientific research, is directly correlated with addiction, low self-esteem, depression, failure to reach potential, self-harm, athletes quitting sports, eating disorders, chronic illness and suicide. Regardless, at least in some places, bullying appears to be celebrated if the bully is a coach. Bullying is learned behavior; it is taught to children by adult role models and in these cases appears to be sanctioned in our society. We actually reward it. </p> <p>That is why we should not act as if the recent suicide by sixteen year old, Kennedy LeRoy, who was bullied is shocking (8).  It’s to be expected. In Canada, we know what bullying did to Amanda Todd, Rehtaeh Parsons, and Ashkan Sultani who all committed suicide and were all widely discussed in national news (9).  We know that bullying harms and that’s why athletes---at Olympic, university, and high-school levels---seek the courage required to speak up and ask for protection. When we give awards to those who bully, it sends out a message that is hypocritical at best and traumatizing at worst.</p> <p>Kennedy LeRoy stated in his suicide note that words hurt more than physical blows. This teenager that took his life is speaking about words said by children. We can’t even begin to fathom how much words hurt when they are said by adults in powerful positions. We know the soul-destroying impact of bullying and we know that suicide is the second leading cause of death in adolescent populations.  If we keep honoring bullies, this may well be the reward we can expect to reap.</p> <p> </p> <p>References:</p> <p>1 - <a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/03/14/teachers-bullying-scarred-us-say-student-athletes.html">http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/03/14/teachers-bullying-scarred-us-say-student-athletes.html</a></p> <p>2 - <a href="http://bc.ctvnews.ca/bullying-allegations-leveled-against-victoria-b-c-coach-1.2281255 ">http://bc.ctvnews.ca/bullying-allegations-leveled-against-victoria-b-c-coach-1.2281255 </a></p> <p>3 - <a href="http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Kennedy-LeRoy-Bullied-Teen-With-Aspergers-Commits-Suicide-Ayala-High-School-308013731.html ">http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Kennedy-LeRoy-Bullied-Teen-With-Aspergers-Commits-Suicide-Ayala-High-School-308013731.html </a></p> <p>4 - Rod Mickleburgh, “Before Amanda Todd, the Sultani family suffered silently,” The Globe and Mail, October 23, 2012 <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/before-amanda-todd-the-sultani-family-suffered-silently/article4633468/">http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/before-amanda-todd-the-sultani-family-suffered-silently/article4633468/</a> </p> </div></div></div> Tue, 14 Jul 2015 17:53:35 +0000 Dr. Jennifer Fraser 48815 at https://www.kidsinthehouse.com https://www.kidsinthehouse.com/blogs/jenmfrasershawca/rewarding-adults-who-bully#comments