19 Jul 2005 - 23:51

how to stop a bully

Carolyn and I were just chatting about Fred Frankel’s book Good Friends Are Hard to Find: Help Your Child Find, Make, and Keep Friends on one of the Comments threads.

I mentioned that we solved a fairly serious bullying problem Christopher had in 2nd grade in just two weeks, using Frankel’s book.

It struck me that the subject of bullying is so universal I should pull this comment up front in spite of the fact that it has nothing to do with maths.

Carolyn asked, specifically, whether Frankel’s book can be used with very high-functioning autism & Asperger kids.

Xtreme behaviorism in action

Fred Frankel says his book is not intended for kids with autism or Asperger syndrome.

But if my autistic kids were high-functioning, I'd sure give it a shot.

In his book, Frankel precisely breaks down exactly what kids do to make friends.

Exactly, down to the finest detail. It's Xtreme behaviorism.

For instance, he says that when kids approach other kids to play, they are rejected 30% of the time!

I don't know about you, but I find that observation incredibly useful.

Most adults think it's Bad When Kids Reject Each Other--and, from an adult perspective, it is. I certainly wouldn't reject 30% of the people who tried to talk to me at a party, and I would leave any party where 30% of the other guests refused to talk to me.

But Frankel says 30% is what kids do; it’s normal.

(caveat: I haven't fact-checked this figure, but I will.)

Then Frankel tells you what a kid should do when he is rejected, which is: he should accept his rejection and move on!

And that’s it!

There’s no You Can’t Say You Can’t Play!

I had just assumed you’re supposed to teach your child surefire social strategies to change the nasty rejecting child’s mind, but no.

That kid doesn’t want to play with you, and he’s not gonna want to play with you any time soon! So you're outta there!

I don't see how this observation wouldn't be helpful to the parent of a high-functioning child. If regular kids are getting rejected 30% of the time, and your kid is getting rejected 35% of the time....maybe he's not doing so bad.

[Hey! This does have to do with maths!]

Frankel also tells you almost word for word what your child should say and do in order to join a group of kids playing a game. (Hint: always join the losing side.) He scripts it out, and you can rehearse your child before he makes an attempt.

Frankel (and others whose work I’ve read) makes the point that we adults can't see children's social skills; we see their behavior through our adult filter. We don't perceive what it is socially skilled kids are doing, because children's social skills are different from grown-ups'. (I may be grafting something I read in another book onto Frankel....but if he didn't actually say this, he could have.)

Xtreme behaviorism & conceptual understanding

After I read his chapter on bullying, I had all the conceptual understanding I needed to solve the problem.

I knew that children who are bullied share two characteristics:

1. they cry easily, giving the bully bang for the buck
2. they are compliant to other children

Both of these things were true of Christopher.

We didn’t end up using Frankel’s script for anti-bullying, because our neighbor had a better idea. He taught Christopher ‘how to fight,’ which in Christopher’s case meant how to defend himself in a very loud voice accompanied by an equally loud glare & the all-important step forward.

There was also a whole dramatic Second Act Christopher was supposed to launch into if the bully dared to mouth off after he’d been Warned. It was basically Robert DeNiro for the 2nd grade. Christopher spent the afternoon running through the whole thing with the neighbor and his son, and then we rehearsed him at home.

So I didn’t use Frankel’s script, but I based everything I did do and had Christopher do on Frankel’s concepts.

They worked.

How to stop someone else's bully (aka transfer of learning)

When Christopher's friend was being bullied, I was stumped.

I knew he didn't cry easily, and I'd never seen him be compliant to other kids.

Then it hit me.

When other kids bullied him he ran.

Talk about bang for your buck. Number one, motion triggers everyone's 'prey chase drive;' and number two, chasing a running target is fun whether you're planning to kill and eat your prey when you catch him or not.

I told his mother: Tell him not to run.

I also told her that not only should he not run, he should make direct eye contact with the lead bully, and take a step forward.

His message: There are 5 of you and 1 of me, so you can stuff me in a garbage can if you want to.

But I'm not the only one coming out of this with bruises.

I don't know how much of that she told her son, but I know she gave him the basic thrust.

The bullying stopped so fast I almost had to jog her memory when I asked her how things were going two weeks later.

I haven’t read too many books in my life that let me solve a major problem in two weeks’ time, and then follow that up by solving someone else’s problem in 2 weeks’ time, too.

I’m a fan.

update

from Amazon.com:

As the mom of an Asperger child who desperately wants to have friends, I found this book more helpful than any other. It describes -- step by step -- the powerful social dynamics needed to "infiltrate" the mysterious world of friendship. I would recommend this book to the parents of ANY child who had social issues, be they autism, LDA, or just a bit shy or a bit aggressive. A must have for every resource library as well.

update 2

Frankel is now part of UCLA's Center for Autism Research and Treatment, which was established after we left. (fyi, Ed used to be a history professor at UCLA, and I taught in the film department as an adjunct years and years ago. That's how we met.)

Dr. Frankel is the Principal Investigator on the current CART project, “Parent-Assisted Friendship Training in Autism,” which focuses on the friendships of high-functioning children with autism who are included in typical elementary school classrooms from grades. This study is based upon the Dr. Frankel’s published treatment manual Children’s Friendship Training (2002).

update 3

Interesting comments thread on bullying at joannejacobs.com



Xtreme behaviorism, teaching & scripts
comments thread on bullying at joannejacobs.com

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Comments

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I haven't looked at the book, but I find the concept interesting. I believe that it takes a special skill to remember your own child accurately, through the lens of childhood, and if you can remember it, then you can teach children anything.

You can teach them math or history or art or how to be polite or how to handle a bully.

Teaching is a puzzle. It's a puzzle where you must navigate backwards in a maze. A child is at point K, but they are supposed to be at point Z. If you just show them again how to go from A to Z, you are missing the point of how they got to K.

And usually, kids made a rational mistake: they misunderstood something, or misheard something, and this thing is embedded in their minds. It leads them (Rationally) to this bad position K.

Teaching is about figuring out how someone got into that position, so you can FIX that misunderstanding. It's not enough to tell them that K is the wrong place; you have to help them never follow that wrong path in the first place.

The best way to help kids learn is to remember the typical misconceptions YOU had as a child, and ones similar to it, to try and understand why they would think what they think. Then, you can see how they are really very smart--just misguided.

re: the aspergers/high functioning autism stuff: this kind of description is very similar to what behavioral psychologists teach to help children with anxiety and attachment disorders. I personally believe that there is a high correlation between attachment disorders and what's called asperger's, but I caution people to refrain from just teaching these techniques to children.

The problem with just teaching this techniques is that you need your children to feel like themselves. That may sound silly, but it isn't helpful to teach your child how to act. You may want them to learn how to behave, but they need an emotional makeup capable of backing up the behavior.

For a short term case like a bully, maybe it doesn't matter so much, but in terms of making friends, you need your child to have an emotional makeup that feels these behaviors are natural. If not, the other children will recognize that the behavior is still off, and worse, the child can often feel that they are not capable of making friends by being themselves but have to act like someone else. That's a painful experience for a child, and can do a lot of damage in the long run. Be careful at behavioral solutions that make a child feel that their personality isn't acceptable.

-- KtmGuest - 29 Jul 2005

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This is a wonderful comment.

I'm going to pull it up front.

Thank you--

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Jul 2005

WebLogForm
Title:	how to stop a bully
TopicType:	WebLog
SubjectArea:	AutismAndAspergers, OffTopic
LogDate:	200507191921