Transcript for
Supporting children who engage in bullying
Jessica Staniland (00:00): I think that the biggest part of understanding why or understanding bullying behaviour is to really get a good grasp of what exactly it is that is going on for them in the background because this is going to have quite a significant impact on their behaviour going forward.
Narrator (00:20): Welcome to the Emerging Minds Podcast.
Nicole Rollbusch (00:25): Hi, I’m Nicole Rollbusch. On today’s episode, I’m joined again by Jessica Staniland, a clinical psychologist and the director of Counselling and Psychological Services at Trinity Grammar School. This episode is the final episode of our two-part series on supporting the mental health of not only children who are experiencing bullying, but those who are engaging in the behaviour as well. In part two today, we’ll be focusing on children who’ve engaged in bullying behaviour and how practitioners can support their mental health. If you haven’t listened to part one yet on supporting the mental health of children who’ve experienced bullying yet, please do check it out.
(01:03): We’re again going to be applying the practice discussed to a case study. Throughout part one, you would’ve heard us referring to the case study of Olivia. Today we’ll be applying the practice to the case of Sam. If you’d like more information about either of these cases, please check out the online course, Practice strategies for childhood bullying where these cases are both featured in more detail, and that can be found on the Emerging Minds website.
(01:27): But for some context today, Sam is 10 years old and he lives with his mum, Emma, his stepdad James, and 17 year old stepbrother, Nathan. Sam’s been engaging in some verbal bullying and harassment, sometimes physical, of one of the quietest shy boys in his class. This has been going on for a while and has now resulted in Sam being suspended from school. Sam’s mum, Emma, is currently pregnant, and Sam’s stepbrother, Nathan, who’s recently come to live with the family, has been giving him a bit of a hard time at home.
(01:58): So Jess, thanks for joining me again. Last time we began by talking about some of the key considerations in the work, so I wanted to start with that again. What are some of the overarching considerations for working with children who are engaging in bullying behaviour?
Jessica Staniland (02:14): Yeah. So really important to have a think about why that particular child is engaging in that bullying behaviour. So I think we really need to act as a bit like detectives in these circumstances. Like what is it that is going on for this child that has potentially meant that they’re engaging in this negative behaviour towards other peers? That might be, have they got any underlying diagnoses? Do they have trouble picking up social cues or engaging appropriately socially? Are they emotionally dysregulated because they’ve got an underlying diagnosis? If they’ve got a diagnosis of something like ADHD, are they medicated or are they undermedicated? Is there significant impulsivity that might be impacting the way that they’re engaging with their peers and they maybe don’t even realise that what they’re doing is quite harmful to somebody else because they’re so impulsive.
(03:09): What’s going on for them outside of school or at school? Are they experiencing bullying themselves or at home? Is there a change? Is it a safe environment or are they potentially being exposed to something that’s not so great at home? Has there been a change in the family dynamic? Is there something that has shifted where they’ve felt like they’ve had to take on a new role and potentially that has had an impact?
(03:33): So I think that the biggest part of understanding why or understanding bullying behaviour is to really get a good grasp of what exactly it is that is going on for them in the background because this is going to have quite a significant impact on their behaviour going forward.
Nicole Rollbusch (03:51): Yeah. So there could be so much behind the behaviour. I’m particularly curious about how you might start a session with a child who’s been engaging in bullying. And why that is, is because I imagine there can be a bit of protest going on about being confronted by their behaviour, perhaps a bit of, I guess, justification or minimization particularly going on initially. And if that does happen, how do you respond to those sorts of protests in a way that isn’t shaming or punitive and actually opens up the child to conversations with you?
Jessica Staniland (04:26): Yeah, so again, I think I’d be really curious, like why do they think it was a joke? Why are they minimising it? There may be some real reasons as to why they are engaging in that sort of minimization. Is it that they’ve seen somebody else do that and they’ve said it was a joke, and so they’re kind of just following their lead? Is it that they’re really worried about getting in trouble? Is it that they actually just didn’t even think that this was bullying behaviour and they’re toning it down because legitimately they think that it’s not a big deal? And is that, again, because of some underlying challenge that they have, whether that be a diagnosis? Did they miss a social cue when they literally just didn’t see it or notice? So I think just trying to be really curious is really important. So not jumping straight into, “This is the case. This was inappropriate.” I think being open to understanding why potentially they are playing it down.
Nicole Rollbusch (05:23): So it’s about being curious and considering what might be behind the behaviour. What about, and I think this will be of interest to our audience because I’ve definitely faced this before myself as a practitioner. What about if the child just really isn’t wanting to talk to anyone about their behaviour or anything?
Jessica Staniland (05:44): Look, I think as practitioners, that’s always a really big challenge. And it’s not necessarily just related to bullying. It can be related to so many different areas of their life. I think we can only do so much. If a child is not at the right stage to engage with you, I think we need to reflect on that and understand and be respectful of that for them. If we continue to push, the challenge is that then we turn them off help seeking in the future. And unfortunately, we can end up being looked at as disciplinarians or as people that they don’t particularly want to engage in because they think they’re going to get in trouble.
(06:19): So look, if a student was not at a stage where they were ready to engage with me, I would try and work more broadly with the family and make my impact and the change through the lens of the family as opposed to the individual student. So I think it’s important for us to remember in any situation, if a student is not ready to come to us, give it a try for a couple of sessions. Sometimes I’ll say to students, “You know what? Why don’t we just give it three sessions? If you are really not interested after three sessions, that’s absolutely fine. You don’t need to keep coming back.” Usually when I’ve said that, most of the time they’ll come back for more than three sessions. So it’s about putting the ball in their court, giving them a sense of ownership around the approach. But again, if they’re not ready, they’re not ready and it’s actually going to do more harm than good in working directly with them.
Nicole Rollbusch (07:05): Yeah, that’s a tricky one because you want to help, but you might be kind of pushing them away from that help-seeking in the future. If we go back to Sam, our case study, so say for example Sam is really minimising the situation, saying it’s just a joke or mucking around, how might you respond to Sam and his protests about his bullying involvement?
Jessica Staniland (07:30): Yeah. So again in that circumstance, for Sam, potentially there are reasons underlying why he’s saying it’s a joke and why he’s just mucking around. It might be around trying to prevent the attention being brought on him. It might be that maybe his older brother had said it was a joke too when he was following that lead. I think just trying to understand what’s going on at home for him in terms of the family dynamics is really important because I think there’s a lot more for him playing into this situation. So I think, again, the key is just being as curious as you can. What is it that potentially is making him think it’s a joke?
(08:08): The other thing that you could potentially do is to help him to see it from other people’s perspectives. So it might be engaging in some role plays. It might be to get him to kind of think, “Look, if I was in that person’s shoes, would I be seeing it as a joke? Okay, how else might you see it?” Are there some other ways of looking at what’s happened here that might mean that it is not a joke? What sorts of factors might make it a bigger deal for some people than other people? So helping him to step into the shoes of the people around him.
Nicole Rollbusch (08:42): Yeah, I find that so interesting because I think protests can so easily be taken at face value, but there’s actually a lot going on behind them. It makes me think about how children don’t necessarily want to be bullying others, like they’ve got preferences and values around engaging with others, and I imagine they don’t include bullying. Is exploring values and preferences important in this work? And if so, how do you go about it?
Jessica Staniland (09:11): Yeah, so I think values is a really, really important aspect of working with children who are bullying themselves. I think it’s really important to spend quite a bit of time really nutting out, I guess, what they do value. Usually I do that by a values-based activity where they need to identify and prioritise a number of different values that are really important to them in their life. I may ask them to have a think about somebody that they look up to, that they admire, that they’d really like to be and think about what values that person upholds or eludes and the types of behaviours that that person engages in that are attractive to this young person or to this child.
(09:55): So helping them to really identify what’s important to them moving forward. Then helping them to reflect on, “Okay, the behaviours that I’m engaging in right now, are these values-led behaviours or are these behaviours that are aligned to my values, or are these behaviours that are not aligned to my values? Am I heading in the right direction in terms of where I want to go? Or actually, is this a behaviour that maybe is not aligned with my core values?” So helping to do a bit of a brainstorm around that.
Nicole Rollbusch (10:29): How might you apply this to Sam? How would you work with him around his values and preferences?
Jessica Staniland (10:34): Again, I’d probably engage in a bit of a values-based activity where I’d go through a list of 20, 25 values and get him to really understand what the concept of a value is and then help him to be able to identify those that are really core and important to him at heart. I might get him to think about somebody that he really looks up to and really admires and help him to think about what is it that they show in terms of their values that really attracts him to them in terms of a role model. So helping him to understand that.
(11:07): I think in terms of things like fairness, exploring what those values mean for him. Why is the value of fairness or family or whatever else it is, why are they important to him and why? Give some examples. Then I think that the other area is then using those values to help him, again, to identify is the behaviour that he’s engaging in right now a values-led behaviour or is it a behaviour that is not in alignment with his current values.
Nicole Rollbusch (11:39): I guess that contrasting between values-led behaviour and action, like bullying, becomes a big part of the work. I’m wondering how you go about highlighting these contrasts, because I imagine you have to be careful in not being shaming, sort of saying, “Oh, you said this is important to you, but now you’ve gone and done this,” which would be particularly helpful. How do you ensure that those contrasts are brought into the light safely, for example, with our case study, Sam?
Jessica Staniland (12:12): Yeah, absolutely. So I often am just really reflective in those situations. I guess I probably take a bit of a motivational interviewing approach and I’ll sort of just be really reflective and say, “Okay, so on the one hand you’ve talked a lot about how fairness is really important to you, and you’ve given a couple of examples of why fairness is really important to you. But I guess on the other hand, I’ve heard this situation about you engaging at school with this particular boy. I guess I’m just wondering, would that be in alignment with your value around fairness? Would that be a behaviour that you think would be something that your role model might display?” And just being, again, very curious around that, being open and reflective and trying to understand from his perspective why maybe that happened, whether it be a slip in his thinking or whether it be that there’s other reasons behind it.
(13:07): So helping him to draw out and using, I guess, reflection to help draw out some of those discrepancies for him that maybe he didn’t notice himself, that maybe he just needs put back and out in the open to have a bit of a discussion about. I think the other thing is just a bit of role play. Exploring some of the situations that have happened and maybe if he was sitting in the other person’s shoes, maybe what his response would’ve been or how he would’ve felt had he been in that position.
Nicole Rollbusch (13:37): Yeah, great. I’m interested in going back to that point about role models actually, because in our case study, Sam looks up to his older stepbrother, Nathan, a lot, but Nathan’s been encouraging Sam to do some things that would probably get him in trouble. I wonder how you might work with someone like Sam where they might have someone whose role modelling values that aren’t particularly helpful.
Jessica Staniland (14:01): I think there’s a couple of parts to that. Probably the first part is that mum and dad have a conversation with Nathan around him being a role model to his younger brother as well and what his role within the family is and I guess from a positive sense as well. And then mum and dad… Well, mum and stepdad reinforcing that as well to Sam. This is his role as an older brother, and talk a little bit more about some of the key important behaviours that are positive that they’re really looking out for. Because at the moment, I guess I think just because the family have been very busy and there is obviously a focus on this new baby coming that potentially they’ve unintentionally reinforced Nathan’s behaviour and reinforced Sam’s behaviour by either not picking it up early enough or kind of just I guess agreeing with Nathan’s approach towards Sam.
(14:54): So I think it really needs to come from the parents to start off with. But if we needed to start working with Nathan before that had been done, just gently challenging, I guess. If he sort of said, “Oh, I really look up to Nathan because he just does what he wants.”
(15:08): “Okay, if that’s the case, what are some of the possible consequences for Nathan if this were to happen? I’m getting the sense, I guess, that you really like freedom and you really like responsibility. Is it that you like freedom and responsibility in a contained way where you feel like you can do things and make appropriate decisions? Or is it that you want freedom and responsibility to do things that potentially might lead to trouble?” And most of the time kids will sort of say, “Oh, no. No, it’s the other way around.” So helping to really clarify exactly what it is that they want or what they admire in that person.
Nicole Rollbusch (15:45): And so once you’re really clear on the child’s values, how they want to be seen in the world or interact with the world and also those contrasts have been uncovered, how might you support the child to continue to, I guess, live by those values?
Jessica Staniland (16:01): Yeah. It’s really tricky. And I think the biggest thing here, particularly in this case, but in many cases, is that it’s not always going to be about a single person change. I think we need to understand that bullying is a much broader topic. And I think particularly when you are working with somebody who is engaging in bullying behaviour, there’s often a lot more going on within either the school setting or within the family.
(16:26): I think in Sam’s circumstances there’s been a lot of changes in the family dynamic. He’s becoming an older brother, he has had a new person come into the house, the attention dynamic has completely changed. So whilst it would be really important for us to work directly one-on-one with him around setting some goals, thinking about who he wants to be seen as, what type of a big brother would he like to be when he’s younger baby brother is born, what type of a role model would he want to be as he grows up, how does he want to be seen at school, does he want to be seen as a leader or does he want to be seen as a follower, so whilst we can do all of that individual work, there also is much broader family work that needs to happen. And look, as a school counsellor, that can’t always happen by me, but it can happen more broadly with family counselling.
(17:18): I think in Sam’s situation, there were a lot of changes. Mum and dad… Or he no longer sees dad. His mum and his stepfather are pregnant, there is a new baby that’s about to come along. All of a sudden the expectations around him having more responsibility, that’s really been dropped on him quite quickly. So he’s really had to sort of step up. He’s had this older stepbrother come into his life who also takes up a part of the household. He’s wanting to impress, he’s wanting to be like, so I think… And that there is some approval from mum and dad around, or mum and stepdad around how this brother is engaging with him. So I think some work around that is really important.
(17:58): The one-on-one time that he gets with his mum and his stepdad has completely changed. So he is no longer got that intensive one-on-one time, which is really important for kids as they’re developing. So a real focus on that is going to be really important. The other thing if we look a little bit from a family systems perspective is the roles within the family have changed and they’ve shifted, and that is always going to result in some inconsistency and people having to slot into different roles within the family. So I think for him, it’s going to need to be a lot broader work. That might mean that he can see somebody at school, a school counsellor who can work on some of those goals. But more broadly, family counselling is going to be really important here.
Nicole Rollbusch (18:42): I think that’s a really important point to remember actually, is that this work can’t just be done with the child alone, that family should be involved whatever the circumstances, but particularly in cases Sam’s where there’s clear there’s lots of dynamic shifts and changes happening within the family with the new baby and Nathan coming to live with them. So how might you have that conversation with Sam’s mum and stepdad? What sorts of things would you want to raise with them as a practitioner?
Jessica Staniland (19:13): Yeah, so I think it’d be really important, again, to be really reflective and say, “This has been a really rough time.” There’s been a lot of change within the family. Ask them what do they think has changed. How do they think that their dynamic potentially with Sam has changed with the older brother coming home, the new baby on the way? I guess doing a bit of psychoeducation around the impact of that one-on-one attention and how important that is for Sam to still feel valued as part of the family and to still have a role. I think at the moment we’ve kind of seen this need for him to step up by making life easier for mum, which is really important, but we haven’t seen much of a shaping around what is his role going to be as a bigger brother and what are some of the really great things about that. What sorts of responsibilities are going to be extra that he can take on that he’s really going to like? And what sort of teachings and learnings can he then think about handing over?
(20:09): So I think his role within the family has really changed. And in his mind I’d say probably not for the better at the moment. And so I think helping the family to understand the importance of dedicating a bit of time to helping him still to feel really valued and an important part of the family, not just for the older brother, but for them too.
Nicole Rollbusch (20:30): Yeah, that family environment and support is so crucial. You mentioned before that the individual work with a child is also important though. I’m wondering if you could go into a bit more detail on what the individual work with Sam might look like.
Jessica Staniland (20:45): Yeah. So just helping him to set some goals and helping to touch base with those goals on a regular basis. How are we going where your behaviours aligned with your values and your goals? Having that kind of regular touch base. Lots of praise and reward for his positive behaviour, that’s so important. Acknowledgement and positive attention towards some of the great stuff that he’s doing is really important because at the moment it kind of sounds like the attention is not positive. It wasn’t actually present for some time and then it wasn’t positive. So I think trying to reverse that attention ratio is really important. Helping him to have some ways to remind himself to engage in positive behaviours. Remind himself of his goals. Maybe he has a little gold tip sheet in his pocket or maybe he has something up on his notice board at home that he can look back on and remind himself, “This is how I’m going to present today. This is what I’m really going to try and focus in on.” But lots of really positive acknowledgement, yeah.
Nicole Rollbusch (21:42): Yeah, that positive acknowledgement and attention, I think that can actually be missing for kids engaging in bullying because they’re getting attention, but for kind of the wrong reasons. I wonder if after a while they sort of start taking that on board and forget that there’s more to themselves than the bullying behaviour. So we’re at the end of our time together, but is there anything final you wanted to say about children who are engaging in bullying and supporting their mental health?
Jessica Staniland (22:12): Yeah. I think, look, the most important thing is just to remember that it’s usually not a behaviour that happens in isolation. It’s usually the result of something much broader going on within their system or their environment. In this case, it’s family related. Most often, there is something bigger going on. It might be a change that’s happened. It might be a change in school, it might be a change in family dynamics, it might be a new diagnosis, it might be a change in medication. There’s usually something else going on behind the scenes that’s really important for us to understand because otherwise we can easily get into that, I guess, approach of blaming without knowing the full story and really understanding. So I think for me, that’s why I try and really use that sort of reflective and curious approach to just understand what is going on for that particular child and their broader environment.
Nicole Rollbusch (23:03): Yeah, all important things to remember. Well, thank you so much, Jess, for speaking with me over the course of these two episodes. I’ve really enjoyed hearing about your work and how I can support children’s mental health when they’ve been experiencing or engaging in bullying.
(23:18): Thanks to our listeners as well for joining us. I hope you’ve taken as much away from this as I have. If you’re interested in learning more about practice approaches like those discussed in these episodes, please check out the Practice strategies for childhood bullying online course available now on the Emerging Minds website. Bye for now.
Narrator (23:39): Visit our website at www.emergingminds.com.au to access a range of resources to assist your practice. Brought to you by the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health, led by Emerging Minds. The National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health under the National Support for Child and Youth Mental Health Program.