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Can We Bully-proof Our Kids? Maybe, If We Can Help Them Manage Their Social Goals
Positive social goals help kids counter bullying.
Posted August 30, 2011
In May, I wrote about the effects of verbal abuse on children and teens. In that article, I explored some of the research on why bullies bully, but I didn't get into the other side of the question: How do children respond to bullying and why? The answers to that question may point to better ways of averting, ameliorating, or stopping the bullying phenomenon.
Today, I read a new study that moves us a step closer toward implementing new strategies for bully-busting. Published online in the journal Child Development, the study from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign psychology professor Karen Rudolph and her colleagues set out to determine whether the social goals kids set for themselves make a difference in how they respond to aggression from peers.
Consciously or not, Rudolph asserts, children tend to adopt one of three approaches to social goal-setting:
• development goals: improving social skills and relationships . . . Children in this category want to develop their relationships. They seek to improve their social skills and learn how to make friends.
• demonstration-approach goals: gaining positive judgments or approval from others . . . Children in this category seek to demonstrate their competence by enhancing their status or seeking approval from their peers. "These are kids who say: 'I want to be cool. I want lots of kids to like me. I want to hang out with the popular kids,' "Rudolph explains.
• demonstration-avoidance goals: minimizing negative judgments . . . These are the children who try to demonstrate their competence by avoiding negative judgments. "These are the kids who say, 'I'm not going to do anything that's going to draw negative attention, that's going to make me look like a loser, that's going to embarrass me,'" Rudolph said.
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign psychology professor Karen Rudolph studies children's responses to bullying.
To assess a relationship between these goal orientations and children's response to bullying, Rudolph's team administered a series of questionnaires to nearly 400 second-graders and their teachers. The survey revealed that half of the children had been the target of teasing, gossip, physical intimidation, or worse--at least occasionally. The researchers then followed the children to determine if, and how, the students' social goals influenced how they dealt with harassment in the third grade.
The researchers found that development goals predicted adaptive responses--more effortful engagement, problem solving, advice seeking, and fewer impulsive responses. The children who were most interested in developing relationships "had more positive perceptions of themselves and were more likely to say that they would cooperate and work to reduce conflict with other kids," Rudolph said. When other kids harassed them, these children were "more likely to engage in proactive strategies to solve the problem." This might involve asking a teacher for advice, or getting emotional support.
On the other hand, demonstration goals predicted maladaptive responses--less effortful engagement and problem solving; more disengagement, retaliation. Children who wanted to be perceived as cool or competent were less likely to use thoughtful, careful strategies when dealing with harassment, and they were more likely to retaliate, Rudolph found. These children also had more negative perceptions of their peers.
Those who wanted to avoid negative judgments were less likely to retaliate against their peers. "But they were also more passive. They just ignored what happened," she said. This approach might be useful in some circumstances, particularly for boys who tend to be more physically aggressive and more likely to retaliate than girls, but passive responses may also increase a bully's willingness to "up the ante," Rudolph believes.
The researchers also discovered that children who were the most bullied in the second grade "were more likely to freeze up and try to escape from the situation, or to ruminate about it, keep going over it in their mind, but not actually do something active about it," Rudolph said. They also "were less likely to show problem-solving type strategies" in the third grade.
While no one is saying that "bully-proofing" potential victims means bullying can be condoned, it seems only prudent to equip our children with some effective, anti-bullying strategies they can use when peer aggression comes their way. I think Rudolph is on to something here. As an educator and a parent, I know that it's possible to teach children to be aware of their own goals. It's also possible to teach social skills directly. So, we can work to help our children learn relationship-positive goals and behaviors, and-in so doing-make them a little more resistant to the sticks and stones that other children may hurl in their direction.
"Just telling kids, 'this is what you should do' might not change their behaviors because their goals might be different from our goals," Rudolph said. "So I think understanding where [kids are] coming from and why they're actually acting the way they do is going to be crucial for changing their behavior."
In practical terms, that means guiding the children in our charge away from working so hard to be popular or cool and toward being a friend to make a friend. Children who actively work to acquire social skills and develop solid relationships are more likely to engage in thoughtful and constructive responses to bullying. These children manage their emotions better and are more likely to think positively when relationships go awry. "Achieving this goal can promote constructive coping strategies, ultimately reducing bullying and lessening its long-term impact on children's social and mental health," Rudolph said.
For More Information:
Karen D. Rudolph, Jamie L. Abaied, Megan Flynn, Niwako Sugimura,
and Anna Monica Agoston, "Developing Relationships, Being Cool, and Not Looking Like a Loser: Social Goal Orientation Predicts Children's Responses to Peer Aggression," Child Development. Published online August 29, 2011.
Rudolph Photo Credit: L. Brian Stauffer
