Regular Stuff

What I Write About

I tend to post most of the time about my life and how I manage the challenges that I face as a Mum of two children.  I like to be honest and show both the challenge and how I resolve it, rather than some parenting coaches who prefer to show a more perfect image.

There are also some other types of blogs that I’ll be doing every now and again:

• Hints and Tips – stuff that was useful to me, that might be useful for you in the same situation
• Reviews – I don’t do many reviews, but if the product is of interest or use to me then I will (so for totally selfish reasons!).
• Awards and Memes – They aren’t as popular in the Mummy blogging community now, but sometimes they take my fancy.
• Series of Blogs – sometimes a particular subject will peak my interest, so I will write a pile of blogs explaining more about it, for example I’ve written a great deal on affairs and bullying.  I’ll list them below, and then you can use the categories to find all the posts.

Series of Blogs

These are subjects that I will be posting lots of blogs about, in a more informative manner, rather than just one off discussions or stories about my life.  I thought it might be an idea to let you know which ones are the major series that I have blogged about.  At the moment I have written about:

• Affairs
• Bullying

Affairs

I have a great deal of experience of helping people through the pain and heartbreak of relationship problems.  I might have an unusual viewpoint on them, as I don’t believe that they have to be the end of a marriage.  Instead, when I work 1to1 with clients, my objective is to just help them clear the pain and learn about relationships, without a specific aim to finish or keep the marriage.

Check out the categories on Values, Relationships and Affairs for more information.

Bullying

I will be posting a great deal about bullying throughout this blog, but this is a great place to start with a Summary of the Concepts that I will be discussing and the Strategies to Employ.  For all of the posts, click on the category for bullying.

Summary Of Concepts

I thought it might be useful to summarise all the concepts that I have covered in my Bullying Blogs for you guys.  (See my other blogs for the background information for these):

1) Everyone is a Bully, just as much as each other

2) Bullying can not be destroyed, so trying to remove it, will just move it to more subtle or difficult places to monitor.

3) The objective instead is to understand and appreciate the bullying, so that it can be generally spread throughout your children’s lives, versus coming in a focussed way from one direction.

4) Bullying is attracted or created by the balance of support/challenge, ease/difficulty in your child’s life i.e. where things are going the way they would like and where they are not.

5) Everyone is both liked and disliked to an equal degree, it is impossible to be liked by everyone, but also more comfortingly we will never be disliked by everyone either!

6) The ‘bullied’ child will gain benefits from being bullied, and if we can help them understand, appreciate and learn from this and the concepts above, then they do not need to feel victimised & powerless.

7) The ‘bullying’ child also requires some assistance (although I’m not against consequences and punishment either), as the reason that they are ‘bullying’ is to gain a supportive/enjoyable experience in order to deal with something else in their lives that they are finding challenging.

8) An example of what the ‘Bullied’ child can gain from the experience is to learn to stand up for themselves, or to mix with other children who might be a ‘better influence’ or more suitable for them.

9) An example of why a ‘Bullying’ child does it, is because they need Power, Freedom, Belonging or Fun, i.e. they feel powerless at home due to under-dominating parents, or have lack of choice due to dominating parents, or are insecure about belong loved or belonging, or are bored.

10) The ‘Bully’ is not ‘horrid’ or ‘evil’ and the ‘Bullied’ is not an ‘angel’.  Thinking of them like that will cloud the issues and stop them from being resolved.

Now, if any of this pushes some buttons (and I would totally understand if it does, as bullying is a very emotional subject), please read my other blogs before jumping to conclusions.  I’m not just saying all this for no apparent reason and with no background.  It has come from 10yrs of studying, a 40yr lifetime of experience, plus being a Mum myself.  So bear with me, I’m attempting to help us all resolve the growing problems of bullying in the UK ;o)

Summary Of Strategies To Employ

I’ve been blogging about bullying for ages, but it’s a complicated subject and I realised that you might be needing a quick summary on how to start tackling the issue.  Please bear in mind that you will probably need to read my other blogs to get the background situation and examples.

So this is a ‘quick’ summary.  With the proviso, that it is ‘quick’, not thorough, and there are different degrees of bullying, some of which are quickly resolved and some of which you might need some assistance with.

Here are the titles of my blogs to date (I will keep adding as well):

Bullying Pt12 – Ideas on Strategies to Empower your Kids

Bullying Summary of the Concepts

Bullying Pt11 – More Insights into the Bully

Bullying – Pt10 – What on Earth could be the benefits?

Bullying Pt9 – Everyone Is a Bully

Bullying Pt 8 – Why Bully?

Bullying Pt7 – What is ‘Support’ and ‘Challenge’

Bullying Pt 6 – Do we really want to get rid of Bullying?

Bullying Pt 5 – Is there too much Like in your life?

Bullying Pt 4 – We Can’t Be Liked By Everyone

Bullying Pt 3 – Balance at Home?

Bullying Pt 2 – Where Does Bullying Come From?

Bullying Pt1 – Always there

Step 1 – Deal with your issues first

This is an emotional subject and you are likely to either be upset because you are remembering what it was like to be bullied yourself, feeling terribly protective, or really mortified because you feel guilty that your child has been doing the bullying.  So in order for you to deal with this, you first need to be able to see the situation clearly.

Step 2 – Stand back & objectively have a look at the Support/Challenge

If your child is being ‘bullied’, where is the support/ease/life going the way they like it?  Where are they ‘popular’?  Where are they getting their own way?  Are they ‘over-protected’ somewhere?

If you child is the ‘bully’, where is the challenge/difficulty/unease in their lives?  Are they feeling insecure, lacking in power, bored, or needing more freedom?

Step 3 – What are they getting from it on both sides?

What is your ‘bullied’ child getting from being bullied?  Why do their so called ‘persecutors’ need to do it?

What is your ‘bullying’ child getting from the bullying?  What are their so called ‘victims’ getting from it?

What do they all need to learn?

What is it directing them to do or not do?

Step 4 – Devise a strategy

1) Where can you help to re-balance the support/challenge in your child’s life? Does the bully need something to give them more security, or more clear guidelines/boundaries, or for a parent to back off, or for a parent to stand up for themselves more?

Does the bullied child need more responsibility at home, less spoiling, or more consistency and rules.

2) Help your child learn directly, what they have been learning indirectly.

Now my son is nearly 4, so I can have chats with him, but I also need to use things like role playing with puppets to get the point across.  If your child doesn’t understand chats, then you might want to look for a media that they will understand for example a story/book/film/TV program that will initiate a conversation.  If they are bullying they may need to understand the consequences of their actions, either with a form of punishment or a look at how it will affect them detrimentally in the future.  How can you teach them the social interaction lessons that they are learning from the episodes?

3) Involve the school

Just because I don’t think that bullies are bad kids, doesn’t mean that I don’t think that the school should get involved.  I don’t think that vilifying the bullies will help, or rescuing the bullied.  However, clear signals an rules as to what is expected and allowed in behaviour at school is definitely necessary.

4) Create a plan of action & monitor it

Remember you can’t remove bullying from your child’s life, but you can rejig where it displays.  So create a plan of action, and then monitor it over a period of time to see where it is and isn’t working.  Get in touch with me on my fan page or via my website if you require any assistance.