Can babies prevent bullying? The answer may be a resounding “yes.”
Bullying has been in the news a lot lately. In my last blog posting, I wrote about recent information from neuroscience about the violent changes in the brain from being bullied, and ended on a more hopeful note with suggestions for positive actions to prevent, intervene, or heal from bullying.
One delightful and effective approach to preventing bullying comes from a Canadian program called Roots of Empathy. An educator named Mary Gordon had a brilliant intuition that bringing babies and their parents into classrooms would help children activate their empathy.
Her organization, Roots of Empathy, developed two programs, one for children 3-5 years of age, and one for 5-13 year olds. They recognized that to prevent bullying in middle school or high school, they needed to start when children were much younger.
The program design is simple. A baby and mother or father come to the classroom for a series of 9 monthly meetings, with additional facilitated meetings (sans baby) to prepare for the meetings and process afterwards.
The children have the opportunity see the babies and mothers lovingly interact, and to themselves interact with the babies, through singing nursery rhymes and playing games. They get to see the world from the baby’s perspective, literally, by lying on a blanket. The children also get to see how the babies change and grow over the 9 months.
Teachers whose students participated in the meetings noticed an immediate and marked change in the children’s behavior. They were kinder to each other and more respectful to the teachers.
A statistical analysis of the pilot project confirmed that as the children developed their empathy, their bullying of peers and their disrespectful behaviors to teachers and staff decreased by almost 50%, a dramatic shift. And, these changes in the children have persisted for more than three years.
These innovative programs to develop empathy have spread across Canada and to other countries as well.
As conflict coaches and mediators, we recognize that building empathy is a major key in conflict resolution between family members, co-workers, or others. When people in conflict are able to understand the other’s perspective and somehow relate to it, that emotional shift makes resolving the more concrete issues far easier and opens the way to deeper, more helpful conversations.
When I work with coaching clients, and with mediation clients such as co-workers or parents and teens, I always hope not just for a solution to the current problem, but for transformation and learning, enhanced communication skills, and compassion for themselves and others to help them navigate future difficulties.
These baby “teachers” opened the hearts of the young children and shifted their attitudes and behavior toward empathy. The world would clearly be a kinder place if babies became a standard part of all pre school and K-8 curriculum. And the rest of us, adults and teens, could also benefit from the lessons that these babies teach.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/fighting-bullying-with-babies/
http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/12/10/babies.combating.bullying/index.html?iref=allsearch
Lorraine Segal is a coach, trainer, and mediator specializing in transforming communication and conflict for parents, teens, couples, organizations and others. Her business,Conflict Remedy, is based in Santa Rosa, California . She also teaches in the conflict resolution program at Sonoma State University. She provides communication and forgiveness coaching by telephone as well as face to face. Contact her through this website to schedule a free initial telephone session.
© Lorraine Segal www.ConflictRemedy.com
Yeah, it’s what kids actually learn from going to Sunday School and “helping” with the babies in the nursery. Also much like what might have happened in previous generations with larger families. Play groups and co-op preschools have this opportunity built in to the structure even though it’s not usually formalized. I find it fascinating that current research is keying in on this aspect.
I’m reminded of one of my sons’ favorite stories: The Three Billy Goats Gruff – They are all gruff (tough?) but they definitely rely on and look out for one another.
I found this very perceptive and touching. It’s just not realistic to expect changes in young people who are already acting out – empathy has to be taught early and modeled frequently. It’s the one good thing that came from the “starving children in China” ruse to get kids to eat. It made kids think of kids who had no food……..the beginnings of empathy. Not that I recommend it – but it has to start somewhere.
Hi Lorraine,
I work for Roots of Empathy in Toronto. For more information, your readers can visit us at http://www.rootsofempathy.org.
Thanks so much for your post and for shedding light on the importance of fostering empathy in children! Julia Morgan
Here’s a further resources to learn more about empathy and compassion.
The Center for Building a Culture of Empathy
The Culture of Empathy website is the largest internet portal for resources and information about the values of empathy and compassion. It contains articles, conferences, definitions, experts, history, interviews, videos, science and much more about empathy and compassion.
http://CultureOfEmpathy.com
and here is my interview with the founder of the roots of empathy program, Mary Gordon.
http://cultureofempathy.com/References/Experts/Mary-Gordon.htm
Hi Lorraine,
I’m a teacher (and a parent) and I enjoyed your article. It reminds me that we all have a responsibilty to teach and model empathy for the children in our lives. Thanks.
This is a nice introduction to empathy. However, as the parent of bullied and traumatized children, I think there needs to be this and many more approaches towards the emotional intelligence quotient. We teach towards an intellectual barbarian paradigm in our schools these days. The poor teachers are strapped in the “teach for the test” no child left behind mode. They have little time to try and instill life lessons, which are the most important of all.
My children were brought up to be polite and empathic. Their trauma arises from finding out that other children are not brought up with the same message, and cruelly so. Both of my children were bullied for their race and for their spiritual beliefs, almost every day they would come home from school and ask ” Why do they treat me like this? I didn’t do anything.” The most terrible thing is, especially for my daughter, the bullying started in kindergarten and hasn’t let up yet. She is now under treatment for severe depression and many other manifestations from the bullying on mental, emotional and physical levels. Many children, and unfortunately many parents, have very little in the way of what we would call ‘common civility’: please, thank you, excuse me, may I help you, etc. We see it from children who shove past adults to get in a door, including the frail elderly, and from adults, with children in their car, engaging in road rage. School administrations need many modes of anti-bullying methods; the ones available for the Sonoma Unified School district are woefully inadequate. As one administrator told me in response to my complaints of my son being beat up almost daily, “Well, we all know that some kids are just more bullied than others.” No, we do not “all know that.” At least some of us know this is a case of inadequate instruction of positive emotional qualities in children, not a forgone conclusion. With an administrative attitudes such as this, however, one can see why such bullies can develop in elementary school, and intensify in middle school. It has to stop.
Unfortunately, it was almost too late for my daughter before we found out how very depressed she really was. Parents of bullied children need to know the signs, and should have materials from the schools telling them what to look for in their children, before it manifests as a severe mental illness or life ending problem.