Helpful tips and ideas for teachers and parents

Since having my son, I spend a lot of time thinking about my own childhood. The more I remember about school, the more I pray he has a completely different experience than I did. Although I did excel academically, socially, my life was a nightmare until I was in high school. I was bullied non stop throughout middle school, but nothing was ever done to help me. Back then, bullying was simply a part of the school hierarchy. Some bullied, others were bullied. 
Today, recent extreme bullying incidents have made schools more proactive when it comes to teaching proper social skills, preventing bullying and teaching anger management. Classroom strategies and anti-bullying materials are available that give every teacher ideas on how to combat the ever growing problem of bullying.

Children today face many hard situations that may affect behavior negatively. From divorce to abuse, kids have to deal with stressful home lives, but are not aware of how to deal with the strong emotions that come along with their situations. Whether you’re a teacher, mentor, counselor or family friend, there are plenty of age appropriate materials geared to various age groups that will help you teach kids about bullying, anger management and behavioral disorders.
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Teacher ideas and tips are a dime a dozen when it comes to dealing with math, science and English lessons, but finding helpful advice on how to teach a group of elementary students about anger management are much harder to find. The most important thing to remember when attempting to explain proper social behavior is patience. Keep in mind that certain “at risk” children have never been taught or shown proper social behavior and are used to letting their negative emotions run the show.

Many educators believe that teaching some level of anger management is important so that children know how to resolve conflict using non violent methods. This can prevent fighting in schools as well as at home amongst siblings. To teach anger management to children, you can employ the use of specialized games and age appropriate books.

In my school, when I was bullied, the bully was given detention or suspended, told to leave me alone, then they came back to school and continued bullying. The actual cause of the bullying was never treated, so the bully never stopped. Now, you can find materials, games and teacher ideas that can help constructively correct bullying behavior. Games work well for young children, while role-playing and videos work well with older kids.

It’s important to be proactive as a parent when it comes to teaching your kids about proper social behavior and anger management. Don’t wait until they’ve actually had a problem before teaching them about anger, depression and bullying.

Knowing that there are so many helpful parent tips and teacher ideas that can help confront bullying and other behavioral issues makes me feel better, because it’s these innovative tools that will ensure that my son will have it far better than I did.