Q: My 14-year-old son was having trouble with being bullied at school. He wants to change schools because some kids pick on him, both in and out of school. He wrote some threats in his notebook. The teacher saw the notebook and he has been suspended until he can get counselling. How can I handle this?
A: Recent tragedies in North America have made schools concerned about threats expressed by students, but the
officials sometimes overreact.
The following ideas may help with this situation.
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If the school wants him to get counselling, then it needs to be able to give you the names or addresses of agencies or people who can provide this, without dealing with long waiting lists.
School officials also need, with your written permission, to give that agency a full version of how they saw the situation.
Your son needs to prepare himself to benefit from the counselling in the following ways:
He needs to admit to his comments, whatever they were, and to prepare a genuine explanation of what he was going through at that time. This is best done if he writes down some of the experiences he has had. He needs to describe the pressure he may have been under, but also be honest about his behaviour, and the fact that he made the choice to do something that upset the school and created anxiety about his future behaviour.
If the school says it doesn’t have resources on anger, I would be happy to send it the anger education program that I have just developed and tested in my own community. The key is that the material is not a lecture at the students. It can be done by an individual or in a group setting.
We don’t manger anger. We manage ourselves. Everyone gets angry. It is a normal emotion. But we need to learn to understand it and express it in constructive rather than threatening or destructive ways.
Your son needs to learn about the nature of anger. But being a normal human, he will balk at being told what he has to do by someone. This is a normal, first response by any teenager. But the school wants him to learn about anger and if he is willing to do so, he will feel better about himself.
He will also be able to better express his feelings to you, his
friends and teachers. The better he learns to feel about himself, the more confident he will appear and the less likely that the bullies will see him as a target.
Also, you may have to encourage him to overcome the myth that you don’t rat on people who hurt you. People who assault or bully others need to face the consequences, and that is why we have police and a court system.
Peter Griffiths is a mental health counsellor based in Prince Albert, Sask. His columns are intended as general advice only. His website is www.sasktelwebsite.net/petecope.
