The juggling for social status increases as a child’s need for acceptance, power and dominance grows. Kids often recognize their own place on the social ladder. No one wants to be at the bottom of the barrel.

Think of the social ladder in the following way. There’s the Top 15%, the Middle 70% and Bottom 15%.
•Kids in the Top 15% often have strong social skills, are very adept at reading social cues and pay attention to power and dominance. Sometimes kids in this group are mean and aggressive towards others. Recent studies have shown that children in this group get teased and taunted too, but they seem to know how to deal with ridicule. This is how they remain in the top 15%. Many other kids aspire to be in this group even though the emotional price can sometimes be too high.

•Kids in the Middle 70% know how to make friends too. They may not be as skilled in negotiating power and dominance conflicts as those in the very top group. Studies have shown that kids in this vast middle get pushed around too. More often than not, they are bystanders, or witness to the more severe bullying. Kids in the middle are sometimes in conflict over doing what’s right and what’s best for their own social status. They may want to stick up for a victim, but fear retaliation. There has been a lot of emphasis lately on empowering bystanders to do the right thing.

•Kids in the Bottom 15% are often totally ignored by other kids or bullied rather harshly. If they are bullied, they often lack the skills to signal an aggressor to stop. Without meaning to, they may reinforce the aggressor by overreacting, crying or striking back. Sometimes these youngsters get in trouble themselves, leading to more frustration and hurt.

Parents and professionals were rightly concerned about the bottom 15% of youngsters, believing them to be principal victims of bullying. Recent research has shown that while these youngsters may be targets, kids in all rungs of the social ladder can be victims or aggressors too. Attention has to be paid to all young people, teaching them effective anti-bullying measures, empowering bystander actions, confidence skills and empathy training.

To read more articles of interest:
No One to Sit With At Lunch
I Wish I Were Popular
I’m Not Invited to the Party

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Job I – Taking the test
Job 2 – Fooling their body and mind to stay calm and keep their brain at
the highest level of functioning.

JOB 1 – This is the academic part.
•If young people attend class, complete homework and study, they are on a good path to good test performance.
•A good night’s sleep, a good breakfast and some mild exercise in the morning will help a brain perform well.

JOB 2 – This is the staying calm part
•Even though finals are important, when your child is actually taking the test, he or she must think of it as just another test not more important than any other test.
•Encourage kids to stay away from thinking about grades, passing, failing, getting into college or questions they don’t know the answer to. These are questions that are important, but should be addressed BEFORE STUDYING or AFTER THE TEST. Thinking about these issues DURING the test will flood the brain and body with stress hormones and make the child’s brain less efficient. The No More What If tool in the Outsmart Your Worry Toolkit for Kids is particularly helpful for this.
•Use calming techniques for breathing and muscle relaxation, such as those found in the Outsmart Your Worry Toolkit, specifically, Easy Does It Breathing and Let It Go. These techniques help to keep bodies calm.
•Self-Coaching techniques, such as silently saying, You’re doing fine, You’re OK, also help to keep brains calm.

Remember, calm brains perform better. You can help your child use thinking and behavior skills to outsmart test anxiety.

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Brains work best when bodies are calm. Calm bodies allow brains to concentrate better, process information well, problem solve effectively and retrieve information that is already learned. Important pathways in the brain stay open so that the benefits of studying can be used during the test.

Although a very small amount of anxiety actually helps performance by keeping the brain focused, this is unfortunately not what happens during test anxiety. Test anxiety floods the brain and body with stress hormones. The body is primed for a fight or flight response as opposed to doing well in an intellectual activity, such as taking a final. Concentration, information processing, problem solving and information retrieval all suffer as important brain pathways are closed by the anxiety response.

So how can a young person deal with test anxiety? First, worrying is fine, but only before studying, as fear is a good motivating force for studying. Once studying is begun, tell your child that being worried will actually hurt rather than help performance. Learning cognitive (thinking) and behavior skills to help stay calm during the test comes next. Read about these strategies in Fear of Finals – Part 2.

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•Your teen is a treasured member of a sports team. Everyone expects him or her to have an amazing season. Your kid feels mounting pressure and anxiety before each major game.
•Your middle school child is not on a sports team by his own choice. He feels left out at lunch and recess because he feels he has nothing to contribute and always has to make excuses why he’s not on a team.
•Your daughter had been told to drop a few pounds. She’s a good athlete but feels embarrassed about her weight. This affects her self-esteem.

Student athletes can be derailed by criticism from the other team, their own teammates, coaches as well as themselves. They need an effective plan to get back on track and stay focused. Confidence skills can do just that. Young athletes can also be thrown off base by negative What If’s which can break concentration and lead to panic. Anti-anxiety strategies can improve accurate thinking before and during a game.

Young athletes can learn how to maximize self-esteem and minimize anxious thoughts. It does take a bit of practice. Young athletes are used to that. Building emotional strengths along with athleticism is a winning combination. Read more about how to stay steady and strong during athletic competitions:
Turn Sore Sports Into Good Sports
March is Not Just About Basketball
Performance Anxiety in Kids

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Anxiety symptoms can include repetitive What If thoughts (What If there is a bombing in my town?), sleep problems, appetite problems, crying, explosions of anger, development of new fears (such as fear of going out in crowds, malls) and new anxiety habits (such as repetitive checking of locks in the house or avoidance of trash like the ones where the bombs were planted). These are very real symptoms and can cause genuine distress for children and their families. When the symptoms don’t go away, they can evolve into Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.

What can you do to help your child worry less and be more resilient? Listen to his or her fears. Don’t minimize them. Reassure children that you are there to protect them and the likelihood of another bombing in their neighborhood is very low. Normalize their lives – be sure your child’s life goes on as normally as possible – school, activities, playmates. Distraction is always a good strategy. And remember, it takes time.

If you are interested in learning more skills about HOW to help your child, worry skills and resilience skills are just a click away. You really can help your child feel better.

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Many kids do not feel safe when they hear about events such as bombing at the Boston Marathon on Monday. It’s no wonder, as many adults don’t feel safe either. As parents, one of our many important jobs is to teach young people how to manage their fears in a what is often a very scary world.

It’s not easy to do this but you can get a good head start by working with your child on two concepts – likelihood and anti-terrorism efforts. It’s not realistic to tell your child that things like this NEVER happen. They do happen. Fortunately, they happen very rarely and the likelihood that something as dreadful as the Boston bombing will happen to your child is very, very, very low. Even though children may see or hear about something bad , it doesn’t mean it will happen to them.

The second concept is reminding your child of the strong and vital anti-terrorism effort of our government. Very smart people are working very hard to locate and capture the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon. Many terrorists have been apprehended before and brought to justice. It may be only a matter of time before these terrorists have been captured as well.

We don’t live in a perfect world. We don’t live in a world that is always safe. But we can help our children navigate their way through their fears in the best way possible. For additional readings on this topic, see Time Square Bomb Threat Can Scare Children.

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Try your best to maintain family rules while on vacation and always teach children to be respectful of your host. Realistically you might not be as successful as you would like. It’s important to remember that the holidays and holiday visits are time-limited. All too soon, you will be back home and involved in familiar routines. If your expectations for your children’s behavior return home with you, things will be back to “your family normal” before the holiday trip.

Here are other articles about traveling with children that may be of interest:
Kids Afraid to Leave Home
Air Travel Can Be Scary
Back To School Blues

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Here’s what’s known about cyberbullying in 2013:
•Studies report that 17% of kids have been bullied online. That’s almost 1 out of 5 kids who were cyberbullied. Other research found it to be as low as 5%.
•Cyberbullying has not increased in the last 5-6 years, despite growing concerns to the contrary.
•80-90% of kids bullied online are also bullied in person.
•Young people who are bullied in person or online can suffer from depression, poor self-esteem and anxiety. Some have suicidal thoughts.
•If a youngster is bullied by someone with more power or social status, the impact is often greater.

The big surprise about cyberbullying is that it has not escalated in the past 5-6 years. Yet even one youngster being bullied online is one too many.

What can parents do? It’s important to note that in all types of bullying, including physical, verbal and online, adults intervene in only 4% of the incidents. That means there is no adult intervention in 96% of all bullying situations. The number one recommendation to reduce cyberbullying is for parents to monitor, monitor, monitor. Know what your kid does online. Discuss it routinely. Make kindness, respect and empathy important values taught in the home. That’s the best defense.

Here are other articles of related interest:
Rumors: Building Confidence Helps Kids Handle Them
Technology and Constant Communication
Bullying: Confidence Helps Kids

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Here’s what’s known about bullies:
• Bullies exhibit a repetitive pattern of aggression in their formative years. Power and dominance is their game, and sometimes it seems as if the bully is winning.
• Bullying is widespread and is the most common form of violence in young people. The AMA estimates that 3.7 million youths engage in moderate to severe bullying each year.
• Some kids who are popular or in leadership roles can start to take advantage of others. This can lead to bullying behavior, because peers reinforce the power plays. Of course it sends the wrong message to the bully in training.
• Research has documented that some bullies grow up in homes where power and aggressive acts are valued. These bullies in training learn to disregard other people’s feelings. It’s what they see at home. Not all bullies come from such homes however.
• Bullies don’t always pick on the weak. Sometimes bullying behavior involves a complex jockeying for position among peers. Other times kids who are picked on try out bullying behavior to protect them.
• Most kids experiment with bullying behavior at some point in their lives. It’s one way they learn about power, dominance and the kind of person they want to be. The good news is that the majority of children do not engage in a repetitive pattern of cruel and aggressive behavior, even though they may have tested the waters.

To stop the cycle of bullying, victims have to learn assertiveness and social skills, bystanders need courage to stop bullies, and bullies need to learn empathy and compassion. Helping the victim alone is not enough.

Here are other related articles:
Turn Sore Sports Into Good Sports
I Wish I Were Popular
Rumors: Building Confidence Helps Kids Handle Them

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In much the same way, many loving and well-meaning parents restrict the everyday emotional turmoil a child may experience. Some parents try to do whatever they can to make things easy and stress free for their children. But stress free does not build happiness. In fact, the best way to learn to deal with stress is by experiencing it. Parents can be most helpful to their children by allowing them to experience age-appropriate stress and learn effective problem-solving strategies to deal with disappointment, mistakes and change. Again, a little exposure to life’s ups and downs can be good in the long run.

To read more about parenting today see:
Does Frequently Rewarding Kids Build Their Confidence?
Facing Fears in A Way That’s Fun and Really Works
Discipline and Confidence in Kids

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