What do you do if the school or a parent notifies you that your child’s involved with bullying? What to do you when your child is being a bully? What steps do you take? Nobody wants that call. But if it happens, every parent wants to handle the situation correctly. You’d want to explore causes, stop the behavior, heal into a more positive mindset. But how do you get there?

What to do you when your child is being a bully

1. Stay calm, get your head on straight, and gather information

Resist the urge to act impulsively. Maintain your crucial calm and take time to process and accept what’s happening. Clear your mind of internal distractions so you can approach fact-finding with an open mind and patience.

Learn everything you can about the behavior. Ask about specific incidents, involved individuals, and potential triggers. Find out the sequence of events and whether previous history could have contributed to the behavior.

Your goal is to build a framework for a mindful, constructive approach to the problem. Any piece of information can be helpful. Knowing more before talking to your child makes the conversation easier.

2. Listen to your child

Maintain a safe space and peaceful environment when approaching your child. Adding tension and fear to that conversation won’t help and you need open, truthful communication from your child. Avoid accusations and don’t indulge in anger. Instead, use open-ended questions when you ask specific incidents.

Get your child’s perspective on events so that you can understand the problems.

Ask about your child’s feelings leading up to the incident and then how they felt afterward. Children may struggle to articulate motivations or convey inner dialogue but try to get a sense of what your child is thinking.

You might find some underlying issues, such as peer pressure, emotional struggles, or even toxic self-esteem problems. You may never discover a solid, simple why, but hopefully, you can get a feel for what’s happening in your kid’s head.

3. Enlist professionals to help you child who is bullying

Depending on the severity of any incidents or the depth of any emotional challenges your child might face, consider the help of trained and certified professionals. Perhaps seek counseling or a local community member with expertise. Local programs and organizations often have supplemental therapy services available. Ultimately, choose an appropriate intervention based on what you feel is a proportional and reasonable response.

If the situation warrants it, you might consider the help of an official or authority who can help guide you through critical legal steps. The aim is to address what’s right in a healthy and constructive way for your family.

4. Look for other associated behavior or disorders that may be leading to poor behavior.

It’s critical not to minimize the traumatic impact of bullying, but we should recognize that individuals with emotional or behavior disorders often exhibit bullying behavior. Sensory issues, social processing, or developmental disorders could all contribute to the problem.

A mental health professional might help discover and diagnose underlying challenges affecting the behavior. Schools often have mechanisms or programs to help support a child’s individual needs. Uncovering that a problem exists is the first step. If you have any instinct, your child might be struggling, this is a great way to address challenges.

Armed with fuller knowledge of any disorders, you can focus on getting your child the correct help for the problem..

4. Monitor and supervise online activity of your kids

Cyberbullying includes a wide range of actions, usually meant to harass or intimidate a target. If bullying behavior is occurring physically, then you absolutely must check your kid’s computer use.

Regularly monitor your child’s online behavior, including social media engagement, messages, and web habits. Survey your child’s online behavior for harmful influences and toxic content. Users create the content for sites like YouTube and TikTok; you have no guarantee of its accuracy or positivity.

Parental controls are widely available and can help restrict undesirable content. They vary according to circumstance and device but even most cell carriers and internet providers offer options.

Learn about the communities and apps your child prefers. Your child might have learned some of this behavior online! Find out what interests your child and offer a healthier alternative. Look for human moderation in any community. Chat filters are better than nothing but users constantly invent new ways to circumvent them. Besides, someone can use perfectly polite language but still be harassing another. A human moderator can read the subtle cues and take action.

5. Watch your language

Bullying is a behavior and an action, not an identity. Be careful not to just call your child a “bully.”

Assigning a label sends the message that you don’t think change is possible. But kids can grow; they evolve with encouragement and education. Help your kid learn better behavior and reinforce that effort by never using a permanent, toxic label.

6. Be very clear and maintain accountability

Make your expectations clear to your child and highlight that you can’t accept bullying behavior. That seems obvious, but miscommunication can derail behavior improvement before it even begins.

Once you’ve laid out your expectations, build a plan for actions and consequences appropriate to your parenting style. These consequences also must be clear to your child. Focus on being constructive instead of punitive, though. Again, kids change as they grow, and you’re aiming for a healthy improvement rather than retribution.

7. Be positive about the good

As you increasingly monitor and regulate your child’s activity, provide lavish positive feedback for good behavior. This will reinforce your expectations and encourage your kid to keep improving. Praise is often far more effective than punishment for enacting change.

8. Keep checking in

Keep checking in with school officials, community members, and counselors. See if your plan is creating change and if your kid’s behavior is improving. If you’re not getting the results you want, alter your plans and expectations. Remember that there are online resources available to you.

Don’t let setbacks discourage you. Your child is learning a fresh approach to managing feelings and emotions. Be patient with the process.

If the bullying incident took place at school, the staff should help guide you through whatever policy or disciplinary actions are required. You can’t shrug off that responsibility, but your focus should be on helping your kid improve.

Remember, your child needs help and you are the best person for the job. With patience and meticulous work, you can help make the improvement happen. Good luck!

If you think your child may be being bullied, check this out to find out what to do next.

The post What to Do When Your Child Is Being a Bully appeared first on The Mabelhood.

But you can overcome these challenges, it is possible to organize a blended home. Children and parents alike can work together to navigate the emerging family landscape. Every tool you can put on your belt is worth the time and investment.

A well-organized, mindful home helps a family tackle those challenges by reducing stress, minimizing distractions, and literally improving their mental health. The science is clear on this: a clean, organized living space can enhance your relationships, while a cluttered and chaotic home makes everything harder.

Tips to organize your blended household:

1. Make a plan… together.

Blended families often start from different places regarding organization. Do you keep your keys, wallet, and backpacks in the same place? Where do dirty clothes go until you wash them? What will you do with duplicate stuff? An antique credenza might be crucial furniture to one family while the other just considers it a clutter collector.

Avoid assumptions and develop a unified, collaborative plan.
Creating this plan could take a long time and become frustrating, but you’ll avoid tons of miscommunication by thinking through your organizational strategy. Talk to each member of the family and be certain that
everyone gives input.

Start by designating some goals and principles.
Are your goals to maintain a debris-free floor or ensure that laundry is always done? Agree about what you want to accomplish. That forms your road map and shapes your plan. Take the time to address each person’s concerns and preferences so that minor issues don’t become enormous problems later.

Mentally divide your space into smaller sections, allowing you to focus on one room or area at a time. Work in small steps to avoid feeling overwhelmed. Marking an area “finished” could help keep you motivated.

2. Identify communal versus individual space

Respecting personal space, in both a metaphorical and literal sense, swiftly becomes crucial to a blended family. Personal areas provide each family member with a sense of security and reinforce individual personhood. If absolute privacy is impossible, work doubly hard to reinforce boundaries around storage units and “alone-time spaces.”

You can still create individual agency, even if siblings are forced to share a room for practical reasons. Buy each child a foot locker and forbid anyone but the owner from opening it. Label the ownership of each one clearly. Establish that there’s no talking to someone who is in their bed, as that’s personal time. You can even hang curtains around the bed to provide a sense of separation.

Balance those individual spaces with communal areas.
The dining room table, living room, and kitchen, for example, should be areas where the family comes together and bonds over games, food, and conversation. No individual can dominate that space; it should be a gathering place for the entire family.

3. Be specific and label where things belong.

Each belonging needs a designated place, and it needs to be labeled. This tactic minimizes arguments about toys, tools, and clothing being left out and not put away. If a label on a shelf proclaims, “Hair Brush Here,” it’s difficult to argue you didn’t know where to put it.

Children often feel tempted to drop backpacks and kick off shoes with wild abandon when they get home from school. Labeling cubbies and lockers reduces the mental load of tidying. The kids will be able to see exactly where to put away their stuff.

Labels serve another purpose. They document family agreements. Once you’ve agreed that a category of dish goes on a particular shelf, stick a label on it. Restaurants and businesses have been doing this forever.

We love this Split Name Label Pack. It’s the most simple way of getting multiple kids labels that they can use to label their own items, their lockers, and personal items that they don’t want to share. Not only does this make the household run smoother when everyone is responsible for their own things, but it also stops many sibling rivalries over who owns what.

4. Make a calendar your best friend.

Create a few shared calendars for your family. Separate your cleaning routines onto their own calendar. Another calendar can manage drop-offs and pickups. A third calendar will organize due dates and critical days; you could put doctor appointments on this one, or create a whole separate calendar. Create as many as you need as long as your family collaborates and agrees.

You organize all these dates on different calendars to avoid information overload. Never underestimate how easy it is to overwhelm someone with data, especially a child. Keep the information separated, bite-sized, and manageable.

5. Flexibility and accountability.

Flexibility and accountability might feel like opposite ends of a spectrum, but they both revolve around a central point: respect for the other members of your family.

Be accountable by documenting compromises and decisions. You could keep a notebook with important agreements, like a particular process to paying bills or a decision about what gets stored in the garage. A quick email could suffice and you should definitely stick a label on anything you can. The goal is to create a touchstone you can refer to. Clarity makes everything easier.

Maintain your open mind and willingness to accommodate, though. Minds change and preferences evolve while you’re creating your organized, uncluttered home. You’ll want to be flexible with family members but also yourself. There’s no telling what you’ll discover about your goals while going through this process.

Final Thought

You’ll see that respect came up a lot amidst this list. That’s on purpose. Respect and communication will be the foundation of your organization journey, just like they’re part of the foundation of your family. Creating this big, blended family won’t always be easy, but it should always be rewarding.

The post How to Organize a Blended Home appeared first on The Mabelhood.