Practical Access Podcast

S:2 E:17_Bullying

June 26, 2020 Season 2 Episode 17
Practical Access Podcast
S:2 E:17_Bullying
Show Notes Transcript

Drs. Rebecca Hines and Lisa Dieker, UCF faculty, share their thoughts on how to help your students or children make friends or to deal with bullying.  The practical ideas shared are meant to provide ideas to help build friendships or regain power from those being bullied.  The ideas shared will help you think about giving students with disabilities words and ideas to ensure they are confident in their strengths. We look forward to receiving your questions on Twitter @accesspratical

Lisa Dieker:

Welcome to practical access. I'm Lisa Dieker.

Rebecca Hines:

And I'm Rebecca Hines. And Lisa, I think today we're going to focus on answering some key questions that have come in. So what are we going to start with?

Lisa Dieker:

Well, you know, questions are always interesting, because you're never quite sure of the intent. But I think the first one is pretty clear. How do I help my child with a disability deal with bullying, and at the same time, help them to get more friends? And I was like, Huh, that's a really good question. You want to start us off, Becky, I have a couple thoughts.

Rebecca Hines:

I don't mind starting off, I will, I'm going to tell you from a practitioners point of view, and I'm going to be specific about things that I, I did and tried myself as a teacher. So working with kids with emotional behavioral issues, as you can imagine, some of these kids struggled to, to have friends. And they were often either in the case of bullying other people or being type of thing, and who was willing to do that type of thing. And so it's not that the girls became these huge lifelong friends. But it was a great entry step into understanding that everybody has things that we're working on. And so after a week, then I asked Trisha, you know, what is one of her goals and had had Beth, conversely, work with her on one of her goals. So my first thought is

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah, I think I'll go back to one of our earlier podcasts is, you know, kind of know thyself, or you know, self advocacy. And I think for kids with disabilities, if they don't know their strengths, and you and I've had the privilege of being around several students here at UCF with disabilities and been around and some of them really surprise us, once they get their wings, they find school, please come to your friend, Tricia or so that there is this pathway to talk about bullying, because often it's happening in kids with disabilities don't share that because they think that's something that's secret and private. So there's a couple of ideas have a couple more, but what are your thoughts there, Becky?

Rebecca Hines:

Well, I think in terms of being bullied, I mean, even even with our own kids, anyone who's a parent, I think it's one of the fears, probably one of the greatest fears when your kids are, are starting to go out into school, no matter no matter what characteristics your child has, it's this fear that they won't be accepted by and that they won't have friends. So I know I went stop them in their tracks, because the last thing they wanted was for me to act like they needed something they were trying to get power, not my you know. And so with kids, and again, this is more of an approach for older kids, but getting them to understand when people bully you, you should feel bad for them because they need something they're not getting. And you know that so that kids don't

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah, and I love that I think we always say you know, behavior is language. And you know, bullying is a language. It's a language of, as you said, so well power. And I think that kind of goes along with the line of trying to find friends. And I don't think that changes whether you're to 20 or 50, to 70 to whatever age you are, you know, is helping our kids with gain friendship. First think that's true for all of us. We make that decision. One last quick note, too. I just have to share a quick laugh. And then I think we can wrap this one up and use the next question for the next podcast. You talk about self confidence, my favorite moment as a mother. So this is for a good laugh for everybody is my son. We lived right across the street from middle school, middle school was

Rebecca Hines:

Well, you know, I think I think the hard part for anybody for teachers and parents is to know when to intervene and when not to intervene. And, you know, and bullying, you know, Lisa, we didn't even mention the kind of bullying that happens online or via text or anything else. And so I would say as much as our first inclination might be to try to punish the bullies. I think that

Lisa Dieker:

All right. Well, thank you for joining us for this session. And please send us additional questions at our Twitter @accesspractical