Stop Teasing in its Tracks

You’ve just learned that your 9-year-old is being teased at school. How do you stop teasing in its tracks even if your child doesn’t want you to?

A) Decide he should just tough it out on his own — life’s full of teasing, after all.

B) Sit down with your child and hatch out a plan that he decides upon himself.

C) Call the teaser’s parents and alert the school to the teasing.

In the book Parenting By Heart, author Ron Taffel, Ph.D.,  says that you should definitely intervene even if your child protests. Taffel says it’s easy to give way to your child’s argument against intervention — especially because you’re not sure it’s the right thing to do and it would be easier to ignore it, hoping it will improve on its own. After you’ve given your child a first chance to handle it though, if things don’t improve, ACT. When your child knows that you are an active presence in the situation, it will make up for the short-term friction your initial involvement brings. Call the other parents AND the school to let them know what’s going on. Without your intervention, Taffel says, the taunting and teasing will continue.