Tag: schools

Not all parents are mothers: A reminder to programs for kids

Real Social Skills

Sometimes camps, schools, and other programs for kids think “mother” when they should be thinking “parent or guardian”. In addition to being sexist, this kind of bias can cause a number of other problems.

When programs for kids think of “mother” and “parent” as synonyms, they often end up forgetting that other parents and guardians exist. When they think of “mother” and “primary caregiver” as synonyms, they often fail to contact the appropriate adult.

For instance:

  • Susan, an eight year old, just fell off the jungle gym and needs to be taken to the hospital.
  • Susan’s teacher, Ruby, calls 911.
  • Ruby thinks “I need to call Susan’s mother to let her know that Ruby was just taken to Hypothetical Hospital”.
  • Susan’s mother, Melissa isn’t reachable during the day because she works in a secure building without access to a phone.
  • Susan’s father, Christopher, *is* reachable. He works from home, and always has his phone with him.
  • Although Susan’s emergency contact form has a note saying to call Christopher first, it doesn’t occur to Ruby to do so, because she’s thinking “I need to call Susan’s mother”, and looking at the “mother” line of the form.
  • Ruby keeps trying to reach Melissa.
  • It takes an hour before it occurs to anyone to call Susan’s *father*.

Or:

  • David is a twelve year old who has food allergies. He also has a mother, Miriam, and a father, Fred.
  • Katie, who runs the kitchen at Camp Hypothetical, has some questions about what he can and can’t eat, and whether the plan for an upcoming camp out will work for him.
  • Katie tries calling Miriam, David’s mother. She doesn’t reply. Katie tries again and again, over the course of several days.
  • It doesn’t occur to her to try calling David’s *father*, even though she knows he has one — because she thinks of mothers as the parents who keep track of that kind of information.

When you’re working with kids, it’s really important not to treat “mother” and “primary caregiver” as synonyms, and to remember that:

  • Not all children have mothers.
  • Not all mothers are primary caregivers.
  • Not all children who have mothers live with their mothers.
  • Not all mothers should be given information about their children.
  • Fathers are parents.
  • Nonbinary parents are parents.
  • When a kid has more than one parent, it’s often best to contact both/all parents (especially if contacting the first parent doesn’t work.)
  • Some kids are raised by people other than their parents (eg: grandparents, a sibling, foster parents).

Short version: If you’re working with kids and you need to contact their parent or guardian, don’t assume that their mother is the right person to contact. Look at the instructions on their emergency/parent contact form, and follow those instructions. And if you try calling a kid’s mother and don’t get a response, check to see whether they have another parent you should try calling.

Doing right by victims of bullying

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
Hello! I’m in my first year of teaching and I have a couple of students who are being bullied verbally everyday by a group of older boys. Of course, I’ve been working on putting an end to it, but instead of helping my bullied students, the boys have just added me and another new teacher to their list of targets. They are not my students so I can’t directly punish them and their own teacher wouldn’t do anything about it. And their parents are busy rich people who couldn’t be bothered. Any advice?

There’s a book you need to read. The Are Word by Dave Hingsbuger is an amazing practical guide to helping victims of bullying. It’s short, easy to read, and has practical techniques that actually help people. (He wrote it for those who work with people with intellectual disabilities, but what he says is broadly applicable to everyone.)

Some things I think it’s important to acknowledge about this kind of situation (and this is part of what Dave Hingsburger discusses in his book):

  • You might not be powerful enough to make the bullies stop
  • The victims are almost certainly not powerful enough to make the victims stop
  • There are a lot of things you can do for your students, whether or not you can stop the bullies
  • Your students need you, and it’s important to be there for them

Be careful about your ego:

  • You probably want to see yourself as someone who stops bullying
  • Most teachers decent enough to care about vulnerable kids feel that way
  • This can lead to some bad consequences when there are bad things going on that you can’t stop
  • Sometimes teachers who want to believe that they are solving bullying end up talking themselves out of acknowledging bullying when they can’t fix it
  • Or worse, sometimes they convince themselves that teaching victims social skills or other responses will fix bullying
  • That ends up hurting victims really badly, and making them feel like it’s their fault and/or that no adults care very much about what’s happening to them.
  • Don’t do that to their students
  • Acknowledge what’s happening to your students, even when it hurts to admit to yourself that something bad is happening that neither you nor they can fix

Even when you are not powerful enough to control the behavior of bullies, there are a lot of other things you can and should do to help your students. I’ve written before about things adults can often do to help victims of bullying.

Short version: Teachers can’t always stop bullying; they can always do things that are at least somewhat helpful to victims of bullying. One of the most important things you can do is to be honest with yourself and your students about the situation. _The Are Word_ by Dave Hingsburger is an incredibly helpful book for anyone who wants to support victims of bullying.

Respect names

Real Social Skills

This is something that often happens in English-speaking schools to kids from other cultures:

  • A kid has a non-English name
  • The teacher decides it would be better if they had an English name
  • They give the kid a different name, and refuse to call them their actual name
  • Or heavily pressure the kid into changing their name

This also happens to some kids in foster care. Their foster parents or social workers will decide that their name is a problem, and assign them a different name.

Some reasons adults in power will cite for doing this to kids in their care:

  • The name is hard to pronounce
  • Other kids make fun of the name
  • A kid with a non-English name will feel different from the other kids
  • Having a different name will make it easier for the kid to assimilate into English-speaking culture
  • And then the teacher makes the kid use a different name, one that’s more usual in English

Don’t do this. Names are important. It’s not ok to change someone else’s name.

It’s actually *more* important not to change a kid’s name if other kids are making fun of it, because:

  • You’re teaching the kid that their name is wrong
  • And that it’s their own fault they’re being bullied, that it’s because they’re weird
  • It also teaches the bullies that it’s ok to bully people for having weird names, and that they’re entitled to have other people erase themselves for their sake
  • A kid who is being bullied for their name will also be bullied for other things, especially if they are from a non-English-speaking culture
  • Changing the kid’s name will not stop this, it will just make the rest of it harder to take

Names are important. Respecting someone’s name is part of respecting them as a person. It’s not ok to change their name for your convenience.