Ginger Whitson on Bullying and Neurodivergent Kids— How to Handle It and How to Protect Our Kids from Being Targets

Debbie:

Hey Ginger, welcome to the podcast.

Ginger Whitson:

Thanks. Thanks so much for having me here.

Debbie:

Yes, I’m really looking forward to this conversation. I have to just say this season in particular, I am bringing so many new topics to the show and it’s very exciting to me. And I can’t believe we haven’t even had an episode in seven and a half years that’s focused specifically on bullying. So this is long overdue and I’m really excited to get into it with you. Yeah.

Ginger Whitson:

Great. Oh, I’m so happy to be the first guest and this is always a pleasure for me to talk about.

Debbie:

Yeah, and no pressure that you have to cover all the things. No. But I would love if you could take a few minutes. I’ve read your formal bio, but if you could just take a few minutes and tell us a little bit about who you are in the world and connected with that, I always like to know people’s personal why, because there’s usually a reason why they were pulled to do the work that they’re doing.

Ginger Whitson:

Right. Right. That is a great question. And that would probably take a whole lot of thought on my part, all the different threads that sort of pulled me to where I am now. But I can tell you that all my life, I knew I wanted to work with young people in some capacity. You know, spent my childhood babysitting, you know, whatever it was, always either with kids or trying to help kids or sort of with a real passion or a lot of heart for helping kids who were struggling or who didn’t have a strong enough voice of their own, who maybe felt misunderstood. So I actually got my undergraduate degree in communications. Thought I’d be a writer for a while, but once I was done with college, I realized right away that was not the path I wanted to take. So I did all my graduate work in clinical social work and have been working with young people in all kinds of settings, residential treatment, schools in private practice therapy. I mean for the last 11 years I’ve been working in schools and that would be a really natural pathway into bullying prevention because you know in a school environment when kids are close to each other all day experiencing the natural conflict that comes with just being in a community. But then, you know, the unique social conditions that school brings and adolescence brings. But I actually was interested in bullying even before that. I was doing some work in the field of helping kids manage their anger and also learning about how kids express anger other than in aggressive ways, including passive aggressive ways. And that was really my entree into helping kids manage bullying, looking at all of the passive aggressive sort of relational ways that young people use their friendship as a weapon instead of the overt, you know, hitting verbal teasing, sort of cyber bullying, things that were easy to recognize how young people threatened to take their friendship away. I won’t be your friend anymore if, or use the silent treatment, or spread rumors about other people. Sort of that, you know, underhanded, a little bit more covert, a little bit tougher for adults to recognize, but really confusing, really painful for kids who are on this receiving end of it. So, yeah, I found my way to this work by just sort of really seeing that need and having a lot of heart for kids who were being bullied, but not in the traditionally recognized ways that people thought bullying happened. I just wanted to shine the light on it for those young people.

Debbie:

It’s so fascinating, and it’s already brought up about three questions that are not on my extensive list of questions. But as you’re talking, I’m thinking about that relational aggression. And I used to write books for teenagers and back in the early aughts, I guess. And Rachel Simmons had written her book, Odd Girl Out. Rosalind Wiseman had her book, That’s kind of when I think of bullying, that’s kind of I’m still stuck maybe back in like 2010. And I’m wondering if you could kind of another huge question, but like what is the kind of landscape for bullying right now? Like does it look different because of technology or how pervasive is bullying? Is it getting more intense? Is it starting to decrease? I’m just kind of curious, where are we with bullying?

Ginger Whitson:

Yeah, that is a great series of questions. Let me see how many of them I can answer because there’s a lot rolled into that. I do think that bullying is still a pervasive problem. I think it has been for a long time. I think people like Rosalind Wiseman and Rachel Simmons were great, like pioneers, you know, talk about shining the light. They shined light on bullying when it was something that no one else was talking about or people would just say, it’s a rite of passage, it’s part of being a kid. They were two of the great people that said, no, this is not a normal part of growing up. This is cruel. It’s having a lasting impact on people. So I think bullying has always been pervasive. I think they did a good job at bringing it a little bit more to the forefront, getting more people talking about it. I think that cyberbullying and just, you know, the type of bullying that I experienced, or people my age experienced when growing up, was not a 24-7 experience. School could be really, really rough, but then you could go home and you had a respite, and you had the family dinner table, without as many interruptions, and you just weren’t connected like kids are now. So I think bullying feels like a bigger problem in some ways because kids are so connected to each other at all hours of the day. My guess is, and I think research also bears this out, that it’s not that higher percentages of kids are being bullied now, but I think that there’s no time of day that’s off limits, there’s no rest, and I think the media does keep bullying in the spotlight more. You know, It’s talked about more than it ever used to be.

Debbie:

Yeah, yeah. Thank you. That’s helpful. And I’m wondering if it even makes sense because there’s a lot of language that we don’t always know what it means. And I’m thinking of the word gaslighting is used all the time. And now it’s like, used when it’s not really gaslighting. And bullying is one of those words, right? It gets thrown around a lot. And maybe isn’t used correctly all the time and something might be labeled bullying that really isn’t bullying. Do you have a good definition you could share with us?

Ginger Whitson:

Yeah, I do, you know, talk about my pathway into this work. That was also another one of my entrees. Even though I think of myself as an advocate for children, a person who’s, you know, steeped in the bullying prevention world, one of the things I’ve really learned is that is an overused term. Not everything that happens among young people is bullying. And the problem is, you know, for a long time, no one was talking about bullying. Then all of a sudden everyone was talking about bullying and every crossed eye, or, you know, not crossed eye like the letter, but anytime someone looked at someone else funny, it was labeled as bullying. And that made it really hard for parents and teachers and professionals to discern what’s really important here versus what is normal, manageable conflict that while it doesn’t feel good to be on the receiving end of it, children should be able to develop the skills to manage independently. Bullying is a whole different level of behavior that I would say we don’t want children to have to manage independently. But I guess the way, the work I’ve done is tried to really break down or to separate behaviors that are rude from behaviors that are mean from behaviors that are bullying. And I try to teach kids, I try to teach parents, I try to teach professionals that rude behaviors are things that happen spontaneously, impulsively, certainly not pre-planned, not with a lot of intent to, or pre-planned intent to hurt someone. So, I work in a K to eight school. One of the things I hear almost every day is something along the lines of, she bullied me and I’ll ask a question about what happened and a child will say, well, they jumped in front of me in line, that’s bullying. And I like to remind them that that’s against the rules. I understand why they don’t like it, but maybe the teacher asked them to be there in line. Maybe they really need to go to the bathroom. You know, there’s a million reasons why they could have done that thing, or maybe they were just being rude, right? But that’s different than bullying. Mean behavior, I feel like takes it another step further where it is on purpose. 

But mean behavior is actually something that usually happens between kids who are friends or friendly, but they’re mad at each other. Um, or there’s a particular conflict that they’re involved in. And so they are intentionally cruel, but it’s happening once or twice. This is not a whole pattern of behavior. Where bullying differs from rudeness and meanness is that it is on purpose. There is absolutely a pattern to it and there’s some type of imbalance of power. So when I was little, I assumed that a bully was going to be older, bigger, faster, stronger, smarter than me. But usually the imbalance of power is not that type of physical or age. It has to do with several kids all ganging up on one kid, making them feel isolated, excluded sort of. No one will talk to them, no one will sit with them on the lunch table. Everyone’s avoiding their party or sitting with them or whatever it is. So that’s the distinction I think is really important to make that to be bullying behavior there needs to be purpose, pattern, and power. I teach it that way very specifically to kids because it’s easy for them to remember. And I try to let kids know for them in identifying bullying properly, not over labeling it. And also there’s lots of skills that young people have and they should have and we should encourage them to develop to manage rude behavior and even mean behavior independently. But I want them to know what bullying is because I want them to get an adult’s help with that. Because of the imbalance of power, that’s not something they’re going to be able to handle on their own.

Debbie:

Yeah, that’s super helpful the way that you broke that down. I love that pattern, purpose and power. I want to talk about what is at stake if a child is being bullied, because I hear from parents in this community, especially neurodivergent kids are more at risk of being bullied. So I want to get into that. And we’ll take a quick break and then get into that conversation. So as we’re talking, I just interviewed Dr. Robin Silverman for the show. Her book came out, actually, as we’re recording this yesterday, How to Talk to Kids About Anything. But she shared a story I didn’t know in the beginning of our conversation about how she was bullied and how it’s still, there’s trauma there from when she was bullied as a kid. And it was just that reminder of how this really can have a deep impact on a child. And so I’d love to just talk about that if there is genuine bullying going on that the way that you’ve just defined it. What what really is at stake for kids when they’re experiencing that?

Ginger Whitson:

Yeah, I mean, everything’s at stake. Their self-confidence, their willingness to go to school. I think bullying can have an impact on grades. Bullying can have an impact on certainly mental health as well as physical health. But there’s all kinds of outcomes, just like there’s all kinds of people, right? And I think you could meet adults that talk about their bullying experiences as children, and maybe they learned something from it. There’s still pain there, but they can find something good from it. And there’s others that had maybe similar experiences and it really was devastating to them. So bullying affects different people in different ways over the long term. I think one of the factors for the long term outcomes is how helpless did that person feel in the moment. Were they on the receiving end of cruelty, but they felt like they knew how to stand up for themselves, that their voice was able to make a difference. There were adults there that were on their side. There were parents that were supporting them. There was another group of friends that never left their side and always, you know, was there to remind them that they had value and worth versus a person who received similar treatment, doesn’t know how to stand up for themselves, doesn’t have any teachers offering them protection, doesn’t have parents that are supportive, doesn’t have a group of friends that will stand by them. So I think those positive human connections can make all the difference in building someone’s resilience to bullying.

Debbie:

Yeah, and that makes sense if we think about kids who are at higher risk of depression and suicidal ideation and those poor outcomes if they identify as, for example, in the LGBTQ community if they don’t have that same support that those safe adults or people who have their back. So that makes sense. And I’m wondering if a parent, someone listening to this is knows that their child has been on the receiving end of bullying, are there specific ways that they should be responding to I mean, that’s one of the things Robin shared in her story that either it wasn’t talked about at all, right. And so her parents, you know, or sometimes parents would just be like, Oh, it’ll be okay, and just don’t really validate those feelings. So are there some kind of strategies or approaches that are really important that parents follow if their child’s been bullied.

Ginger Whitson:

Yeah, absolutely. The first thing I think is don’t freak out. Just like when you have a toddler who’s learning to walk and they wobble and they fall, if the parent says, oh my gosh, are you okay? The first thing the toddler does is cry, right? But if the parent sort of goes and says, oh, you’re okay and helps the child up and sort of expresses some confidence in the child’s ability to recover from the fall, kids go on their merry way most of the time, right? So I think that’s the same thing when a young person tells you that they are being bullied. If you have a parent’s heart, you’re going to panic, your heart’s going to drop, the blood’s going to drain from your face, you’re going to worry, you’re going to, you know, just feel so terrible. But no matter what is going on inside your body, you have to convey to the child that their situation is manageable. If kids feel like their adult can’t handle what’s happening, they lose all of their confidence that, okay, I can get through this situation. So I think that’s one of the number one things. We want to respond, take it seriously, validate the experience, but all in a way that helps convey that we’re going to get through this together this is manageable. I think the second thing I always encourage parents to do is thank kids for telling them what’s happening. There are statistics out there that I would misquote if I tried to get them exact, but I will just say in general kids have experienced many, many incidents of bullying behavior typically before they will go to a parent for help, especially as kids get older younger kids tend to tell their parents much more readily, but by the upper elementary, middle and high school years, it’s embarrassing for kids to admit that they’re being bullied or to ask for that kind of help. They wanna just keep it to themselves, keep it in their bubble. So I always tell parents like, thank your child for having the courage to tell you and also for letting you know what was going on because now that you know, now that you can help, now you’re able to help them. Third thing is, like encourage people, like express sympathy. You know, tell kids, I’m really sorry this is happening to you. That simple statement is powerful and I think conveys to kids, this is not just a normal part of growing up. This is not okay. This shouldn’t be happening to you. And then after those three things, that’s where I say, it’s time to help the child problem solve. 

And I stress that should be number four, because I know me, mama bear, when my kids tell me something that’s hard, I want to rush it and problem solve right away. But I think if you skip those steps, you take away some empowering things that kids really need. You’re missing the foundation. And also if you solve right away, you sort of rob them of a feeling of power right you leave them in a helpless powerless position and it’s the adult coming in so Problem solve but don’t problem solve first and I think problem solving sounds a lot like brainstorming. What have you tried? How did that work? Do you have any other ideas? Hey, have you thought about trying to do this? Did you ever think of maybe saying this? and then I’d like to say like come up with plan a B and C and maybe have plan D in your pocket, because chances are your kids have already tried ignoring the child. They’ve already tried walking away. They did the easy thing. So help kids really have realistic ideas of how they can move forward that they feel comfortable with. And then I think the last thing adults need to do is after you have a good conversation with a young person about bullying that they’re experiencing follow up check in. Not every single day, like, oh, how did they treat you today? Did they talk to you? You know, did they do this? That increases a child’s anxiety. But every few days, hey, we talked about you saying X to the person that was teasing you. How did that work? Or hey, we talked about you maybe talking to the school counselor. How did that work? I think that follow-up just lets kids know that’s an adult that took it seriously, that is still thinking of me, that’s in my corner, and those things are really important.

Debbie:

So good. I’m taking so many notes here and I want to acknowledge because as you were talking about that and how hard it is right to val you know to we want our kids to not sense our freak out. I just want to acknowledge how hard that is. I’m like, as we’re talking, being transported back into a time when my child was, I don’t know, like seven. And I witnessed, now, no, it was not bullying. It was just mean behavior, where a child told my kid to shut up in an animation camp. And I was standing right there. And I mean, I was seeing red. I was, and I just, I spiraled like, Oh my God, this is happening all the time when I’m not here. So I just wanna kind of put it out there. This is a lot easier said than done. I love the framework you just shared with us and it’s just so hard on a deep level for so many of us, right?

Ginger Whitson:

100%. As you were telling that story, I had this visceral reliving of when one of my daughters was four and a friend of hers from preschool that she just adored told her she was annoying. And I overheard it and my mama heart sunk and it’s 16 years later and I still am carrying a grudge against this little girl who said that. But honestly, I think, you know, a day or two later, I asked my daughter about that. She didn’t even remember that the girl had used that word. I still remember it all these years later. So I just, sometimes things wound kids really deeply and I wanna take them seriously, but sometimes they wound us as parents more and kids are able to let it roll right off their back. And we want that type of resilience in kids. We don’t want them to be deeply wounded by every single thing because it’s an angry world out there. It can be a mean world. And we want, you know, where they show resilience, we want to encourage it.

Debbie:

Yeah, and it’s just such a good reminder for us as parents. So much of what we talk about at Tilt Parenting is like doing our own deep inner work so that we can not bring our own stuff into our connection and relationship with our child. So we may have our own baggage from our childhood where we experience negative things. So it can be very triggering.

Ginger Whitson:

But it’s hard. I’m glad you pointed that out. Parenting is not for the faint of heart.

Debbie:

No, no, and no one really quite tells you that. Well, I guess we wouldn’t listen. We would think we’re not gonna, not me. Oh, my goodness. Okay. So I want to talk a little bit about are there things that make kids more at risk of being targets? And we’ll do that right after a quick break.

Ginger Whitson:

No, you would think not me. Yeah, I love children. That won’t happen to me.

Debbie:

So we talked earlier, or I mentioned earlier that we know that neurodivergent kids are more at risk of being bullied. I’m just wondering, are there certain characteristics or qualities or traits of kids, and maybe at different ages, that make them more easy targets or more likely to be bullied?

Ginger Whitson:

Yeah, I think what you’re talking about has a lot to do with kids who don’t have great control over their emotions, and therefore their emotional reactions, unfortunately, tend to be great targets. I shouldn’t say great targets, easier targets, prime targets for kids who bully. As I mentioned before, bullying is all about an imbalance of power, and sometimes that has to do with look at me, look how calm I can stay. I have the power to make you lash out, explode in anger, cry, you know, whatever big reaction it is they’re looking for. So unfortunately, kids, neurodiverse kids who’s, you know, the way their brains work, their emotional control is lagging behind a little bit. Unfortunately, that one characteristic makes them an easier target, which is really unfortunate, sad, speaks to the power of us as adults needing to teach empathy as a skill so that kids don’t derive pleasure out of getting other people to have big reactions, but rather they know that’s cruel, that’s not okay. I never wanna make a person feel that way. 

Debbie:

One of the things I’ve been thinking about in preparing for this conversation is a lot of neurodivergent kids may be more sensitive to, in addition to not necessarily reading social cues or being able to regulate their emotions, they might also have more rejection sensitive dysphoria or this perceived criticism. And I’m just wondering if you have any guidance around talking with kids who have that more heightened sense of rejection or concern about how they’re being perceived by other people when it comes to supporting them and not being targets.

Ginger Whitson:

Yeah, I have a, I definitely have thoughts about that. I’ll try to make it succinct. One of the things that I think is really helpful with kids who perceive the world a little bit differently is to start by figuring out what their perception is. How did they interpret that comment? What was it that they thought the other person meant when they did or said? whatever it was that made them feel rejected. And then validate their emotional response, but also offer a different perspective if there is one. Could it be that when the person said this, they were trying to make you laugh, trying to make someone else laugh, trying to actually make a friend? I can’t even think off the cuff of different interpretations, but I’ve had success with kids in validating their perception, but then offering another one and just helping them consider that maybe that thing that they perceived as so hurtful or painful or personal actually wasn’t about them or actually wasn’t meant to be unkind. And that I think has really helped kids think, oh, this adult’s not telling me I’m wrong or I’m just too sensitive, but they are giving me alternatives for how to perceive something. And then I think when you practice that with kids over and over, they get better themselves at learning how to consider different ways of interpreting somebody else, which is a really valuable skill.

Debbie:

Mm-hmm, yes. Yeah, for sure. I appreciate that answer. I think that is such a hard thing for kids who are more kind of concrete, rigid thinkers, but it is something that, yeah, I think, especially if you use that avenue of their own neurodivergence, like sometimes you’re misunderstood in the way that you act, and people might think that you have a negative intent with something you’re doing. So I think that can be a nice avenue into that conversation.

Ginger Whitson:

I can give you a real quick example of something that happened just with just this week with one of my students. The second grade student came to me distraught but also furious that one of their classmates was a liar over and over. He’s a liar. I hate him. I’m never playing with the game. He’s a liar. So I listened. I helped him calm down. We talked about what happened. His perspective was that the friend had said, I will play with you at recess today. But when they got outside, the friend decided, you know what, I don’t really feel like playing, I think it was Spider-Man, I really wanna play soccer. And the friend said, do you wanna play soccer with me? But the student didn’t even hear that, didn’t register. All he heard was, this friend promised to play with me. And now this friend is not, so they’re a liar. Anyway, it was a process of sort of helping this child not be as, as you said, rigid, concrete, and understand that this friend does like him, does want to play with him, changed his mind, which is a very human thing to do, especially when you didn’t, he didn’t know soccer was going to be an option at recess. Once he saw it was, you know, it was okay for him to pick something different. But that’s a good example of sort of helping kids interpret things differently and not take them quite as personally.

Debbie:

Mm hmm. Yeah, I love that example. Thank you. I want to ask if there are ways, again, knowing that our kids are more at risk, are there ways to kind of bully proof our kids to, without scaring them, but kind of give them some resources before something happens so that they’re less, less of a target?

Ginger Whitson:

Yeah, no, I think it’s a great question. And I think there’s lots of things we can do. One, I think it’s helpful to teach kids just some physical ways to show strength, show confidence. It’s very easy for someone who is, has more social power, more social savvy to sense in your body language, you’re looking down or your quieter voice that maybe you’re not gonna stand up for yourself. So I think if we teach kids things, making eye contact to the extent that they’re able to, keeping a strong voice, a confident voice, but not a yelling voice, standing an appropriate distance away from someone. I think there’s concrete things that we can do to teach kids how to show some confidence that way. And then I think we do kids a great service when we give them some pre-planned phrases that they can use to stand up for themselves. And one of the things I do with kids a lot is I say, I’m a grownup, my phrases, you might think they’re kind of corny or cheesy, but let’s brainstorm together some things. And kids come up with good phrases like, hey, knock it off, that’s not cool. Hey, I didn’t think that was funny. I also try to help kids brainstorm cool things that they could say to stand up for other people because that’s really effective. But for many of us, me, certainly, when I was a kid, if someone would tease me, 10 minutes later, I’d have the world’s best comeback. But in the moment, I could never think of something to say. So I think it’s really helpful as adults when we can just give kids phrases that are in their pockets that they don’t have to stretch their brains to think about, but automatic assertive phrases. And by assertive, I don’t mean, you know, tell the other person that you hate them and that they’re a jerk and you know, whatever other terms you would use, standing up for yourself without putting somebody else down. And then if I had to say the other best way to bully proof kids is help your child cast a wide net. Sometimes it’s hard to fit in at school and that can be really painful, but kids that don’t fit in at school might really fit in with their youth group or in a theater group or martial arts or you know, whatever else, other interests they have. And kids can do okay, even if school is hard, kids can do okay if they have strong, supportive friendships in different parts of their life.

Debbie:

Mm hmm. That’s great. And I want listeners to know that one of your books is called the eight keys to end bullying activity book for kids and tweens, worksheets, quizzes, games and skills for putting the keys into action. And that book has strategies for how to do all of these things. And I do think it’s so helpful to have those, those scripts, for lack of a better word in your back pocket. And then we can also like role play those situations or kids, kind of now in the moment how to do it. Just as I’m cognizant of the time, so we’ll be wrapping up, but you mentioned earlier how important it is that our kids grow up with a sense of empathy kind of in general. And I’d love if you could just spend a minute talking about that. I think about this a lot, and I’ve talked about this before on the show that one of my big dreams is to like really create some kind of a preschool curriculum, something to help preschoolers really understand and respect the different ways that their peers are moving through the world so that they can grow up with that sense of empathy as opposed to judging a difference as a negative thing. I think it has to start pretty young. But I’m curious to know if you have thoughts on how all of us can be a part of raising kids who are more empathetic and, and would be the not a bystander, but would be someone who not only wouldn’t bully but wouldn’t stand for anyone being bullied.

Ginger Whitson:

Yeah, I do. I’m a strong believer that empathy and compassion for some kids, they come completely naturally. For other kids, it is a skill that has to be taught and has to be practiced. But I don’t think it’s an either or when I hear people say, you know, that kid has no empathy, I think, yet. But that’s absolutely a skill that we can cultivate and develop, and we have to cultivate and develop that skill. We’re all in a whole lot of trouble if kids can’t empathize with other people and don’t have the ability to put themselves in other people’s shoes. So I think there’s a million opportunities out there for parents with kids. Talk about a character that’s in a book, just make up conversations, how might that character feel if, or how do you think that character was feeling when that person said that? You can do it with characters in a book, movies, TV, I mean, goodness knows our kids, you have a lot of screen time. We could fight it or we can watch some of the things with them and use those as opportunities to just always have this dialogue of how do you think that person felt when this happened? And I think we just make that part of our everyday dialogue with kids, always drawing their brains to consider different people’s perspectives and the impact that people have on each other.

Debbie:

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. That’s great. Um, gosh, there’s so much we could talk about. And I just want to say also for listeners that when I first reached out to ginger, I had, I wanted to talk about bullying and about anger. Because ginger has a book called how to be angry strategies to help kids express anger constructively. And like, that’s the book we all need to be reading and talking about. So we’ll have to do that in another conversation because I really, this has been such a rich conversation and I want to make sure we devote the time for that. But I wanted to mention that it’s such a great resource. Are there other places? Sorry, let me start that over. But in terms of our conversation about bullying, I mentioned your book, your activity book for kids in tweens. You also have a website with resources. Can you share with listeners how they can learn more about your work? Maybe bring you into their school. I know that you do training. What are the best ways for people to connect?

Ginger Whitson:

Sure. My website is probably the best place to start. It’s www.signawitson.com, which is a mouthful. Maybe you’ll have that somewhere for people to see. And that sort of describes the different topics that I talk about with children, but also parents and teachers. And anyone’s always free to reach out to me by email as well. My email address is on the website. Ask a question if anything from this podcast, sort of get your interest. I’m always, as you can tell, always happy to sort of unpack these subjects and talk about them. So yeah, happy to hear from anybody.

Debbie:

Awesome. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for everything you shared today. Again, I took so many notes and learned so much, and I’m just grateful for everything you shared for the work that you do. And I look forward to continuing the conversation.

Ginger Whitson:

Well, same. I’m grateful for the work that you do as well and sort of, you know, making these topics accessible to so many people. So thank you so much for inviting me. I had a great time.