Success Story: Getting Parents Excited About the Program
Dr. Judith McBride, District Consultant
West Covina Unified School District
West Covina, CA
Dr. Judith McBride has found that parents’ enthusiasm for the STEPS TO RESPECT bullying prevention program has little to do with whether their children are on the giving or receiving end of bullying behavior. In her years as a consultant for California’s West Covina Unified School District, she has honed to a science her ability to get parents excited about the program. Every year, McBride holds several seminars for parents who want to know more about it. “When I say, ‘Next year we are thinking about a bullying program,’ [parents] are crazy with enthusiasm.” They like the idea of a curriculum designed to keep their children safe.
Although she has no problem steering the dialogue toward targets of bullying behavior, she finds it more difficult to discuss the possibility that some of the children of parents in the room may be the perpetrators of that behavior. “Parents like you and me…we’re generally fairly okay with our own kids’ social skills, but we are desperate about our kids being victims of bullying.”
Since no parent wants to think of his or her child as a bully, McBride began to examine carefully the language she used, and she decided to present it in terms of power. Children with power get used to bossing people around, but parents have to be careful when that leadership “goes south.” McBride tells parents, “A lot of our kids, who are strong, powerful leaders, can flip over into this bullying behavior before we know it, and so we need to watch out for that and exert every bit of power we can to bring them back to the point where they’re powerful, positive leaders.”
Once she has the parents on board, McBride can more easily reassure them that the problem of bullying in their school is being addressed. She tells parents that if their children come home talking about bullying, they can feel comfortable talking to the teacher about it, because, with the STEPS TO RESPECT program, “the teacher has a whole plan for how to manage it.”
