Moving to another country is always stressful, both for adult children and children. Researchers believe that it takes at least five years for a person to integrate and feel at home in a foreign country. This process may take less time for children, but it can be complicated by bullying. Many children who have moved abroad for permanent residence face bullying in their new classes, as they immediately fall into the “risk group” - they are “new” and they are “different”. And very often our children begin to actively resist this bullying, which is the right thing to do. But how do you teach children to defend themselves without breaking rules and laws? It happens that younger children exceed self-defense, and then the aggressor becomes a victim, and the blame is passed on to the defender. And in this case, we need to understand that immigrant children are receiving special attention from social services. So the question is, is it worth preparing children for the fact that they may find themselves in an outcast class in another country? Taras Ivashchenko and I recently talked about this on our website in the “Consultations” section, answering a question from a concerned grandmother whose granddaughter is being bullied by classmates. This is happening in England. But I would like to supplement my answer with one more recommendation.
Last autumn, I received a call from familiar parents who left for permanent residence in Germany. They said that a girl in third grade has been bullied by a boy since September. It came to the point of being beaten, but the teachers believe that it was her own fault, as she provoked the boy. She was interviewed by a social worker and her parents received a warning. This situation frightened parents; you can understand that there are cases when in some European countries the guardianship service removed children from their families because parents could not teach their children to comply with the rules and regulations that exist in this country. The girl, whom I know well, was in the “risk group” — a new girl, and even a foreigner. In my opinion, her parents should have prepared her for the possibility of such a situation. Even young children should be told about bullying using literary examples, for example, looking at G.H. Andrsen's fairy tale The Ugly Duckling from this perspective. You also need to prepare children for life in a foreign cultural environment, tell them about the peculiarities of the culture of their new homeland, about the rules of decency, about etiquette, and about the norms that are accepted in this society. But, as a rule, children are not prepared either for integration or for conflict situations, which is simply necessary for the child's safety. I know that it is a very difficult and painstaking process to teach a child to navigate a new group of children with a different cultural background. Of course, training should be related to the development of the child's emotional intelligence and communication skills in a foreign cultural environment. But bullying has no “national roots”. It can occur in any children's group. And in this case, kindergarten children should be taught what bullying is, what “roles” exist in it, why it should be avoided, and how to overcome it. I talk about how to prepare a child to perceive hurtful words and aggression on my YouTube channel (there are links on the site), and very soon I will post my presentation for parents on the site. And I advise parents who are about to emigrate to introduce their children, especially teenagers, in advance to the rights and obligations that they will have in this country. I recommend that parents familiarize themselves with the rules established in schools in advance and be sure to ask the teachers and management of their new school about how they are solving the problem of bullying.
.png)
