My Reply to a Misguided Mom

Here is a note I found on this website titled "When Should I Intervene During Teasing?"

My 13-year-old son is constantly teasing his younger brother, who is 10. I never know when to intervene. On the one hand, I want to let them work it out themselves. On the other, I worry that my older son is going to think it's OK to be mean and my younger son is going to have some lasting emotional scars. What do I do?
- Janet

And here is my response:

Dear Janet,

You're a good mom. It sounds like you're involved in your kids' lives, and want the best for them. You want to do what's right and you follow the advice from experts, parenting books, and most likely the people in your life: children should be left alone to "work it out themselves."

But here's the thing: "Working it out themselves" is something that applies to your kids' conflicts with each other. If your sons are fighting about what to watch on T.V, or who stole whose skates and broke them, or which video game they want to play together, then they can be left alone to work it out themselves.

During a teasing situation, children should not be left alone to handle it. While conflicts can be dealt with by compromising, teasing is very different. In this situation, there's nothing to really "work out." We're dealing with misbehavior here. And when a child misbehaves, it is a parent's duty to step in.

Telling a teaser and a victim to "work it out themselves" is like telling a child running around a restaurant screaming his head off to "work it out himself." The restaurant-screaming child is not going to stop until an adult steps in and punishes him for misbehaving. The same goes for the teasing child.

You are absolutely right that your older son is learning that it's OK to be mean. The fact that you are worried and the fact that you wrote this letter both tell me that your intuition has given you the answer here. You know already that it's time for you to intervene.

And when do you intervene during teasing? If the teasing is constant, if it's meant to embarrass or dominate the victim, if one child is always teasing and the other always being teased, then you must step in and hold the aggressor accountable. You're worried that there's some sort of acceptable limit for teasing, and you shouldn't intervene until the teasing has surpassed that limit. What all parents should know is that the threshold is a lot closer than they think. If you can say "teasing is present in my house," then chances are the limit has already been reached.

Try your best to stamp out the teasing and let your older son know his power to be compassionate. Then it will no longer be necessary to intervene

Sincerely,

Spunky Sybil