Parents often unwittingly teach their children to become bullies. This shouldn’t come as a shock seeing as though little bullies are often taught by bigger bullies, and in many cases, by their own parents. However, what should come as a shock is the fact that some of this teaching is not a conscious process. Most obnoxious parents frequently have obnoxious children, yet the behavior is so commonplace that it goes unnoticed.

Any person who has ever observed the activities at a school playground probably would vouch for the fact that such a study is needed — desperately. No parent endorses violence (or so we would like to believe), but like it or not, many of our children spend a lot of time exhibiting truly violent behavior in their play situations. Threats of beating other child or random outbursts of vulgar language are things that children commonly pick up at home instead of learning it at school.

What many fail to realize is that parents may unconsciously encourage aggressiveness through a process known as shaping. For example, a young boy might ask politely for a piece of candy but his mother or father will ignore his request until he starts screaming. Essentially, what the parent has taught the child is that you’ve got to be really intense if you’re going to get what you want.  Just as children learn to become bullies, they can learn how to share, to cooperate and interact with others in a friendly, less hostile manner.

One of the easiest ways to teach children the value of friendliness over aggression is to call a “timeout.”

Each time the child shows aggressive behavior that is not acceptable, he should be asked to leave his group of friends for a short period of time. As simple as it may sound, this simple solution works. It’s a good idea to get children to shed their aggressiveness before they reach junior high school in order to prevent alienation in later years. 

During your child’s growing years, friendships between children are flexible with playmates easily forgetting another child’s nasty behavior, but preadolescence seems to produce more crystallization amongst peers. At that point, even if you teach a child to behave more appropriately, you also have to break down me negative reputation he has with other children. So, if you’re actively going to teach your children not to be bullies, you better do it while they’re young.