Answer: Parenting style and family experiences can often contribute to a child's bullying behavior at school. Children who bully often have difficulty managing their own emotions and getting along with others. They bully as a means of regaining back a sense of control.

It is important for the school and the parents to work together to intervene and change this behavior. Your granddaughter must learn what behavior is expected of her and she needs to know the consequences if she engages in bullying. These consequences must be implemented with consistency. By working with the school, consistency is created between the home and school. This will require ongoing meeting as a result of incidents and between incidents.

It is important to also identify times when she is not bullying and foster this behavior by praising her during for appropriate behavior.

Your granddaughter needs to learn to acknowledge her actions, as well as the results of her behavior on herself and the effect it has on others. This can be accomplished by talking with her about what happened and how it affected the other child. If she takes responsibility or recognizes the impact of her behavior on the other child, praise her for taking responsibility for her actions and talk about ways she could have handled the situation differently.

Here are the questions you might want to ask:

• What did you do?
• Why was that response or action a bad choice?
• Who did your actions hurt?
• What were you trying to achieve?
• In the future, how will you achieve that goal without hurting other people?

Since your granddaughter spends so much time at school, implementing the same strategies at home and school can provide her with the consistency she needs to change behavior, and provide you and other family members support in helping eliminate the bullying.

Dr. Michelle Alvarez is an adjunct professor at the University of Southern Indiana and project director of Safe Schools/Healthy Students for the Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corporation. She is the a co-editor of School Social Work: Theory to Practice, chair of the National Association of Social Workers, School Social Work Section and a former school social worker. She is also the parent of a special-needs child.

Advice from our experts is not a substitute for medical or other professional advice and services from a qualified health-care provider familiar with your unique situation. We recommend consulting a qualified professional if you have concerns about your child's medical or emotional condition.

February 2007