How to help your child tackle social exclusion

Your 12-year-old daughter is home on a Saturday night doing perfectly well until she opens Snapchat and crumbles when she sees that all her friends are hanging out without her. Social exclusion has always been an issue, but with social media, it has been amplified.

Though our schools are proactively addressing bullying and cultivating kindness, the issue of social exclusion continues to plague many a tween and teen. In a recent King David Schools webinar, Rabbi Ricky Seeff, the general director of the South African Board of Jewish Education, discussed this issue with psychologist Dr Hanan Bushkin, the founder of The Anxiety and Trauma Clinic.

“Bullying and exclusion has become a lot more pervasive because of the digital amplification brought by social media,” Bushkin said. “Whereas 20 years ago, exclusion happened face to face, these days it’s on social media for all to see.” Gone are the days where kids can come home and have a safe space to disengage from school bullying. “There’s no escape. Kids come home and attach themselves to social media. They’re faced with it 24/7.”

Exacerbating the situation, Bushkin said, is that parents today are a lot more removed. “Kids are watching TV while parents are on their phones. So, parents aren’t really engaged with what’s going on with their kids, which makes it a lot more difficult for them to catch on when they’re being bullied.”

Bushkin stressed the importance of defining the problem before you can fix it. “If you don’t define what exclusion is, then you run the risk of including everything in it, and even kids who set healthy boundaries can be seen as bullies,” he said. That’s why he groups social engagement into green, orange, and red zones.

The green zone is what Bushkin calls inclusive leadership, based on a pattern of consistent, proactive, and courageous inclusion, where your child actively makes space for others. “The data shows us that children that exhibit this kind of inclusive behaviour become leaders. They are happier and much more fulfilled. It all starts at home.”

The orange zone is also healthy. “Here, children have developmentally appropriate boundaries and express their personal preferences,” Bushkin said. “So, they don’t have to be friends with everybody, but they feel comfortable enough in their own skin not to exclude anybody, and not to create harm in a public way.”

The red zone encompasses harmful exclusion, he said. “This is when your child deliberately and repeatedly wants to shame another kid by leaving them out. That’s unacceptable and hurtful, and it’s also not healthy for the kids doing it, or the parents who aren’t watching it. It’s a lose-lose proposition.”

He dispelled the popular parental belief that children who exclude become leaders because they know how to manipulate the social hierarchy. “It’s the absolute opposite,” he said. “The number-one reason I see for anxiety in children is when they’re put under social pressure.” Even for the child doing the excluding, it becomes a game which teaches them to exclude at any cost, creating its own kind of pressure which leads to harmful feelings of anxiety.

However, Bushkin said it was important to understand the need for natural and healthy boundaries. Those who have these in place are in the orange zone and naturally gravitate towards kids that they connect with. This may inadvertently result in exclusion, and therefore must be managed sensitively.

“Confidence is about my ability to know who I am, what I like, and what I want, and to be able to communicate that in a kind way towards others,” Bushkin said. “It’s not about wanting to exclude you because you’re not a part of my group. The big differentiator between natural boundaries and harmful exclusion is the intention to create harm in another kid by excluding them to create shame or embarrassment. Natural boundaries are healthy in the development of a child.”

However, children can still feel excluded even if it is a result of another child’s healthy boundaries, Seeff said. That’s why it’s our job as parents, said Bushkin, to build resilience in our children. “We must teach our kids how to cope in the real world, where we don’t shy away from hurt, disappointment, grief, and sadness. It’s part of the human condition.”

For example, some kids may not necessarily belong in the soccer or netball team, and that’s ok. “We’ve got to build resilience in kids to know that they don’t have to form part of every group and be invited to every social interaction. Teach your child that resilience is about managing not being part of everything but including themselves in those areas and elements of life that they do belong.”

This comes with developing a strong sense of self, which is why parents must help cultivate self-awareness and reflection in their children.

Encourage your child to learn from difficult experiences, said Bushkin. “Tell them, ‘Don’t allow this exclusion moment to define who you are. Use this experience to make yourself better, to level up, to develop yourself. Keep moving forward. Increase your value, because that’s what you’ll attract in return.’”

Children “copy paste” what their parents do, Bushkin said, which is why we need to model healthy behaviour and moral codes. He also stressed the importance of creating a culture of open communication in the home.

Develop an authentic relationship with your kids, he said. Once you chat to them regularly about the things you know they like, they’ll naturally begin to open up about any issues they face.

The school’s role in dealing with exclusion is to create policies that have clear expectations and strict consequences. “Being in control has nothing to do with your intellect or willingness to manage life,” Bushkin said. “It’s about whether you have a framework to manage the situation that’s in front of you. Creating frameworks that are more robust than the stress or threat facing kids, parents, and schools will build resilience.”