The line that gave respectme its name has served us very well over the years and made for a
very popular poster and video campaign – ‘You don’t have to like me, agree with
me or play with me… but you do have to respect me’. The thinking behind this
was the need for a way to describe how we wanted to help children and young people
shape the terms for relationships and interactions with peers.
While this sounded quite catchy and lends itself well to a campaign
– I always wanted to it have substance – and that is why we always follow this up
by exploring what does this statement actually mean or what does it actually
feel or look like for children and young people?
It is a nice demand to make of people I know but again, what
does it mean. For the most part – it means simply leaving someone alone – you don’t
need to connect with them, learn about them, understand them or become friends
with them – just let them be.
The example I tend to use when discussing this, relates to
an experience I had when my second oldest was at nursery. As reputations were
being built and lost around the sandpit I heard the teacher tell the boys and
girls who were playing and getting out of hand that ‘they should all be friends
and play nicely’. This was of course said with warmth and with the best of
intentions but at the time it really got me thinking – ‘’Do they all have
to be friends?’ how realistic an expectation is this?
Now, if a bunch of 4 year olds cannot behave around the
sandpit we need to intervene and let them know how they should behave but do they
all need to be friends? No – should they be expected to play near each other in
a civilised way? Yes – perhaps a better response is along the lines of ‘if you
are all going to play here together you need to be nicer to each other, no grabbing or shouting and you take
turns – that’s one of the rules here’.
That is an easier boundary to set and easier to role model, if you
tell them they need to be friends you are setting up an unrealistic expectation
that they can’t possible manage – friends with everyone in your class? Are
we as adults expected to be friends with everyone we work with? Do we even like
everyone we are related to at times? Of course not.
I know for some this is not a huge issue but friendship is
one of the first currencies children have to withhold or bargain with – it is a
very powerful tool in early years and as such I think we can frame it more
effectively. I would rather see a group of P1’s who can get along on different
tasks, are respectful of each other and make friends on their terms. This also
lets us talk about what it means to be a ‘good friend’ and help them understand
that there will always be a wide group of people around them throughout school,
some you’ll be friends with. Some you’ll know and say hello to and some you won’t
get on with or agree with.
The skills needed to understand and negotiate this will serve
them well in life not just school. Anti-bullying agencies get a bit of stick at
times because the impression they give is that all they want is for everyone to
be nice to each other and in fact this is unrealistic – I think it’s no bad
thing to want everyone to be nicer but I agree that it’s not realistic.
What I do believe is that we should be asking children to
respect their peers and that can mean a whole range of things. It can include
talking and listening to someone and perhaps becoming friends, or it can mean
fixing what was once a friendship or it can mean learning to be quiet and not
shouting at or about someone you don’t like. I think friendships are vitally
important to our children and young people – they rely on them, value them and
as they get older, they turn to them for support and comfort - all this message
and these campaigns seek to do is to help frame an understanding of what it really
means to be friends.
Learning that it is
okay not to like someone, that it’s okay not to agree with them is important -
it’s what you do that matters. Not being friends does not have to mean that you
are enemies. That is a message I have seen young people benefit from
exploring on many occasions.
If you think about it there must be a few people in your life
you don’t like, you don’t and never will agree with – you don’t hound and abuse
them at every opportunity – you may have learned the hard way that a family Christmas
dinner is not the time to get these feelings off your chest. It might be a colleague
or your boss – most people learn to use their developed social skills that enables them
to work effectively or not fall out with the whole family.
If you pick on, exclude or verbally abuse someone in person
or online you don’t like or agree with then that’s the kind of bullying that
will cause problems for everyone – if you are able to let them walk by, be
online or in the corridor without you responding in some negative way – then everyone
will be a lot happier.
We will always respond to bullying more effectively when we
focus on what someone actually did and the impact it had. If they behaved in a
way that is unacceptable then we focus on their actions and what they should be
doing in future. This will be more
effective than trying to fix or reframe a dynamic between two people that might
not need ‘fixed’- nor will it ever fit into what we might think a ‘friendship’
is.
Brian
