Standing out from the crowd can be a kid’s worst nightmare. Not everyone loves the limelight. And even for those who do draw more attention to themselves (on purpose or not), the spotlight can turn on them in a moment. Kids don’t always know how to handle the scrutiny, but you can help.
I wasn’t a terribly popular kid in school, but I did have friends. When I was younger, I felt like I was missing out on something because I wasn’t noticed as much as other kids. However, the older I got the more I began to appreciate my relatively low-key status. I learned that many school accomplishments turned into popularity contests, and whoever had the coolest thing going got the love. Also, whoever was embroiled in controversy lived in the hot seat for a while. My school was rather small, just fifty or sixty kids in each class. You exhaled and people knew it within 20 seconds. So the spotlight could get white hot at a moment’s notice and not everyone handled it well.
Many kids really would rather fit in than stand out. Even someone who is accomplished in certain areas of life can get scorn from those who think they are showing off. Here are a few examples – a child thinking the handful of children chosen for a special project are “better than anyone else” (even if they are being modest and respectful), a child who’s been to the principal’s office a few times is a “troublemaker” again, a child with a physical deformity, a child who has stand-out physical attractiveness for their age. Any of these things can make a child distracted and uncomfortable.
You can help by giving your child a few ideas for handling the attention. Often, a child will get a comment from someone about why they stand out. “You think you’re so smart – I’m not playing with you anymore.” “What happened to your face?” “You’re going to be in jail someday!” “You are so skinny, are you from a starving country or something?”
Most of the time, kids tease or make fun of a situation that looks different or makes them feel uncomfortable. The more they can make the other person stand out, the less they stand out themselves. They might be saying something because they really don’t know much about the situation (physical deformity) or their teasing comment makes them feel more powerful in the moment. If there is a pattern of bullying and intimidation, that’s an entirely different story and DON’T let that continue! But if comments seem to be just a reaction to the child standing out from the crowd, you can give your child a few canned responses.
They can say, “I’m just doing what the teacher asked”, “I was born with a space in my lip and I’ve had surgery”, “This is just the way I am and I like it”, or “Thanks for noticing!” (a little humor if you’re kid can manage it in the moment). Or perhaps no response is the best response. If a child gets teased or made fun of, tell them to give a friend or a teacher a hug (if that is allowed), or ask for a hug when they get home. Even if they don’t say why, a hug often helps.
Tell them to do something they enjoy like drawing, running at recess, playing with a true friend who accepts them, or think about something else they can look forward to during their school day to balance out the positive and the negative. Explain that kids make comments like that because they don’t understand or they feel uncomfortable, left out, jealous, etc. Help your child know that comments like that don’t mean they are a bad kid, even if he or she feels bad at the moment.
You can’t keep people from making comments that might make your child uncomfortable, and you can’t always predict when this will happen. But if you can give them a few suggestions on how to handle it, they can thicken up their skin a little and maybe not take it so personally. As we parents all know, learning how to handle attention is a skill we all need to have for years to come.
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PsychCentral (November 24, 2009)
I was the tallest child in my primary school and taller than many of my teachers. My son is in the same position now. Being thirteen and standing out so obviously from the crowd makes one a natural target, especially if you are doing well academically. The “Tall Poppy” syndrome is well known and their is a widespread perception that they “need to be cut down to size”. One of the ways to do this is through name calling. I was first called Giraffe, then Brixton Tower after the tallest tower in Johannesburg at the time, and finally in high school I became “Freaky Deek” – a play on my surname. As a hyper sensitive, shy, bookworm this was agony. My son has it a little easier because he’s a boy but nonetheless he wept on my shoulder last year because the kids at school were calling him so many names. We told him to ignore them when they called him something other than his name. Just recently he told us that this worked for him in that the kids got to know that if they called him Columbus or some other name he would just not respond. It was a kind of Pavlovian training in reverse! I recently read an article, however, that said that, especially in dangerous schools, this need not be the best way to deal with verbal bullying. How did other people deal with verbal bullying – either for themselves, or their kids?
Jayne-
Ignoring name calling can be a good tactic. When it moves across to manipulation, threats, using their position of power to hurt him, that’s when it’s bullying.
Bullies target kids who appear weak because they likely won’t fight back. If your son appears confident and consistent that he doesn’t take the flack and doesn’t give a strong reaction, he likely won’t be targeted.
Just keep in good communication with him to be sure he is still feeling good about how he’s handling it.
Last reviewed: 23 Nov 2009
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