With school start-up just a short time away, an ideal opportunity exists to get your daughter (or any other girl) discussing relational aggression. Rather than waiting to respond when a bullying situation occurs, spend some of your remaining downtime chatting with her and developing a proactive plan for the year ahead.

Some tips:

1. Get her to reflect back on her last school year. What were the highs and lows she can identify now, months after the last day of her previous grade?

2. Pick a specific relationship situation she struggled with and ask her how she might handle it now. Are there opportunities she missed, or lessons she hadn’t realized she learned?

3. Share one of your recent experiences with gossip, exclusion, manipulation, intimidation, or other RA type behaviors, and describe how it hurt everyone involved in different ways: the bully lost an opportunity to connect positively with her peers, the victim felt attacked and hurt, and bystanders were frustrated if they failed to intervene.

4. Depending on her age, ask her to write out an “Action Plan Against Aggression” for the next year with or without your help. Brainstorm ten realistic options for dealing with RA–whether she tends to be the aggressor, bystander, or victim.

5. Together, create a special secret reminder of her inner strengths and abilities to use positive relationship skills in everyday life. It might be a locker magnet or mirror, a patch she sews on her backpack, or a keyring symbolic of the belief you have in her. Each time she sees it, she’ll reflect back on the moment when you and her had a heart to heart talk about the amazing potential of her future.

For some resources on RA check out www.championpress.com/ophelia.htm