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"When I see crowded pools, I always think that such a photo could never have been taken when I was a child in the 1940s in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, because all our mothers forbade us to gather in groups for fear of catching polio — especially in a pool."

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Good evidence for

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Yesterday's local paper, the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, had a front-page photo of children and their moms lined up, waiting to get inside a public swimming pool. (The limit is 25 children per one lifeguard, so they had to wait until someone left before they could come in.)

When I see crowded pools, I always think that such a photo could never have been taken when I was a child in the 1940s in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, because all our mothers forbade us to gather in groups for fear of catching polio -- especially in a pool.

When the polio epidemics, which always came in summer, were particularly bad we couldn't even play with other children in our neighborhood. One summer, when several children on the next block died, we were forbidden even to leave our yard to play with the kid next door. That summer a social worker came to each house, I remember, and gave me a coloring book and crayons.

Later, in the 1950s, at a small carnival in a Minnesota village, I remember paying a quarter to go inside a trailer to see a girl somewhat older than myself who lived in an iron lung, because illness (I assumed it was polio) had made her unable to breathe on her own.

A decade later, when I was a junior or senior at U Cal Berkeley, (so it must have been 1962 or '63), we all gathered near Sather Gate and were each handed a sugar cube soaked in the Sabin vaccine in a tiny paper cup, and the fear of polio became only a memory.

A few Christmases ago, my adult daughters gave me the Molly doll from the American Girls collection. She represents the era of the 1940s. They gave her to me because I had pointed out that Molly looked exactly like I did in the 1940s. We had the same long braids, the same wire-rimmed granny glasses, even the same wardrobe, including hand-smocked pinafores. (My mother always told me to take my glasses off whenever a camera was nearby, so I can't find a photo with them, but I still have the glasses -- now worn by a vintage teddy bear.)

The Molly doll, like all the American Girl dolls, each representing a different historical era, came with books describing her adventures. There was also a non-fiction book with a lot of vintage photographs explaining the historical period she lived in: "Welcome to Molly's World -- 1944 -- Growing up in World War Two America".

The author had done a good job of researching life in the 1940s and telling, in simple terms appropriate for children, about the wartime shortages, Hitler, Jewish Ghettos, Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt's fireside chats and much more. The book dealt with concentration camps and the Holocaust and the diary of Anne Frank, as well as telling about a little Jewish girl from Austria whose mother sewed money for their escape into her rag doll. The book told about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the little Japanese girl, Sadako, who tried to fold a thousand paper cranes, thinking that would counter the leukemia she got from the radiation of the A-bomb. (She finished 664 paper cranes before she died and the children at her school folded the rest and brought them to her funeral.)

World War II clearly affected children in Europe and the South Pacific far more grievously than it did American children, especially those of us in the Midwest, although nearly everyone had a relative fighting "over there." But reading about Molly's fictitious life brought back many small details of childhood in the Forties-- such as ration books with stamps for our meat, sugar and butter.

We saved and re-used all grease from the frying pan and butter was replaced with a tasteless margarine that had to have yellow color mixed into it. We saved tin foil and flattened tin cans for the war effort and of course had a victory garden in the back yard. Small as we were, we were given cardboard sheets showing the silhouettes of different kinds of airplanes so we could identify an enemy plane if it flew overhead. (We never saw one, but we always looked.) Our games included frequent shouts of "Bombs over Tokyo!" We had blackout curtains in all the windows and had to practice air raid drills, when we'd pull the curtains and turn out all the lights in an attempt to make Milwaukee invisible to enemy bombers. Of course by the 1950's, air raid drills were replaced with bomb shelters and practicing what to do (hide under our desks) when Russia dropped H-bombs on us.

In Shorewood, where we lived, most of the neighbors were of German background and, according to my parents, the FBI came around asking if the neighbors were holding meetings or singing war-like songs or doing anything suspicious. The answer was "No".

Listening to the big mahogany console radio that still had bite marks from my teething days on its corner...trying to get a clear connection with Edward R. Murrow reporting on the war news from London, hearing President Roosevelt saying, "A date which will live in infamy" (well, I can't remember that-- I was an infant in 1941).... Molly and I have a lot of similar memories of a 1940s childhood--some of them poignant or scary, but most of them pleasant. We didn't have television or video games or cell phones, and we didn't need them.

But now, every time I see children escaping the heat, gathered around a sprinkler or swimming pool or an opened fire hydrant, I say a silent prayer of thanks that mothers no longer have to wake up on a hot summer day with the threat of polio hovering over their children.

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What It Was Like To Grow Up In The 1940s

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Yesterday's local paper, the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, had a front-page photo of children and their moms lined up, waiting to get inside a public swimming pool. (The limit is 25 children per one lifeguard, so they had to wait until someone left before they could come in.)

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Most parents, particularly of a first or only child, or a second child if the first has been particularly "easy," are unprepared for that child's adolescence, if they think about the normal abrasive changes of adolescence at all, they often assume these unwelcome alterations will happen to other people's children, but not to their own. However, denial is not a good coping strategy. In fact, denial is the enemy in hiding, parents refusing to prepare for the changing reality that comes with adolescence when their son or daughter lets it be known that he or she is no longer be content to be defined and treated any longer as a just a child.

Better for parents to develop a realistic set of expectations about the "hard half of parenting" (adolescence). A basic expectation to begin with has to do with duration. Today's parents can generally assume that adolescence will commence around ages 9 - 13 in late elementary or early middle school and not to wind down until the early or mid 20's. Must it last this many years? In most cases, yes. What with the increasing complexity of society, the rate of technological and social evolution, and all the knowledge and skills required to master young adult independence, adolescence takes a long time.

So why are expectations psychologically important? Think of them this way. Expectations are mental sets we choose to hold (they are not genetically endowed) that help us move through time (from now to later), through change (from old to new), and through experience (from familiar to unfamiliar) in order to anticipate the next reality we encounter.

To appreciate the power of expectations consider those challenges, circumstances, or relationships where we have no idea what to expect. Now ignorance tends to beget feelings of anxiety. "I've not faced a situation like this before!" "I have no idea what the results will be!" "I never know what she is going to do next!"

This is why a parent has a preparatory responsibility for children who are faced with some major life change. The parent needs to help them build realistic expectations about what the new experience will be like - going off to a new school, adjusting to parental divorce, getting ready for a medical procedure, for example.

Expectations can ease our way through life when they roughly fit the next reality we encounter. They can facilitate our capacity to adjust to the new and different. Although we may not like the reality we anticipate, at least expectations can help us get prepared.

Unprepared, we can be blind-sided by what occurs. This is what can happen when parents expect an adolescent to behave the same as he or she did as a child. For example, consider three different kinds of expectation parents can hold: predictions, ambitions, and conditions, and what happens when they are violated.

Predictions have to do with what parents believe WILL happen. "My adolescent will be as openly confiding with me as she was as a child." But come adolescence, many young people tend to become more private and less disclosing to parents for independence sake. Now, when their prediction is violated, parents can feel surprised and anxious in response to the diminishing amount of comunication.

Ambitions have to do with what parents WANT to have happen in adolescence. "We want him to continue to be as academically motivated and conscientious as when he was a child. But come adolescence, many young people suffer an "early adolescent achievement drop" (see 3/15/09 blog) and school performance and homework suffer for resistance sake. Now when their ambition is violated, parents can feel disappointed and let down in response to the faltering motivation.

Conditions have to do with what parents believe SHOULD happen in adolescence. "She should continue to keep us adequately and accurately informed about what is going on in her life." But come adolescence, many young people become more deceptive with parents, sometimes lying about what is going on for illicit freedom's sake. Now when their condition is violated, parents feel betrayed and angry in response to more dishonesty."

Mental sets can have emotional consequences for parents when a young person violates their expectations. Then, feeling surprised, disappointed, or betrayed by a normal adolescent change, parents can overreact with worry, grief, or anger thereby "emotionalizing" a situation and making it harder to effectively resolve. This doesn't mean parents should just accept it when a young person cuts off communication, stops doing schoolwork, and acts dishonestly. EXPECT DOES NOT MEAN ACCEPT.

Parents must address these new behaviors to let the young person know that they still need to be adequately informed, that performance effort at school still must be maintained, and that truthful communication still must be told. But if these parents had anticipated the likelihood of these changes, a rational discussion and not an emotional encounter would have ensued.

The reason I write this blog is to help parents create realistic expectations about the journey of their child's adolescence. Parents who are adequately informed about some of the normal changes, tensions, conflicts and problems that typically unfold during adolescence are best positioned to cope with these challenges in appropriate ways because they expected these issues and alterations might arise.

But managing expectations for their adolescent's conduct is more complicated than this because there are two sets of expectations for parents to manage - EXPECTATIONS OF ACCEPTANCE to build trust and EXPECTATIONS OF CHANGE to influence direction.

Expectations of acceptance essentially communicate: "you will do what you can, you are how I want, and you should be as you are." Thinks the adolescent: "You love me as I am."

Expectations of change essentially communicate: "you will need to alter your conduct, you are not acting how I want, and you should behave differently." Thinks the adolescent: "You guide me as you think best."

The rule of parenting priorities is to set expectations of acceptance before introducing expectations of change. When parents demand change before establishing acceptance, they encourage resistance because change sends a message of rejection: "you are not okay the way you are." And when parents make acceptance conditional on change, they can really alienate the adolescent. "I will only stop criticizing your conduct when your attitude improves!"

Finally, parents must develop realistic expectations about how the relationship changes when a child becomes adolescent, or else suffer unhappy emotional consequences when they do not.

The parent who predicts the adolescent will continue to prize parental company more than any other is rudely awakened when the young person now prefers spending time with peers instead of time with parents. This parent can not make peace with this loss of companionship.

The parent whose ambition is to enjoy the same interests with the adolescent that were shared with the child is rudely awakened when differentiation from childhood and parents causes that similarity to be lost. This parent cannot make peace with this loss of commonality.

The parent whose condition is that the adolescent should continue to look up to and want to please the parent as in childhood is in rudely awakened when the young person becomes less considerate and more critical. This parent cannot make peace with this loss of approval.

These parents can certainly choose to maintain these unrealistic expectations, but they will do so at an emotional cost -- feeling abandoned, rejected, and disparaged. I believe it is better for these parents to adjust their expectations to fit the new adolescent reality and not protest normal developmental alterations they cannot change.

If parents can keep their expectations about adolescence realistic, then they reduce the likelihood of overreacting when times get hard. And this includes not unduly pressuring the adolescent by pushing unrealistic expectations for performance and conduct (all A's and no mistakes), criticizing anything less than perfection as a relative failure.

Next week's entry: Yelling at your adolescent.

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Adolescence and the problem of parental expectations.

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Most parents, particularly of a first or only child, or a second child if the first has been particularly "easy," are unprepared for that child's adolescence, if they think about the normal abrasive changes of adolescence at all, they often assume these unwelcome alterations will happen to other people's children, but not to their own.

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Teens are under more stress today than ever before. Sound like an exaggeration? Despite the fact that I am often prone to hyperbole, consider this: being a teenager is not easy.

Adolescence has always been a tricky developmental period defined by fundamental yet somewhat difficult changes (physical, cognitive, and social) experienced by teens as they make their way from childhood toward adulthood. These transitions trigger changes in the way the teen sees him/herself, and the way that others see and treat him or her. They are no longer children, but not yet adults, and this series of transitions not only has an impact on the individual experiencing the transitions, but also on parents, peers, and society as a whole.

Adolescence has always been an awkward stage where teens struggle to build their own identity, seek autonomy, and learn about intimacy and sexuality in relationships. These things all cause a certain level of angst, but they are not really new.

What is new is the environment that we live in, and it is this fast-paced, perpetually plugged-in society that sets the tone for the messages and expectations that teens receive every day. Due to varying pressures around school, work, families, relationships, social media, and the seemingly endless series of transitions involved in simply being an adolescent, teens today are indeed under more stress than ever before.

There are certain contexts that inevitably make being a teen even more difficult. Living in poverty, or being in an abusive home, for example. Other, more recent issues, such as society's pressures on young people to grow up fast, have their lives completely figured out by the time they start middle school, and today's technological and social innovations that have transformed family life, make the experience of teen transitions exponentially more difficult.

So, why are teens so "angsty" today?

School: Today, kids are expected to know what they want to do-where they want to go to school and in which field they'd like to work-earlier than ever before. They are also expected to do well, and are put on "success" tracks even in elementary school. They have to do well because it is assumed that all kids will/must go to college, and not just that, but they must get into the best college if they want to "succeed" and be competitive in today's job market. This is a lot of pressure on teens.

Work: Most teens work to earn money, which they like, but it takes time away from other things like academics, extra-curricular activities, volunteering, spending time with family and friends, having fun, and simply enjoying life.

Expectations: Whether it is real or not, teenagers' perceptions are that they are expected to be successful or good at everything. Teens today feel a lot of pressure from parents, teachers, coaches, other family/friends to not fail. Failure has somehow gone from being viewed as a learning opportunity to being clearly unacceptable. This puts even more pressure on teens.

Social Connections: Given the fact that the overwhelming majority of teens today are tethered to a smartphone or other device that keeps them linked on social networking sites, teens justifiably feel "on" all the time. Their every move is judged by their peers, whether their peers are their true, real live friends, or the 1,254 "friends" on Facebook or followers on Twitter. So, the pressure is always on to be cute, clever, sexy, smart, popular, etc., and because social networking sites are the modern-day hangout spot, where teens spend a huge chunk of each day, it can be exhausting.
What can parents do?

We, as parents of teens, must communicate. A recent study from the Pew Research Center asked a national sample of adults which skills are most important for children to have to succeed in the world today. The answer: communication. As parents, we should take our own advice and talk to our teens about expectations, goals, and ask teens about what they think, what they want, and how they feel.

This, of course, means that we should also be prepared to listen. Really listen. Teens need to know that although we clearly want what is best for them in their future lives, what's best doesn't necessarily have to equate to what we want. We should hear what they have to say and consider how they envision their future.

Our teens also need unconditional love, acceptance, and support, and we should be explicit in communicating this to them. We often assume that they know this (and they probably do), but they really need to hear it.

Parents should also help their teens to set realistic expectations and keep things in perspective. No, it's not the end of the world as we know it if our teen, for example, has not decided what she is majoring in during her freshman year of college. Nor does it make you a horrible parent to think that it is OK for our teens to fail at something... after all, failure presents an opportunity for growth! If we allow our children to fall, they can learn from their mistakes (called natural consequences) and pick themselves back up.

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Teens are under more stress today than ever before. Sound like an exaggeration? Despite the fact that I am often prone to hyperbole, consider this: being a teenager is not easy. Adolescence has always been a tricky developmental period defined by fundamental yet somewhat difficult changes (physical, cognitive, and social) experienced by teens as they make their way from childhood toward adulthood.

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summary

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Most marriages took place with parental knowledge and consent, as well as with the consent of the bride and groom, and were preceded by a period of courtship.

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"The wealthiest children of all—those of the nobility and more important gentry—were often received into the great households of other nobility or leading churchmen, where they acted as pages or retainers, learnt aristocratic manners, and in some cases underwent training in military skills."

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Looks great but...

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Five eras spanning almost 1500 years were researched in order to put this article together. Here are general overviews, parenting trends, and bizarre facts about raising children back when.

Medieval (476 AD-1300)

This was an era characterized by harsh discipline and a general uncertainty about parents' roles are parents.

Children in Medieval England were sent away from home before they were 14 to work in someone else's household. This was true for the rich and the poor. Parents did not keep their own children at home, but instead had a sort of "trade off", where each set of parents received someone else's children to finish raising.

As opposed to the social commentary of today, where parents are often criticized for spanking or yelling at children, parents of medieval societies were criticized if they were seen as being too lax in their discipline.

After they were weaned around age 1 or 2, toddlers through preschool age children ate two meals. Pap, which was made up of flour, milk, and egg yolk probably mixed into some kind of porridge form. Panada, which was bread and butter served in broth to soften it for young teeth.

Despite the assumption that medieval children must have had rotting teeth due to the lack of hygiene knowledge, scientists have found that they actually appear to have less early tooth decay. This is because children today eat far more processed sugars, which rot teeth quicker.

Severe swaddling was thought to help them grow straighter. Sometimes they were even wrapped up against a board. They were kept like this until 8 or 9 months of age. Oof, talk about hip dysplasia. :/

Renaissance (1350s to 1650)

The Renaissance was a continuation of the Medieval Era parenting, but it began to take more note of children in general.

During the Renaissance Era, society accepted that children were weak morally and were in need of severe discipline and guidance to shape them into moral adults. Corporal punishment and hard labor were frequently administered to children of all economic statuses in hopes of molding them to society's standards of morality.

The medieval practice of sending children off to live or apprentice with another family was curbed by the idea that parents are responsible for their children's morality. With that sense of responsibility, parents chose to have their children educated in a school or at home rather than having them raised by others who may or may not have their children's best interests at heart.

Ale was a common drink throughout the middle ages, and the renaissance was no exception. While it was viewed during the middle ages as a meal (many families had ale for breakfast) due to its filling nature, it came to be seen in the 1400s as having healing properties. Mothers gave ale to children to keep them healthy.

People in the renaissance era believed that pregnant women should gaze upon pictures of handsome boys or men to help them give birth to a handsome baby boy. Images were brought before the pregnant women, or even painted within her birthing chamber, so that she would be sure to look at them before giving birth.

Unlike during many other eras, and in other parts of the world, Renaissance Italy believed in educating girls from a young age as it often fell on the mother to homeschool the children while their father was working.

Victorian (1837-1901)

Victorian parenting was all about raising prim and proper children.

Due to some poorly founded parenting manuals which were published just before the turn of the century, mothers were urged to impose strict habits upon children from infancy including sleeping and eating. They were also discouraged from indulging children by showing them affection and picking them up when they cried.

Don't tell me you've never been tempted. 🙂 In Victorian England, infants who had trouble sleeping were given medicine to help them. It was not considered bad parenting to drug your baby; on the contrary, it was most likely seen as responsible! What's worse, most of these concoctions contained opiates.

As soon as they were able, children from working class families who needed the income were expected to get out of the house and help support the family. They did factory work, street peddling, chimney sweeping, and a variety of other tasks. Often special tasks were assigned to children because of their small size. Many of these jobs were dangerous, but children were probably less likely to refuse than adults.

Although many poor families still chose to send their children to work instead of school, technically the law stated that children up until age 10 had to be in school during the week.

Parents of better-off families hired nannies or governesses to care for the children. They may have had scheduled times to visit with them and make sure they were learning manners and societal values, but most of the child rearing was left to the nanny or governess.

Great Depression (1929-33)

Everything about parenting during the Depression Era seems stiff and distant. Take a look at some of these bizarre parenting trends.

In crowded urban areas, baby cages were attached to windows of high rise apartments like a modern day air conditioning unit. Infants and toddlers would be placed in the cage to get fresh air, sunshine, and nap.

Of all the things to be concerned about, bad posture and left handedness were considered two things that must be corrected, lest they shine a bad light on the child's upbringing.

Despite child labor laws in place, because of the poverty created by the Great Depression and the general work ethic of the era, parents encouraged children to work and help provide for the family. It was thought to help develop character and keep them out of trouble.

Plumpness in children was encouraged, unlike today, because it meant that the children were not starving. With many families struggling to provide food for their little ones, those who were more rotund were considered healthier and better off. This is still the case in many societies where food is scarce.

Devices were invented to discourage infants from sucking their thumbs, ranging from hand coverings to bad tasting thumb treatments and even splints to keep hands away from mouths.

This is the first hint we get at modern-day parenting, with its more lenient approach to children.

On the tail of World War II, more women than ever were working outside of the home. This raised questions, for themselves as well as society, about their role as a mother. They were concerned about the rightness of leaving their children at daycare or with a babysitter while they went off to work.

Instead of the harsh schedule-driven parenting of the 19 th and early 20 th century, several significant psychologists and pediatricians began encouraging the idea of a gentler approach to parenting guided by the mother's instincts. This was a reversal of everything that had been taught concerning showing affection and discipline to children.

With the improvements in bottles and formula, the high birth rates, and many mothers working outside of the home, breast-feeding lost popularity. Most infants were bottle fed during the middle of the 20 th century.

There are three main parenting styles - authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive. The idea is that the first and last are two extremes (too harsh and too lenient) and parents should strive for authoritative parenting (firm but loving). Children of the 1950s experienced permissive parenting, in sharp contrast to the almost exclusive authoritarian style which had existed beforehand.

Since we didn't have the benefit of research showing the negative effects smoking has on anybody, especially children, cigarette smoking was rampant. Not only was second-hand smoke not a thing yet, but pregnant women were even encouraged by doctors to smoke in order to relax.

Additional References

http://www.biographyonline.net/different-periods-in-history/

http://www.history.com/topics/middle-ages

If you enjoyed this post, read Parenting Throughout History part II here!

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Parenting Throughout History - A peek into the past | Mom but not a Mom

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Five eras spanning almost 1500 years were researched in order to put this article together. Here are general overviews, parenting trends, and bizarre facts about raising children back when. This was an era characterized by harsh discipline and a general uncertainty about parents' roles are parents.

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Not super specific

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The term . Emily Bazelon's new bully is invading newspaper headlines, marching across the evening news, and dominating bestseller lists Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Discovering the Power of Character and Empathy book, , is one of the latest examples of anti-bullying resources, and its examination of the origin of the word bully piqued my curiosity.

As it turns out, bullies haven't always been thought of as intimidating menaces. For English speakers in the 16th century, bully was actually synonymous with lover.
How did the word's meaning shape-shift so drastically throughout the ages?
The good news is that over the years we've become more precise in defining the key characteristics and various forms of bullying. - Dr. Ron Slaby, Senior Scientist at EDC

To Be Feared Rather than Loved

If a feudal lord or town squire in the 1500s spoke of his "bully," he was referring to his sweetheart, a definition that applied to both sexes and traces its etymological roots to the Dutch word boel, or "lover." Several centuries later, the word's meaning transformed from "fine fellow" into "blusterer"-someone full of hot air and empty threats. Before long, the word's definition had morphed even further into a "harasser of the weak."

In the mid-1800s, Tom Brown's Schooldays, a popular British novel, featured a violent "bully" named Flashman who snatched up lottery tickets and taunted schoolmates. Several decades later, a questionnaire asked American educators to provide examples of bullying at school. One teacher described a boy named Fletcher who would push smaller boys who would not obey him and then hold them down with his knee until they begged him to stop.

By the turn of the century, "bullies" were certainly no longer sweethearts or lovers; they were looming figures-like Flashman and Fletcher-who evoked fear among their peers.

From "Mobbing" to "Bullying"

Not until the 20th century did the word take on the more scholarly definitions we use today.

Dr. Peter Paul Heinemann, an accomplished physician and Holocaust survivor living in Sweden, developed a theory about bullying after witnessing the local community's hostility toward his adopted son, David, who is black. Heinemann looked to the behavior of animals-specifically mobbing, a violent, instinctual behavior of birds assaulting a weaker member of their own species-and in turn applied the concept to a group's aggression against a particular child.

A young Swedish academic named Dan Olweus considered Heinemann's theory, but he disagreed with the idea that mobbing was a "crowd" behavior. Instead, as Bazelon describes in her book, Olweus contended that the opposite was true: Typically, a small group of two or three students would do the majority of the bullying that occurred in a class, and as many as 30 percent of children who were bullied had been victimized by the same person. When Olweus translated his 1978 book Aggression in the Schools from Swedish into English, he chose the English word bullying to describe these cruel schoolyard behaviors. Over time, Olweus refined the meaning of bullying to include three conditions: Bullying is (1) repeated (2) deliberate verbal or physical abuse by (3) someone with more power than his or her target.

The concept of bullying, it turns out, is not an easy one to translate across cultures. While similar terms exist in many languages, academic studies have demonstrated that there is seldom an exact match. The Japanese word ijime, for example, has a greater emphasis on social manipulation. In contrast, the Italian words prepotenza and violenza suggest more physically aggressive actions.

English, of course, has its own definition of bullying; most social scientists refer to Olweus's three-part definition. Yet as modern culture has focused more attention on this social phenomenon, people have begun using the word to describe a wide variety of experiences, and some scholars believe that the term is becoming too elastic. A recent New York Times op-ed pointed out that "bullying" should not be a catchall to describe any act of teasing or conflict. The word, the writer argued, is "being overused-expanding, accordionlike, to encompass both appalling violence or harassment and a few mean words." As the piece concludes, "If every act of aggression counts as bullying, how can we stop it?"

Researchers have, in fact, been studying this issue. A study from John Hopkins which examined the accuracy of bullying self-report measures showed that children's victimization reports differ depending on whether surveying tools are definition-based or behavior-based. The power imbalance between bullies and their targets-essential to the concept of bullying-is particularly difficult for children to understand. Without it, children may overestimate the extent to which they are bullied physically and underestimate the extent to which they are bullied relationally. (Visit Eyes on Bullying to learn more about the different forms of bullying-physical, verbal, and indirect or relational.)

Calling a Thing By Its Proper Name

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. As most any child knows, the playground mantra can be a flimsy shield from verbal abuse. Epithets, slurs, and insults can injure as much as physical violence, and many bullies expertly wield the abusive power of language.

Yet words also possess the capacity to heal and to prevent further violence. The act of labeling an atrocity with a certain name can compel action-at the community, national, and/or international levels. Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent, recognized the potential of language as he coined the word genocide in 1944. Those who pioneered our modern definition of bullying-intentional and repeated verbal or physical abuse by someone with more power than his or her target-felt compelled to call a certain behavior by a proper name. Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany and provincial racism in Sweden compelled Heinemann to define what he witnessed, and Olweus built on this research to develop the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program to help children like Heinemann's adopted son, David.

"The good news," explains Dr. Ron Slaby, Senior Scientist at EDC and Technical Assistance Specialist for the National Center, "is that over the years we've become more precise in defining the key characteristics and various forms of bullying. This understanding clarifies the scope and guides the nature of our interventions to help stop and prevent bullying."

In your work with children and youth, do you see them correctly labeling bullying behavior? What prevention programs have you found particularly effective in helping children understand the meaning of bullying and how to respond to it? Please leave your comments below.*

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Old-School Sweetheart to Modern-Day Menace: The History of the Word Bully

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The term . Emily Bazelon's new bully is invading newspaper headlines, marching across the evening news, and dominating bestseller lists Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Discovering the Power of Character and Empathy book, , is one of the latest examples of anti-bullying resources, and its examination of the origin of the word bully piqued my curiosity.

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A little more generic in terms of timeframe

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Historical Essays: Childhood in Medieval England

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Medieval childhood was a rich and varied state, since children varied from one another as much as adults did. It differed chiefly from modern western society in its mortality and in the fact that many young people started serious work at an earlier age.

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Page 27- Family Life in the Age of Shakespeare

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Primary Document?

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Yesterday's local paper, the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, had a front-page photo of children and their moms lined up, waiting to get inside a public swimming pool. (The limit is 25 children per one lifeguard, so they had to wait until someone left before they could come in.)

When I see crowded pools, I always think that such a photo could never have been taken when I was a child in the 1940s in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, because all our mothers forbade us to gather in groups for fear of catching polio -- especially in a pool.

When the polio epidemics, which always came in summer, were particularly bad we couldn't even play with other children in our neighborhood. One summer, when several children on the next block died, we were forbidden even to leave our yard to play with the kid next door. That summer a social worker came to each house, I remember, and gave me a coloring book and crayons.

Later, in the 1950s, at a small carnival in a Minnesota village, I remember paying a quarter to go inside a trailer to see a girl somewhat older than myself who lived in an iron lung, because illness (I assumed it was polio) had made her unable to breathe on her own.

A decade later, when I was a junior or senior at U Cal Berkeley, (so it must have been 1962 or '63), we all gathered near Sather Gate and were each handed a sugar cube soaked in the Sabin vaccine in a tiny paper cup, and the fear of polio became only a memory.

A few Christmases ago, my adult daughters gave me the Molly doll from the American Girls collection. She represents the era of the 1940s. They gave her to me because I had pointed out that Molly looked exactly like I did in the 1940s. We had the same long braids, the same wire-rimmed granny glasses, even the same wardrobe, including hand-smocked pinafores. (My mother always told me to take my glasses off whenever a camera was nearby, so I can't find a photo with them, but I still have the glasses -- now worn by a vintage teddy bear.)

The Molly doll, like all the American Girl dolls, each representing a different historical era, came with books describing her adventures. There was also a non-fiction book with a lot of vintage photographs explaining the historical period she lived in: "Welcome to Molly's World -- 1944 -- Growing up in World War Two America".

The author had done a good job of researching life in the 1940s and telling, in simple terms appropriate for children, about the wartime shortages, Hitler, Jewish Ghettos, Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt's fireside chats and much more. The book dealt with concentration camps and the Holocaust and the diary of Anne Frank, as well as telling about a little Jewish girl from Austria whose mother sewed money for their escape into her rag doll. The book told about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the little Japanese girl, Sadako, who tried to fold a thousand paper cranes, thinking that would counter the leukemia she got from the radiation of the A-bomb. (She finished 664 paper cranes before she died and the children at her school folded the rest and brought them to her funeral.)

World War II clearly affected children in Europe and the South Pacific far more grievously than it did American children, especially those of us in the Midwest, although nearly everyone had a relative fighting "over there." But reading about Molly's fictitious life brought back many small details of childhood in the Forties-- such as ration books with stamps for our meat, sugar and butter.

We saved and re-used all grease from the frying pan and butter was replaced with a tasteless margarine that had to have yellow color mixed into it. We saved tin foil and flattened tin cans for the war effort and of course had a victory garden in the back yard. Small as we were, we were given cardboard sheets showing the silhouettes of different kinds of airplanes so we could identify an enemy plane if it flew overhead. (We never saw one, but we always looked.) Our games included frequent shouts of "Bombs over Tokyo!" We had blackout curtains in all the windows and had to practice air raid drills, when we'd pull the curtains and turn out all the lights in an attempt to make Milwaukee invisible to enemy bombers. Of course by the 1950's, air raid drills were replaced with bomb shelters and practicing what to do (hide under our desks) when Russia dropped H-bombs on us.

In Shorewood, where we lived, most of the neighbors were of German background and, according to my parents, the FBI came around asking if the neighbors were holding meetings or singing war-like songs or doing anything suspicious. The answer was "No".

Listening to the big mahogany console radio that still had bite marks from my teething days on its corner...trying to get a clear connection with Edward R. Murrow reporting on the war news from London, hearing President Roosevelt saying, "A date which will live in infamy" (well, I can't remember that-- I was an infant in 1941).... Molly and I have a lot of similar memories of a 1940s childhood--some of them poignant or scary, but most of them pleasant. We didn't have television or video games or cell phones, and we didn't need them.

But now, every time I see children escaping the heat, gathered around a sprinkler or swimming pool or an opened fire hydrant, I say a silent prayer of thanks that mothers no longer have to wake up on a hot summer day with the threat of polio hovering over their children.

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What It Was Like To Grow Up In The 1940s

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Yesterday's local paper, the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, had a front-page photo of children and their moms lined up, waiting to get inside a public swimming pool. (The limit is 25 children per one lifeguard, so they had to wait until someone left before they could come in.)