Burnaby's Alpha Secondary is hosting a parents' workshop on bullying on Tuesday, Oct. 23.
The free workshop features Deborah MacNamara, a counsellor and educator with Vancouver's Neufeld Institute, which runs courses for adults who work with children. The institute focuses on an "attachment-based developmental model" created by psychologist Gordon Neufeld, and the Burnaby workshop aims to address the root causes of bullying.
"Bullying is an age-old problem with a new face in today's increasingly digital world," MacNamara wrote in an email to the NOW. "Cyber bullies are now replacing playground bullies at an alarming rate, and the need to protect our kids is great."
The workshop is on Tuesday, Oct. 23, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Alpha Secondary, 4600 Parker St.
Event organizer Helen Ward, president of Kids First Parents Association of Canada, hopes the event will help adults rebuild "the damaged relationships driving both bullying and self-harm that can tragically result."
"This requires going deeper than photo-op events, or legalistic reactions to bullying like codes of conduct and zero tolerance. We need (government policy changes) that prioritize parent-child attachment," Ward said in a press release.
Ward's association, the Burnaby School District and Alpha's parent advisory council are co-sponsoring the event. Ward also ran for school board in the 2011 civic election with Burnaby Parents' Voice, a group that formed out of opposition to the school district's policy to protect students from homophobic bullying and harassment.
"There's no contradiction. There's no organization that I know that's in favour of bullying," Ward said, adding that Burnaby Parents' Voice wanted to see bullying addressed in a holistic way, looking at the psychological dynamics behind bullying. Ward said the workshop has been underway for a long time and was not organized in response to the case of Amanda Todd, the Port Coquitlam teen who recently took her own life after years of bullying and online sexual harassment.
