Prevent Bullying

How to Bully-Proof Your Child

Learning how to bully-proof your child is a great way for parents to take an active role in protecting their child against all different types of bullying. Taking a stand against bully by learning how to bully-proof your child is a great way to prevent bullying from continuing to spread among today’s youth.

Kids and teens are prone to be getting bullied by their peers for so many reasons including their appearance, dress, academic ability, disabilities, hobbies or even their social status and parent’s financial status in the community. Kids and teens that are bullied have higher rates of suicide (also known as bullycide) and have low-self esteem, poorer academic performance and overall struggle more to succeed.

Because these repercussions of bullying are becoming more noticed by teachers, parents and other school administrators, schools and parents are taking a more active approach to helping their children become safe from bullying by heavily cracking down on the number of bullies in schools. However, not all schools are taking this active approach against bullying. This is why parents need to learn how to bully-proof their children to help protect them from this unnecessary experiences and severe abuse from their peers. There are all different types of bullying from physical altercations to name-calling, teasing, spreading rumors and cyberbullying. Cases of bullying are also known to happen to even very young children. Parents and teachers need to be on the lookout for cases of bullying that happen even at the preschool age level. This is also the age parents should start teaching their kids not only how to treat others politely and with kindness, but also how to interpret others’ actions and feeling about particular instances.

How to Bully-Proof Your Child:

Researchers including a child psychologist featured in a recent CNN article encourage parents to work with their children even when they are young. It is important to teach your child the difference in their interpretations of life situations. This helps them learn to distinguish between events and feelings. This helps them also understand and relate to the feelings of others. Teaching them these skills early is the best way for them to differentiate how others treat them as they get older. They will be able to determine if how those individuals are treating them is appropriate or not or if they are in fact being bullied.

Another great way to learn how to bully-proof your child is to help them develop a sense of self. Encourage them to learn about themselves and to learn and excel being exactly who they are. Children that struggle to identify who they are, or constantly strive to be their “hero” they are never going to be able to live up to those expectations. This can be detrimental for their self-esteem, which can make them a direct target for bullying. Kids with low self-esteem are less likely to stick up for who they are and make a prime target for kids looking to pick on someone weaker than them.

It is also important to encourage your children to explore activities that make them feel good about themselves. Find something that they are really good at because it will help increase their overall self-esteem and feeling of self-worth. Encouraging courageous behavior is another great way to help learn how to bully-proof your child. You can encourage them to stand up for themselves as well as their peers and other friends. When groups of kids or teens stand together to put an end to a bullying situation, the bully is more likely to back off and won’t mess with your child again. Taking these measures when your child is young is the best way for them to establish early on that they will not stand for bullying. They can grow up with these values and share them with their peers and other friends. This is a great way to help protect your child from bullying situations throughout their live including adulthood.

Sources: cnn.com

Bullying Interventions – Stop Bullies Now

With the growing problem of bullying among children and teens, bullying interventions are becoming more and more of a responsibility of parents and teachers. Bullying interventions are necessary to prevent bullies from going too far.

While it is not always possible to prevent cases of bullying, it is important to know what to do as a parent or as a teacher or other school official to do to stop bullying with various types of bullying interventions. Through this tactic, bullies might be able to be successfully put in their place with an end to the bullying. There are a few different steps and ways you can go about preparing bullying interventions. It is best to find a technique that works with different types of bullies, which can range from physical to emotional as well as cyberbullying. According to a study put together by the Centre for Children and Families in the Justice System of the London Family Court Clinic, there are a few different methods for bullying interventions.

First, intervene immediately. Do not overlook a potential bullying situation. It is then important to talk to both the victim and the bully separately. If more than one student is involved, which does happen in many cases of bullying, talk to each one separately. Be prepared for the bully to minimize and deny their actions. By speaking to each person involved separately, you will have the best chance of figuring out the truth of the matter.

Second, remind the bully about the rules established in the school. Or if you are a parent looking to handle the situation, remind them of the rules in your home or in your neighborhood. Bullying is a crime that often occurs with physical violence, stealing as well as through forms of slander and libelous statements that can be made online or behind one’s back. Remind them that by committing these acts, they are susceptible for punishment by the justice system. If this is a first time offense and the results are minimal, make sure the punishment fits the crime. However, if this bully has continually hurt victims, be sure the consequences are much more severe. When talking with the victim, be sure they understand everything possible is being done to ensure a similar instance does not happen again. You want to make sure and gain their trust and confidence. The effects of bullying can be severely detrimental to the victim not only physically but also emotionally. This is why it is important to help them during the process to feel safe and secure again. If you are a parent, be sure to involve the other child (s) parents in the situation to help reach a resolution. If you are a teacher or school administrator, be sure to call both of the parents of the children or teens involved to help reach an understanding and possible resolution. It is important for parents to make sure their children are not taking on the characteristics of bullying. If they are, they need to be stopped before that type of behavior gets out of control. For some children and teens anger management is a serious problem that may need to be addressed in a counseling type setting to help stop the bully from continuing their antics and damage to their peers.

After the punishment has been delivered continuing watching the behavior of the bully. If you are a parent, be sure to keep that child away from your own and help your child or teen learn to avoid bullies. One way to prevent bullying is to help your child develop good self-esteem. Your teen or child doesn’t have to be the strongest kid in the class or on the block to avoid bullying, but good, strong self-esteem is a great way to help them know how to handle a potential bullying situation. Unfortunately bullies target the weak because they know they are an easy target. Do your best to ensure your child is not an easy target. Along with self-esteem, encourage your child to make friends with nice and kind peers. It is important for your child or teen to surround themselves with a positive support group to help remain strong and not become the next victim of a bullying attack. As a teacher or administrator, keeping an eye on the bullying situation is the best way to stay on top of it and stop it before it starts.

Source: tqe,siu.edu, education-world.com

Prevent Bullying

One way to stop bullying is to take steps to prevent bullying from starting. Some ways to prevent bullying is through providing a bully policy, consequences for bullies, and educating potential victims of bullying. Keep reading for more tips on preventing bullying.

Steps to prevent bullying before it starts can address the problem from several directions. Prevention can be aimed at creating a situation in which bullying is not tolerated, in giving potential bullies outlets and behavior suggestions so that thoughts and feelings that could end up in bullying are channeled in different ways, and in helping potential victims avoid becoming the victim of bullying behavior. This article explores some of the current thoughts about how bullying can be prevented.

Prevent Bullying With Policies

A clear definition of bullying and a policy that disallows it and lays out the consequences is one means to arm a school or school district against this problem. For one thing, when bullying is clearly defined, then it can be more easily recognized and separated from constructive criticism, discipline, and motivation, all of which are bordering areas. It is important that the policy be clear and research-based in order to not be so broad that students and teachers are fearful of being perceived as bullies at every turn when what they say is not praise. And it is different, though still potentially painful, if a child is picked last for games because he or she has an objectively poor skill set as opposed to being picked last due to an explicit campaign to ostracize him or her.

Policies to prevent bullying may explicitly mention major types of bullying, including verbal, social, physical, pack and cyberbullying, and racist, religious, homophobic bullying, along with bullying of people with disabilities. But it is important that policies should be worded so as not to exclude the bullying of mainstream victims, nor victims who are teachers, staff, administrators, or school board members, rather than students.

As of September, 2009, most states have bullying laws. Bullying laws do not exist, however, in Alabama, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.

Prevent Bullying With Consequences

With a carefully written and precise bullying definition in place, there is a need to follow up with appropriate and fair consequences when bullying occurs, whomever the perpetrator and victims are. Victims must know that they will get a fair hearing in order to be persuaded to come forward. Bullies must not be perceived as immune on account of longevity or position. Consequences need to be applied consistently in order for a policy to prevent bullying to be effective.

In states in which there are bullying laws and the bullying involves physical altercations or damage to or theft of property, the consequences of bullying may include criminal prosecution, as well as school sanctions. In addition, bullies, both students and teachers, not to mention schools, school districts, and parents of bullies have been sued for damages.

Prevent Bullying with Family Education

Perception of bullying has changed over time, and while a bullying policy can touch organizations such as schools, it is harder to reach families. People who come from families in which bullying was the norm have been exposed to behavior models that are not considered acceptable today. These people, whether teachers or students, may need explicit models of how to act on thoughts and feelings that could lead to bullying and/or they may need greater assistance to learn new behavior patterns and break old models, such as counseling, rather than simply punishment.

Community education is difficult and takes time: many people feel that what happens behind their closed front door is their business and is private and resent and reject suggestions for change. But if dad bullies mom, or vice versa, and the children take this behavior as a model, what’s behind closed doors can flow out into the community.

Within the home, parents can prevent bullying both by modeling alternative behaviors as well as explicitly pointing out behaviors that fall into the category of bullying and differentiating ways of acting and sharing behaviors that are acceptable within a family – in which people often know more about each other’s characteristics, faults and failings, for example, because of how space is shared rather than because someone has “outed” someone else – from what is acceptable in school and other public settings.

Other Means to Help Prevent Bullying

  • Supervision and appropriate intervention can help stop bullying that is in progress.
  • Teach appropriate assertiveness to those who are, or may be, targets of bullying.
  • If the bullying is linked to something that can be changed – such as an article of clothing or a lack of skill or training in some area – discuss various responses with the person, including changing the behavior, by making a different choice or by working to improve in the area that is lacking if this is an appropriate response, or learning to assert his or her right to be different, if this is appropriate. For example, if a student is ridiculed because his or her desk or locker is a mess with things falling out of it, some assistance in creating and maintaining order could both be beneficial and remove the reason for the bullying. If, however, the student wants to continue to wear a Yankee baseball cap in Red Sox territory, a different approach will be needed to prevent bullying.
  • Staff training can help make sure that the school (and state, if applicable) bullying policies are widely understood.
  • Some bullying occurs at the rate of “almost every day” according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) 2007 data. Head off repeat offense by encouraging reports of bullying and making sure reports are dealt with expeditiously. A victim who has accepted another student’s derision as “jokes” up to a point, should be able to report the derision without feeling complicit or guilty for the bullying being ongoing.

Sources

stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov
nces.ed.gov
stopbullyingnow.com
youthviolence.edschool.virginia.edu

Bullying Stories

Bullying stories can be found everywhere. Just about every person has experienced bullying in some form or another and has bullying stories to share. Many share their bullying stories in hopes that it will help those being bullied find a voice toward help and resolution.

As organizations across the country take up the bullying cause, more people are sharing their bullying stories to help prevent bullying in schools and among teens and children. Celebrities and other well-known individuals are just some of those joining the activist cause to help put an end to bullying of all types. There are many types of bullying including physical assault, teasing, spreading rumors and cyber bullying. All of these types of bullying can have devastating effects on a person’s self-esteem and feelings of self-worth. Hearing some of these bullying stories might help those being bullied find a way to stand up for themselves or to seek help from their situation.

Bullying Stories:

Unfortunately some bullying stories do not have happy endings. Recent media reports tell the story of a young man who was bullied so much for his sexual orientation that he took his own life. These kinds of situations are referred to as bullycide – where a person commits suicide as a result of being bullied. Bullying can be one of the toughest things an adolescent faces in their  young life. They will feel isolated and ostracized from their peers. They will lose all feelings of self-worth causing their self-esteem to plummet. Many bullying stories report that these teens feel they don’t have a way to stand up for themselves or anyone to turn to when the bullying begins to take over their life. They feel that if they report the bullying that it will only get worse. Listening to these bullying stories might  help those individuals realize they do have a place to turn for help and support during such a trying time in their adolescence.

Reasons for Bullying:

There are many reasons teens choose to bully one another. Many teens are bullied themselves and turn on other teens to help feel better about themselves. Other teens like the feeling of power and respect they get when they become a bully. Some teens and even children who bully are simply ignorant and close minded. These are very unfortunate situations that need to be stopped before more tragic situations of bullycide and other devastating emotional effects occur.

Teens are often bullied for a bunch of reasons including their sexual preference, gender, religious affiliation, socio-economic background, intelligence, disabilities, talents, interests and so much more. Many teens can be so mean to each other for almost no reason. Unfortunately the effects of these bullying situations don’t end well in many situations. Teens are so emotionally damaged, they can take these feelings and bottle them up in an unhealthy way. They may develop problems with eating disorders, depression, anxiety, self-mutilation and even suicidal thoughts or tendencies. Because the power of bullying can be so devastating, it is important for parents to watch for the signs that their teen might be being bullied, or to come up with ways to help protect their child from being bullied in the first place. Many schools are also taking an active stand against bullying by putting in place effective consequences and repercussions for teens that still try to attempt and bully their peers.

How To Prevent Bullying:

Everyone should take an active stance against bullying including parents, teachers, school administrators as well as teens themselves. If teens see an act of bullying, they should  immediately report it to a parent or teacher. Because teens are the ones that are most likely to see the acts of bullying occur. Because of this, they are the ones that are going to be the most able to actively prevent bullying from occurring. It is important as a parent to stress this to your teen. Encourage them to take a stand against bullying and to report it if they see it happening. It is also important for teens to notify their parents if they feel they are being bullied. Actively communicating about these topics is the best way for teens to feel comfortable talking about their concerns to their parents. This can stop bullying from getting worse and can help limit the amount of emotional damage a teen feels/experiences when bullied. Parents also need to help prepare their teens for these kinds of instances and encourage their own teens to be kind and understanding to their peers regardless of what differences they might have. Putting a stop to bullying stories in general is a great way to help put an end to bullying.

Sources:trivalleycentral.com