Bullying
October 11, 2013 | 0 Comment(s)
Hello, my name is Ed and I’d like to share with you a story from my past about dealing with bullies.
When I was in the 6th grade, I had a bully named Dave who would put me down and pick on me every chance he got. He was particularly good at saving his biggest insults for when there were as many other students around as possible.
That of course only compounded the hurt and humiliation that Dave had become so adept at hurling my way. Until one day something changed.
Know thy enemy
My parents knew that I had been getting picked on. They also happened to know Dave’s parents.
As it turns out, Dave’s home life wasn’t all that great and my parents assured me that he wasn’t focused on me because of any issue he had with me, but because I presented an easy target for him to turn his frustration out on.
Of course, I didn’t think that fact was helpful to me at all. It’s not like I could change the way he was being raised. It took me a little while to figure out, but I realized that while I couldn’t change the cause of his bullying, I could change myself so I wouldn’t be such an easy target.
Finding the strength
One afternoon as class was letting out for the day, I found myself alone with Dave in the classroom. I frantically tried to gather my things and slip out the door before he noticed this too, but to no avail.
He began walking over to me.
Afraid of what he would do with no one around to help me, I knew this was my time to change his perception of me or face a potential beatdown. As he approached, I stood up and before he had the chance to say anything I took the initiative and finally confronted my bully.
In a firm, loud voice I asked him what exactly it was about me that made him choose me as his target. I still remember what I said.
“Is it because I’m short? Sorry, but I can’t control that. I don’t wear glasses so that can’t be it. What is it? Why do you pick on me?”
And for the first time, he turned around and walked away without a word.
What I learned
It took me a while to realize but appearances truly can help or hurt your cause. There was nothing I could do about being shorter than my classmates but standing up, speaking assertively and having a preplanned practiced response put my bully on his heals.
Dave never bothered me again and I learned a lesson that holds true regardless of age; if you don’t want to be a victim, don’t look like one.
August 16, 2013 | 0 Comment(s)
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Bullying is a sad reality that’s been happening in schools everywhere. In fact, even in 2010, over 160,000 children miss school out of fear of being bullied.
Image courtesy of Freedigitalphotos.net
Bullies use their physical size, age, or gender to intimidate other children–whether by abusive language, social threats, physical aggression or psychological abuse. Usually, students who are quiet or those with disabilities are more likely to be targeted than others. Fortunately, schools are now doing more to address this long-standing problem. Nonetheless, as a parent, it is your responsibility to keep your child safe.
Is your child being bullied?
If you suspect your child is being bullied, the first thing to do is to take a long breath. As a parent, your first instinct may be to march over to the school, grab the bully by the neck and tell him to stop harassing your kid…or else. However, what you’re doing is just what the bully’s doing to your child. Remember, your goal is to help your child protect himself as much as possible, and not beat up another kid.
You’d need planning and understanding to keep your children safe. Here are eight tips to help your children overcome bullying.
1. Listen and encourage them to share concerns
If your child begins to hate school or say that other kids are mean to him, you must take the situation seriously–he may be a victim of bullying. It may be difficult to listen to your child talk about bullying, but you have to listen to what he or she says in a loving manner. Remain calm and express support, understanding and concern. If your child thinks you don’t understand his feelings, it will be difficult for them to open up in the future.
2. Share your own experiences and feel their pain
If your child learns that you too, have been teased, dissed, bullied or rejected as a child, he will realize that this experience is normal and can be dealt with. You can talk about how you felt at the time and what you did to handle the bullies. This can also help your child manage his emotional reactions to hard situations.
3. Learn about the situation
Ask your child about the bullying incident. How and when did it happen? Who is involved? Have other children witnessed it? Also ask your child what he has done to avoid or stop the bullying.
4. Brainstorm about how to respond to the bullying
Rather than concretely solving the problem for your child, invite your kid to think about what they can do. They may come up with shocking suggestions but accept them all in the spirit of brainstorming. Of course you don’t want them to retaliate or affirm surrender, but you can turn “strategic retreat” and “seeking help” as good sense. Once you and your child come up with a plan, make sure to affirm it, giving him more confidence.
5. Talk to school officials
Don’t contact the bully’s parents yourself. Instead, contact your child’s teacher, school counsellor and school principal. You can also encourage school officials to focus on the problem of bullying as part of the curriculum.
6. Follow up
Ask your child for any progress with regards to bullying. If it persists, contact school officials again.
7. Seek help from authorities, if needed
You should know when to seek help from authorities and professionals. If your child has been physically attacked or threatened with harm, talk to the school officials immediately to see if the police should be involved. If circumstances lead to getting legal services, prepaid legal expense plans, like those from Legal Shield, can help you battle with expensive lawyer fees.
8. Boost your child’s self-esteem
Children who are bullied tend to have low self-esteem, even long after the incident happened. As a parent, it is your duty to pick them up, and make them feel special again. If not acted upon, low self-esteem can lead to lasting problems such as depression and anxiety. Encourage them to join music, art, or sports classes to build friendships and develop social skills.
Do you have any other tips to share?
——
About the author
Based in San Diego, California, Melissa Page is an advocate of child safety. She writes about health and relationships, among other things. For more of her works, visit Word Baristas.
August 1, 2013 | 0 Comment(s)
Jessica Carol, guest contributor
School-yard bullying has taken on a whole new meaning in this day and age. Those fat kids who harassed you and took your lunch money have gone digital and the Internet is largely responsible for it. On the surface this may seem pretty harmless when compared to facing a menace face to face but as witnessed in the Amanda Todd case the problem that started off as just a simple way to have fun while hiding behind a computer screen has gotten worse, thanks to our own negligence.
Justin Patchin Speaks Out
In a recent Interview, Co-Director of the Cyberbullying Research Center and Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Wisconsin, Dr. Justin W. Patchin stressed upon the threats cyberbullying poses to kids. While comparing regular bullying to the digital version Patchin remarked that “Using technology can be just as harmful if not worse for some teens.”
With technology penetrating our lives more and more each day the risk of our kids getting exposed to these digital felons continues to grow bigger. Parents might be able to keep a strict eye on their child’s technology time at home but the advent of portable smart devices like iPhones and iPads means that our kids can go online from school at any time they want and indulge in activities which can have a long lasting effect on their life. This is where educators need to do their part and not just limit instruction to the boundaries of a classroom.
Act Responsibly
Since kids spend a good chunk of their time at school the effects of cyberbullying can be easily seen inside the classroom. Sudden odd behavior and short temper can be a symptom. An educator’s involvement at that point can help keep their students on track and prevent their grades from slipping. Teachers can organize after school classes to speak about the use of technology and how students can effectively tackle a situation where they are made victim of hate speech. There might not be laws to prevent cyberbullies from harassing others but educators are certainly capable of advising students on how to avoid such scenarios. Speaking about the role educators can play Dr. Patchin is of the view that “Educators need to be more educated about the problem so that they can respond to it more effectively.”
Offline Activities
A debate that has sparked up in recent years is that the internet and video games are preventing kids from developing hobbies and pursuing outdoor activities. Teachers can organize soccer or basketball games or encourage students to take up a hobby like drawing or skateboarding. This will not only provide the necessary mental and physical conditioning but will also keep them away from prying eyes.
Speak
Encouraging students to speak about their personal experiences with cyberbullying or reporting an incident to an adult to resolve an issue instead of keeping it bottled up inside is another useful technique educators can employ.
——
Jessica Carol has been working on internet security related issues such as Cyberbullying. Her articles have mostly landed on the Mobistealth blog, where she’s covered several aspects of parental control. She tweets @jcarol429
July 2, 2013 | 0 Comment(s)
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Bullying — a situation that has become a common occurrence around the world. Whether one is in school or at work, he may never escape the threat of being bullied. While bullying is not only limited to learning centers, it is however most common in these kind of places. Bullying inside the school is happening at very alarming frequency. But what is bullying? 
Bullying is not just mere abuse of power or authority. It is also not the same as assault or harassment, although bullying could be constituted of such actions. Bullying could be defined as intentional aggressiveness towards persons perceived as lesser in terms of strength, power, stature, social status and even authority. The bullying act could come either verbally or physically and typically places the victim under a lot of stress.
In school, bullying even comes to the point where students become afraid of attending class because of the fear of bullies. Typical acts of bullying include victims being used by bullies as their personal gophers or as their cash coffers. Other typical acts of bullying include bullies playing insensitive pranks on their victims (i.e. showering them with water while walking on the hallway) as well as making sure that their victims are embarrassed in front of a number of classmates or schoolmates.
The role parents play
Parents’ intervention and prevention are typically needed to fight back against bullying. This does not mean that a parent should do things that would allow him or her to exact revenge against his/her child’s bullies. This means that parents could do things that would either prevent their children from becoming bullies or becoming the victim of bullies. In either of the two, parents shoulder the responsibility and duty to make sure that their children are growing up properly.
The existence of bullies could be traced from homes where parents — either the father or mother — are not so involved in the parenting process, especially during the formative years of their children. Children who grew up in a family where physical and verbal violence is a normal way to handle household issues and problems view such actions as normal. They think the physical and verbal abuse is just normal, even when dealing with other people who they think might be inferior to them. Thus, parents who are responsible enough in handling their family and their children could prevent more young people from becoming bullies. This could be considered as the best way to fight bullying. When there is one less bully in the world, there is also one less victim of bullying.
Still a problem
One main reason why bullying still occurs in schools is that victims typically would not report incidence of bullying, even to their parents. This prevents academic tutors and administrators and, most of all, parents from doing any intervention act. When no one intervenes, bullies and victims will keep on increasing in numbers. Bullies feel the power surging when they bully, while victims do not report for fear that the situation would only get worse. Parents must always find ways to encourage their children to report bullying incidents for them to be able to intervene promptly and appropriately.
In the end, it always depends on the parents on how they will prevent bullying or intervene when such acts occur to their children.
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About the author
Lindsey is a working mom with three children aged 3, 6 and 9. She is very active in parent-school activities despite working as an assistant counselor at a medium-sized firm. She written a research paper on bullying and also had essays written on the topic.
April 12, 2013 | 0 Comment(s)
By now we’ve all heard about the bullying epidemic in our schools and communities, but one segment of the population tends to get overlooked when discussing these issues.
In a study by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the biggest predictor of depression symptoms in special needs children was being bulled or feeling left out by other children.
This study collected the data from questionnaires completed by special needs children ages 8-17 and their parents or guardians about bullying and exclusion from their peers. The results showed that bullying and being left out were the main indicators of increased symptoms of depression or anxiety, not their disability.
“What is notable about these findings is that despite all the many challenges these children face in relation to their chronic medical or developmental diagnosis, being bullied or excluded by their peers were the factors most likely to predict whether or not they reported symptoms of depression,” the study’s lead researcher Margaret Ellis McKenna, M.D., said.
Parents and teachers need to sit down with special needs children and explain what bullying is and how to describe an incident if it happens to them so it can be reported and taken care of. It is also important to ask how the child is feeling emotionally and looking out for signs of depression and anxiety.
Bullying is a big problem in this country, and to stamp it out, we need to make sure that we are working to solve the bully problem for everyone.
