Have you ever heard from your child that his classmate is repeatedly teasing him or hitting/pushing him at school on purpose? Bullying occurs when a child is purposely hurting the other child repeatedly. Bullying can start at any age. It is seen that direct, physical bullying increases in elementary school, peaks in middle school and declines in high school. Verbal abuse, on the other hand, remains constant. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that younger students are more likely to be bullied than older students. It also stated in the past that 1 out of 4 kid is bullied.
There are several types of bulling like:
Physical bullying: Pushing, hitting, tripping, physical hurting.
Verbal bullying: Saying bad words, calling names, taunting, abusing.
Emotional bullying: Rejecting ones friendship with the intention of controlling him.
Racial bullying: Mocking on racial traditions and following racist behaviors.
A Bully is usually a stronger child who will pick on kids that feel smaller, who will not stand up for them and have fewer friends by them. Bullying can have negative results on kids. These kids are afraid to go to school, develop anxiety and emotional disturbances. Here are some things that we can do as parents to help them to prevent becoming a victim of bullying.
- Stay by your child always and make sure he gets the feeling that he is loved and is safe in this world. Encourage your kids to talk about all that happens in school. When the child tells you what happened at school, he should get a feeling that you are taking it seriously. If your child is reluctant to talk about it, have your child open up. Praise your child for having been talking to you about the situation and provide reassurance. Take advantage of the situations that can be conversation starters like if you and your child see something like this on a TV show or see it happening to someone else at school or neighborhood. Cultivate this in your child that its important to let an adult know – teacher, yard duty personal, principal, other parents or you depending on his comfort zone.
- Tell your child at any early age which children he can be friends with and rely on. He cannot be a friend with the kids that will make him feel bad. Have your child get involved in-group activities where he can have fun with kids with similar interests. Have him buddy up with such friends he can trust, so that he is not alone. This will help him have more confidence. Another confidence building activity would be having him enroll in a self-defense class like karate.
- Walk away from bullies and avoid them. Bullies like to annoy people, so the best thing to do is to ignore them or walk away. Do not threaten them back. Do not land up in a situation where it is easy to be bullied. There is a fine line between teasing and bullying. Use common sense, withdraw from the situation, the child should not show that he is upset and hence, try not to become the victim of bully.
- Parents can talk to trusted adults at school like teachers or like-minded other parents and ask them if their children are facing such situation. Another thing is to discreetly talk to the bully’s parents by not involving your child.
My 7-year-old son has come home several times and complained about being teased. He is following these strategies successfully –
- Telling the teaser to stop assertively. “Stop teasing me”, “Stop making fun of my….”.
- Ignoring the teaser.
- Agree with the teaser and makes fun of it. “Oh! Really!”, “Thanks for telling me, I didn’t know that! Ha! Ha!”
He is successfully practicing the above three strategies with different kinds of kids and what kind of relationship he holds with them. While I strongly feel that he practices one of these depending on what mood he is in at that point of time. As I said that there is a fine line between teasing and bullying, luckily he is able to control the situation and hopefully things will not get worse.
This kind of practice is very common in elementary school level but situations can get even worse starting from middle school and up. Well! How about toddlers? When my son was a toddler, one day, I go to pick him up from the daycare and another child the same age but much bigger in built came right to him and pulled his hairs. My child with 5th percentile weight on growth chart could do nothing but cry on top of his voice. Well! If this is not bullying, is it exploring the environment? I wish that it could have been done in a gentle way!
Whether or not your child’s recess is turning into a nightmare, it is always good to prepare your child if at all it ever happens. Even though we as parents cannot avoid the growing epidemic of mean acting kids but we can have our children learn bully-proofing strategies that will help them.
