In a prior post, we touched on bullying and some things to consider if having to contend with a bullying situation. In this post we revisit bullying and start to consider some additional information. We will blog on this some more and get specific in future posts.
Contrary to what you might think due to the last few years of news prevalence, there is not a bullying epidemic. According to SLATE Senior Editor and author of the book Sticks and Stones, Emily Bazelon, statistics show that the frequency of bullying has remained fairly unchanged over the last 25 years. However, while the instances of bullying may not have increased, that does not negate the fact that bullying still exists and, as Bazelon is quick to note, is a serious problem.
“You are never going to have a world in which kids are nice to each other all the time and they need to learn how to solve their own problems,” she said in an article at SchoolBook.org. This is a fair point. While it’s true that a child can and should inform a teacher or parent if bullying occurs, oftentimes it takes place on the playground, outside of careful, direct supervision. Furthermore, most chances to inform an adult only crop up after the bullying has already taken place. This can lead to confrontation that is unavoidable when we are all striving for the ideal that it should have been prevented before it had a chance to evolve into physical or emotional abuse.
Bazelon believes the key to preventing the circumstances described above lies in creating a culture among students that encourages standing up for one another and cultivating sympathy: “If [the students] feel like they are in an environment where standing up for other kids in large ways and sometimes just in small ways by expressing sympathy, when that is valued, then you kind of isolate the bullies and you reduce the problematic behavior.”
While it may be that not everyone has been bullied, most of us can recount a story of somebody we know having been bullied, or even recount a story about the bully him/herself. If you had a chance to go back in time to your younger self and impart a piece of wisdom about dealing with bullies, what would it be? That advice is a good place to start when determining what needs to be given to your own child.
In upcoming posts we’ll cover various techniques for dealing with bullies, including in the context of yourself as an parent, how your child should react to bullying, how to deal with and overcome cyberbullying, and what to do if discover that your own child is a bully.
For more from Emily Bazelon, check out: https://slate.com/author/emily-bazelon
