What is Bullying?

Bullying is an aggressive behavior that usually demeans a person in an indirect or direct way. It disrupts the peace of mind of the person being bullied and might have more harmful impacts as well. It might hamper a child’s schooling, social life, and emotional well-being.

Bullying can be physical that involves hitting, pushing and shoving, fighting, tripping, yelling at someone, making rude gestures, taking or breaking another person’s things, etc. It might even be emotional like name-calling, making fun of someone, laughing at someone, neglecting someone on purpose, starting rumors or telling lies about someone, sending mean messages on a computer or cell phone, trying to make someone feel bad about who they are.

Tips for Preventing Bullying

• Identify bullying acts

  You need to notice that something is wrong with your child. The best way to do it is to simply talk to them. Be attentive to your child’s feelings and handle them with care.

• Have a positive influence

  Teach your child about proper social conduct right from an early age.

• Be more aware and educated

  Every community requires proper training and education to stop bullying. Teachers should come forward and talk openly with students about bullying and its impacts. School-wide assemblies can be held to bring this common issue out in the open. The school staff and other adults should be educated regarding this.

• Build an anti-bullying support system

  Bullying requires a community solution. Everyone needs to participate to eradicate it completely. The support system includes students, parents, teachers, administrators, counselors, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, school nurses, after-school instructors, and others. Most importantly, develop a community strategy to combat bullying.

• Written policies

  Prepare written policies so that everyone in the community can refer to it at the time of a ‘bullying’ crisis. Every child should be paid attention to. Emotional bullying should be treated the same way as physical bullying. There should be written school policies as well to make students responsible for assisting others who are in trouble. These policies need to be clear and precise so that they are easy to understand quickly.

• Give power to the bystanders

  Bystanders usually think that getting involved in preventing a bully’s attack might make them social outcasts as well. Schools should take measures towards protecting bystanders from retaliation. It can actually make them realize that silence and not taking a stand can make the bullies more powerful.

• Make sure to work with the bully

  Bullying is an immature act. The bully usually has issues to deal with. They strongly need help from adults. Bullying is a result of a lack of empathy and trust or issues at home. Bullies need to recognize that they are being bullies! For instance, if a student is causing mental distress to his classmate, he might claim later it is not bullying since there is no physical harm done. So, they need to be taught about the types of bullying and their harmful, even detrimental impacts. They need to be shown the consequences of their actions. However, only adults can deal with bullies. In certain cases of intense bullying, the bully might not even show any signs of remorse even after being educated on the subject. It might be that the bully has some sort of mental issues or any other trauma. In such cases, the bully requires therapy sessions or other healing procedures from professionals to do away with the act of bullying.

Tips for Parents Considering Online School

Welcome flexibility!
Embrace flexibility when it comes to building a personal schedule for your child. Sometimes your child might not be able to solve a particular kind of assignment without your help. At such times, you can instruct them to move forward with other topics for the time being. You need to regulate your own personal schedule to handle those specific topics for your child. Learn to sacrifice a bit of your leisure time to give company to your little one.

Your responsibility is even more if your child is an elementary school student. You might need to postpone some of your own professional work-related tasks or household chores to cater to your child’s needs. Prioritize first.

Make sure you are given the facility to directly speak to the online faculty
You might need to act as a mediator between your child and the online counselor or instructor, mostly when your child is reserved. He might not open up in front of his online teachers.

Since the online teachers are professionals, their analyzing power is stronger than yours. They know the root of the cause most of the time. They are likely to come up with genuine solutions. So, make sure to voice your child’s issues on his behalf. For this, you need a proper means to seamlessly communicate with the online faculty, whether in person, by phone, or via virtual platforms. The school should enable you to avail of this option comfortably.

October is selected as the National Bullying Prevention Month. This campaign is established in the United States in 2006 by PACER’s National Bullying Prevention Center. The campaign unites communities nationwide to educate and raise awareness of how to prevent bullying.

This October if you, as a parent, want to prevent your precious child from the acts of bullying, get him enrolled in an online school. Go for an accredited online school like The Ogburn Online school. Delay no more. Your child’s well-being is in your hands!