Find Out Effective Solutions to Bullying in School

Bullying in schools is a problem that plagues countries worldwide, especially in the US, and with statistics showing that an average of 30% of children within the academic years of grades 4-12 are affected by some kind of bullying during their life.

What’s more, over 70% of teachers and 70% of students witness a bullying event; it’s safe to say it’s gone past the point where change needs to happen.

However, as we’ve already found out, bullying can be a complex issue to address and deal with, which is why it’s so important that all parents, teachers, and students are mindful of what it is, how to stop it and, most importantly, how to prevent it from happening in the first place.

Today, we’re going to help spread awareness by identifying three common examples of bullying that takes place in a school, as well as three possible solutions to stop these from happening again. Let’s combat bullying in school once and for all.

Examples of Bullying in Schools

Without identifying bullying when it’s happening, or even before it takes place, we’re not going to be able to stop it, which is why it’s so important for everyone to know exactly what constitutes bullying in the first place. Here are some examples;

• Physical Bullying
  Perhaps the most common example of bullying in schools is when things get physical. This is typically a large student picking on a smaller student, and it can range anywhere from a pacing shove to punching and kicking. Any kind of aggressive, non-consensual physical interaction can be physical bullying.
  This form of bullying is typically used to assert power over people and a display of physical strength. When people think of bullying, this is most likely the form of bullying you’ll start thinking about.
• Cyberbullying
  Another one of the increasingly most common forms of bullying is taking place in the online world. Whenever a message, comment, or post is made with the intent to embarrass, insult, harm, target, threaten or harass another person online, this is a form of cyberbullying.
  This could come in many forms, such as posting a video, writing a text comment, private messaging through direct messages, or sharing media files. This is an increasing problem because teens are more and more connected daily and the ability to remain anonymous through ‘trolling’.
• Verbal Bullying
  Exactly what you imagine it to be, verbal bullying is the action of using words or phrases to harm another person. This could range from using swear words aggressively, calling someone a name to gain control over them, belittling, hurting, or demonizing another individual.
  Usually considered more serious, this includes using racial slurs, sexualized remarks, or, in some cases, stereotyping. Insults can also be made on how someone looks, a certain feature about them, any disabilities they may have, or how they behave and act.
• Sexual Bullying
  Another increasing form of bullying is where an individual or group of people bully using harmful terms or humiliate someone using sexualized references. This can be a mixture of all the examples of bullying above and can be verbal or physical.
  This can include non-consensual touching, name-calling, harassment, or physical appearance or sexuality, or the use of derogatory terms. This is common in the forms of ‘slut-shaming’ or unsolicited ‘sexting’.

3 Possible Solutions to Bullying in School

Since bullying is such a common situation to occur in schools worldwide, there are many students, teachers, and parents looking for proactive solutions to counter the epidemic. Fortunately, there are multiple ways to go about this. Today, we’ll explore three of them.

#1 - Engage in Open, Honest Conversation

Perhaps the most important way to approach bullying in schools is to make sure everybody talks honestly. If you feel your child is being bullied, you’ll want to make sure they can talk to you about it honestly and won’t have to feel pressured or as though they have to hide anything.

This can be achieved by talking to your child about bullying, educating them to look out for and understand the signs, as well as making sure they feel comfortable talking to you about it. The more discussion that can be had, the more likely you’ll prevent bullying from happening.

What’s more, if you feel like your child is bullying someone else, this is a discussion that will need to take place. Even if it’s happening unintentionally, perhaps because they think it’s funny in front of their friends, you’ll need to tell them this is the wrong thing to do and the consequences of what can happen.

Talk to your children about how they should treat others and show respect to other people. If they feel like being mean to someone else, they should have the ability to move away from the situation.

If, for example, the urge to be harmful to someone comes during a lesson, the teacher will also need to be made aware of this, as will the school, to help them make the right decisions.

#2 - Teach Your Child Anti-Bullying Tricks

In some cases, bullying can’t be stopped simply by talking about it. Perhaps a child has a grudge against someone or simply dislikes them for whatever reason; the bullying may happen and escalate as time goes by.

If this is the case, you’ll need to teach your child tricks and tips on avoiding bullying situations to lessen the chances of it taking place. Combine the tips in point #1 with these, and bullying can be addressed as it can even disappear completely over time.

For example, making eye contact with a bully and telling them to stop calmly can be a great way to diffuse a tense situation. If the child has the confidence to do so, humor can also be a great way to do this. It’s important to make sure your child isn’t fighting the bully back or using aggressive terms, as this will heighten the situation.

Bullies are also much less likely to act if your child is with a group of friends, so educated them in staying in a group can also reduce the risk. Make it known that your child can involve the teachers when necessary and take longer routes around the school between lessons to avoid bumping into them.

#3 - Use Leading Parental Control Software

While the techniques above are effective, sometimes children will feel like they’re in a position where they can’t talk or won’t seek help, making it very difficult for parents to pinpoint what’s going on. This is where the parent will need to be proactive in finding the truth to find proactive solutions to bullying in school.

If you feel like your child is being bullied or could be bullying someone else, a great place to find the truth is through their mobile device or tablet, which means you’ll need parental control software for real-time updates.

This is where FamiSafe comes into play.

FamiSafe is the world’s leading parental control software that makes it easy to keep up to date with everything that’s going on in your child’s life, as well as monitoring their online presence and communications between other children.

Now that almost every child has their own digital devices like phones, tablets, or laptops, bullying in schools also takes a new form. Sending insulting SMS or messages via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram has become a common way of bullying. Parents can not easily detect this kind of bullying. Luckily, with FamiSafe's Explicit Content Detection, parents can receive alerts when such bullying messages are detected.

Using the Explicit Content Detection feature allows you to monitor YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Kik, Gmail, and SMS on your kid's Android device. And if your kid has an iOS device, you can monitor the YouTube content without trouble. What makes it better is that you can customize the suspicious words you would like to monitor by enabling different categories or adding your own words to the suspicious word base.

Whenever a message that contains suspicious words is detected, parents would receive a notification to review the message. It also protects kid's privacy by only showing the suspicious message, not the whole conversation.

Other than the Explicit Content Detection feature, other features help to make this one of the best solutions to bullying in school include;

- Location Tracking & Geofencing

With the ability to track your child’s location through their device, you’ll be able to see where they are at all times. You can even use the geofencing feature to set up virtual boundaries where you’ll receive a notification if the boundary is breached.

This will help you know if your child is skipping school or not and whether they are where they say they are, allowing you to figure out whether bullying in schools is a problem you need to be thinking about.

- App Activity Monitoring

By monitoring what apps are installed on your child’s device and how long they’re using them, you’ll be able to see how your child is communicating with other students and whether they’re installing apps and deleting them without you knowing.

- Monitor Screen Time

By tracking how long your child is using their device for using the screen time feature, you’ll be able to watch for signs of bullying and obsessive actions. Children who are being bullied can become obsessed with trying to impress others online or seek advice online. If the bullying becomes too much, you’ll be able to block access to the device for a set period or indefinitely.

While bullying in schools remains a widespread problem, with the awareness of the situation and the education of bullying forms and how to deal with it, we can start to address it and phase it out. In the meantime, be sure to check out FamiSafe to realize the benefits it can bring to you and your child’s life.