Bullying is a really hot-button word, guaranteed to grab you (especially if you have kids of your own) by the collar and make you pay attention. I'll admit that headlines with the word “cyberbully” almost always catch my notice. Bullying both scares parents and mystifies them. Let's clear things up a little.
Parents – myself included – are apt to shrug off cyberbullying as just another iteration of the bullying you or I might have endured as kids. We turned out all right in spite of it, didn't we? But the truth is that cyberbullying is very different from anything we knew.
Cyberbullying is in-your-face, round-the-clock torment, on a very public worldwide stage. And the type of bullying is different, too. There were certain things that the meanest playground bully in my junior high wouldn't dare say or do – but now even good kids with straight A's post worse online because that face-to-face accountability isn't there.
No doubt about it, there's a cyberbullying phenomenon going on, and it's a little daunting to be the parents because we're not sure quite how to deal with it. As a parent, I often fall back on what my parents did with me. Of course, that's not a lot of help when it comes to cyberbullying. A real bullying phenomenon, letalone cyberbulling, didn't exist back then.
Schools know that it's a problem, too. Luckily they're aware, but adminstrators are still working on handling it just like the rest of us. My kids come home talking a lot about bullying, even though they haven't ever been targeted by bullies, but they learn awareness at school and realize that it's a big problem.
In fact, the school cyberbullying presentations and awareness programs get to be a little ad nauseum as they get older. But at least kids are aware, too.
So schools, kids, and parents all know about the problem. Now what do you do about it? If you haven't talked about cyberbullying in a while, take some time to mention it today. Bring up a news story, ask if your child knows someone who's been bullied, or ask what your child would do if cyberbullied.
Talk about ways to handle cyberbullying as well as how to avoid bullying others. Also discuss what to do if they see someone else being bullied. Teach your kids to be part of the solution to the cyberbullying problem.
