Bullying happens. It’s a sad fact that in our lifetimes are likely to either be bullied, be a bully, or be in proximity to a situation in which bullying occurs. Here is what you can do if you are ever in proximity to a bullying situation.
Continue readingThe Difference Between Harassment and Bullying | Corona, CA
The difference between bullying and harassment is a thin line. They both revolve around power dynamics, control, harmful actions, and the perceived ability of the target to stop their experience. Yet, the things that differentiate bullying from harassment stem from the notion that the target its part of a “protected class” designation. Here are some things to be aware of when you consider whether what your child is experiencing is bullying or harassment.
Continue readingBullying Prevention Begins With Developing High Self-Esteem | Corona, CA
Building up your child’s self-esteem is paramount to bullying prevention. When we help our children recognize and feel proud of, their accomplishments, we help teach them their worth. Over time, we can help him or her recognize how their strengths contribute to those around them, teaching them in turn how to repay that support to their peers. When a child is so busy focusing on their skills and cultivating new ones, they don’t have time to be a bully to others- they are busy improving themselves! Here are some easy ways to begin building your child’s self-esteem:
Continue readingWe All Need Good Friends To Lean On | Corona, CA
What makes someone a good friend? When do we cross our own boundaries to help those around us? How do we effectively balance our needs with our desire to help someone we care about? These are difficult questions to answer for ourselves and in regard to the people in our lives. When considering these questions with a child in the context of their own lives, its important to retain the notion that their ability to comprehend complex situations is limited. To keep things simple while introducing the foundation of what it means to be a good friend, here are some simple things you can share:
Continue readingYour Child Can Help Prevent Bullying, Here’s How | Corona, CA
Believe it or not, you can teach your child how to be an effective and empathetic support to their peers experiencing bullying. Here are five ways you can foster the notion within your child that he or she can be a champion for change and help prevent bullying.
- Communication starts in the home. Bullying can be a difficult topic to bring up with your child, but if you establish a foundation of trust with your child, they will be more likely to share their positive and negative experiences at school. When you make them feel safe and heard, they may begin to make their peers feel that way in kind.
2. Being a safe bystander. When children witness bullying, it can affect them too, even if they don’t directly engage in the situation. Help your child understand how he or she can help their classmate by offering to listen to their feelings or tell a teacher what’s going on, without getting directly involved.
3. Respond intentionally to conversations around bullying. When your child brings bullying to your attention, you can help them learn how they should respond, by being intentional with your response. Listen to him or her, ask questions that illicit a thoughtful response, and try to share how you feel he or she can act the next time they experience something similar.
4. Raise awareness. If your child is consistently sharing instances of bullying, share with him or her the ways they can safely take action, and reach out to adults closer to the situation to inform them of what you are being told. Raising awareness in your child about how to react, and within your community about the issue, is more likely to solve problems that prevent future bullying.
Visit StopBullying.gov for more helpful tips on how to prevent bullying, and have a great school year!
If you would like to learn more about bullying, contact Simple Acts of Care and Kindness at 866-459-7225 or visit www.simpleacts.org for additional information.
Helping Kids Understand Compassion | Corona, CA
As school terms come to a close and summer begins to set in, we feel it is important to share some ways you can help your kids better understand what it means to be compassionate.
Children watch and learn many things both consciously and unconsciously. They observe our behavior, that of their teachers, their fellow classmates, and people they admire. If you are a parent helping a friend through a difficult time, invite your child to sit with you as you prepare a gift basket, or ask their opinion on what to write in a get-well card. Including your child in these scenarios will allow them to ask questions and feel like they are contributing. It will also tonight curiosity and allow opportunities for you to share your values, or otherwise teach them compassionate behaviors.
Another thing we can do is when they arrive home from school, ask questions beyond “What did you learn today”, by asking questions that make them consider their friend’s experiences. Instead of “Did you perform well” you could ask “How did that lesson make you feel” or “How did your friend feel when you said or did that today”. This invites them to consider their own feelings and the feelings they witnessed their friend experience. If their reactions to similar circumstances differ when they pertain to themselves versus their peers, see it as an opportunity to teach them that all people are equal, and their feelings should be just as valid as their own.
These are two ways we can begin to incorporate higher-level thinking into our children’s consideration of their daily lives. They won’t necessarily pick up on it on their own; it’s likely they are at an age where their own human experience is the only one they consider, so invite them to consider others whenever possible to help them understand compassion, and pass it along.
If you would like to learn more about bullying, contact Simple Acts of Care and Kindness at 866-459-7225 or visit www.simpleacts.org for additional information.
Who Is at Increased Risk for Bullying? | Corona, CA
Bullying happens, and any child can be bullied for several reasons. Unfortunately, however, some individuals become a target of bullying more than others. Whether children are spreading hate online or in person, the consequences can be damaging for the recipient. Whether your child is the direct recipient or an indirect observer, bullying is so common, it’s likely every child will have some relationship with bullying.
Students seen as being ‘different’ or ‘non-conforming’ to their peers are at an increased risk of being the recipient of bullying. Children with disabilities, members of the LGBTQ community, those who are overweight, those perceived as insecure, and the quiet ones are all potential targets of being ‘othered’ and bullied because of it. Instead of being accepted for who they are, these students are made to feel poorly about the ways they were born, and how they move through the world.
What’s worse, is that many targets of bullying aren’t speaking to their families or teachers about their experience. Many times, they feel hopeless, that they won’t be believed, or that if they were to share, an adult will take actions that result in retaliation against them once out of the adult’s sight. As an adult, it’s important to make your child or student feel heard, safe, and take actionable steps that work to mitigate the chances of retaliation.
If you would like to learn more about bullying, contact Simple Acts of Care and Kindness at 866-459-7225 or visit www.simpleacts.org for additional information.
Bullying Can Feel Like a Taboo Topic for Kids | Corona, CA
On average, 160,000 students around the nation stay home daily because they fear being bullied at school. What’s more, it’s likely parents are unaware their child is being bullied. Unfortunately, kids can feel shame and social pressure to keep this information to themselves. Some may even feel that if they did share their experience, it would either fail to help the situation or make things worse. It’s important to understand that bullying happens, that it could be happening to your child and the reasons why he or she might not bring this to your attention. Here are a few things that may be happening in the background of your child’s experience that may keep them from sharing.
Labeling. Children do not possess the understanding that what they do and say to one another matters, and carries real-world implications. On the playground, a child’s reputation can be created in an instant and stay with them throughout their elementary school experience. This label can be anything from “timid” to “tattle tale”. It’s important to differentiate for a child what is important to share with an adult, and what is playground banter.
Retaliation. Adults can only do so much when it comes to bullying intervention. Adults can certainly converse with the bully to understand what is going on and address the concerns of the bullied child. Yet, they can’t always be around to monitor the behavior or intervene when things escalate. When a bully gets confronted about his or her actions, it tells them someone (likely the child being bullied) told on them. In the moments when no one is looking are when acts of retaliation can occur.
Being believed. Sadly, many children don’t think their parents will believe they are being bullied, or be victim blamed. Children may also take responsibility for the bully’s actions because they believe themselves unworthy of being treated kindly, or the cause of the bully’s behavior. It’s important to listen to your child and allow their feelings to be validated before taking action such as speaking with their teacher or the bully’s parents.
It’s useless. Research tends to support the notion that telling a parent is unlikely to stop bullying. All too often, when a child shares their situation with an adult, it is met with “toughen up”, “it’s a part of life”, or “he’s only doing it because he likes you and doesn’t know how else to express his feelings”. These are dangerous lessons to teach children about how to deal with these situations. It dismisses them, their feelings, and the actions of the bully, and teaches them that they should accept the way others treat them, rather than how to appropriately deal with the situation.
Shame. Shame and embarrassment are real feelings children carry around their bullying experience. When a child feels ashamed for any reason or embarrassed by the actions and reactions of their peers, it’s less likely they will speak up. They have to live with these feelings at school around their peers and might fear their parents will make them feel this way at home.
Bullying is never okay, and the victim’s feelings are always valid. Your child may not bring their experience to your attention, so it’s important to listen and encourage them to share their feelings. If they say things that may hint to instances of being bullied, but won’t tell you outright, it may be a good idea to speak with their teacher to learn more. That may allow you an avenue to begin asking the right questions at home and get to the bottom of why they may be acting strangely or quietly at home.
If you would like to learn more about simple acts of kindness, contact Simple Acts of Care and Kindness at 866-459-7225 or visit www.simpleacts.org for additional information.
Cyber Bullying: What to Look for and How to Stop It | Corona, CA
March 23, 2022 | Beau Yarbrough, Los Angeles Daily News
Most students report having been cyber bullied, but some schools have been able to reduce incidents by hiring additional counselors and creating online portals to report bullying and putting links to them everywhere.
(TNS) — Today’s kids face bullying and other dangers in two worlds, one online and the other offline.
“Parenting is parenting and digital spaces are just another place that kids hang out,” said Stephanie M. Reich, professor of education at UC Irvine.
A new Southern California News Group analysis shows that 33.5 percent of California secondary students reported being bullied or harassed in the past 12 months in an anonymous survey distributed in three-quarters of California school districts.
But the same kind of practical advice parents give their children before heading to school or a friend’s house can also protect them from cyber bullying online.
“When your kid is little and they want to go to the park, you don’t just open the door and say ‘There you go,’” Reich said.
According to a survey conducted between May and June 2021 by the Cyberbullying Research Center, 23.2 percent of children in America had been cyber bullied, with the highest numbers experienced by 15 year olds, 27.7 percent of whom had said they’d been bullied.
Cyber bullying can take many forms, from messages or social media posts intended to upset the target, online gossip, recording and posting offline bullying online, or impersonating bullying victims or creating doctored images to defame them.
In a 2018 Pew Research Center survey, 59 percent of teens surveyed said they’d experienced cyber bullying at some point.
“People always think about it as this dark shadowy thing that nobody is aware of that’s somehow different than what bullying is like,” Reich said. “But cyber bullying is a lot like in-person bullying.”
The consequences of cyber bullying, however, can be more severe than offline bullying, according to the National Institutes of Health. Cyber bullying victims are more likely to suffer from depression than those who are bullied in other ways, for example.
There are school districts in California that have much lower reported rates of bullying — some as low as one-third the statewide average. The rates are typically a result of improving school mental health climates, hiring additional counselors and implementing more robust anti-bullying policies and procedures.
More and more, school districts are taking what happens online as seriously as what happens on campus, according to Loretta Whitson, executive director of California Association of School Counselors.
“I can tell you that, many times, kids were pretty upset about being suspended when they (bullied) online, when they were at home,” she said. “But it disrupted education, and that was the rule.”
Districts with low rates of reported bullying often create online portals to report bullying and put links to them everywhere, including on students’ Chromebooks or other district-issued devices, by posting QR codes around campus and placing links on district and school websites. They also sometimes monitor how students use district devices and Internet use, flagging signs of bullying.
Jurupa Unified in Riverside County has both widespread links to the district’s bullying reporting line and uses software to flag when students visit inappropriate websites, including those dealing with drug use or self-harm.
The reporting tools have been getting a workout in the past two years.
“Since the pandemic, even during the virtual year, the actionable reports that have been put in have greatly increased,” said Monty Owens, the district’s director of educational equity.
The biggest way the districts combat cyber bullying, though, is the same way they combat it offline: By changing the school and district culture.
“One of the key characteristics of schoolyard bullying is that there’s a bunch of bystanders standing by, watching, not doing anything,” Reich said. “It’s the same in digital spaces. We want to train kids to intervene.”
That training is taking place in school districts with lower bullying rates. But Reich says there’s more work to do off school grounds to combat bullying.
“It’s really about a community that doesn’t tolerate it on the playground and they don’t tolerate it in digital spaces,” she said.
To get ahead of the issue, Reich said children should learn empathy to help prevent cyber bullying.
“If you’re empathetic, you’re not going to hurt others online and you’re less likely to tolerate it happening to other people online,” she said.
And that includes empathy for the bullies, too.
“Cyber bullies are often cyber-victims themselves,” she said.
Plus, she said, “they often have households that are not great. They have very neglectful parents or very laissez faire ones. They’re usually bullies because they’re trying to assert control.”
Reich believes parents should teach their children to be aware of the possible dangers online and how to avoid them, as well as develop trust with children so they are willing to share about things that concern or upset them.
“If you cultivate a high quality relationship with your child, you can have those conversations with them, whether it’s about digital spaces or offline,” Reich said.
With her own children, she gave her kids access to digital devices and the Internet gradually, based on their developmental stage. And just like talking about the hazards one could encounter on the way to the park, she spoke to her children about how algorithms for various social platforms shove engaging content at users without any concern about whether it’s healthy or accurate.
“We’re just trying to cultivate our kids being conscious and aware when they’re using devices,” she said.
And for parents looking for specific practical advice, the Boy Scouts — who have an online safety training course for scouts as young as first grade — have some tips:
Common types of cyber bullying
- Flaming, trolling or trash talking by sending or posting hostile messages intended to upset others
- Recording someone being harassed or bullied, then posting the video online for public viewing
- Identify theft or impersonation
- Doctored images
- Physical threats
- Spreading rumors or public shaming
Signs a child may be a victim of cyber bullying
- Avoids computer, cell phone and other devices
- Appears stressed when receiving an email, instant message or text message
- Withdraws from family and friends
- Reluctant to attend school or social events
- Avoids conversations about their computer use
- Exhibits signs of low self-esteem, including depression or fear
- Has declining grades
- Has poor eating or sleeping habits
- Acts secretive when online
What to do if your child is being cyber bullied
- Encourage your child not to respond to the bully
- Do not erase the messages or pictures, and take screenshots and save them as evidence
- Try to identify the individual doing the cyber bullying, even if the cyber bully is anonymous
- If the cyber/gaming bullying is criminal — such as threats of violence, extortion, obscene or harassing phone calls or text messages, stalking, hate crimes or child pornography — contact the police
This story is part of a 2021 Data Fellowship with the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism.
If you would like to learn more about random acts of kindness, contact Simple Acts of Care and Kindness at 866-459-7225 or visit www.simpleacts.org for additional information.
It’s Time the World Stands Up to Bullying | Corona, CA
When it comes to bullying, there isn’t just the bullied that is affected. Of course, the victim hurt on many different levels. But the bully is also affected – after all, hurt people hurt people. Even those that are a witness to said bullying are affected. No one likes to see someone hurting. Therefore, it is so important that we combat bullying any way we can.
In the United States alone, 20 percent of children between the ages of 12 and 18 say they have experienced some type of bullying. That is a heartbreaking statistic. But if you think of it on a global scale, one-third of the world’s youth are bullied. Those who did the bullying had more social influence, more money, or were physically stronger than the person they bullied. You see, they have this idea that they’re “better” than you. And unfortunately, it can happen at any point in time. The bullying will take place in a school cafeteria, hallway, classroom, school grounds, or bathroom. Some bullies also use texting and online platforms to target their victims.
But there is hope… In 2008, Canada celebrated the first International Stand Up to Bullying Day. It started in February, but it is celebrated twice a year. And today is that day. Schools around the world are celebrating this anti-bullying tour de force by wearing a pink shirt to spread awareness of this very important cause. Because this can’t be done by one student alone – we all need to stand up to bullying if it’s ever going to stop.
So, wear that pink shirt with pride and put your foot down against bullying.
If you would like to learn more about random acts of kindness, contact Simple Acts of Care and Kindness at 866-459-7225 or visit www.simpleacts.org for additional information.