Author: Yolandi Singleton (Supervisor: Assessments and
Therapy Unit)
It is safe to
say that most parents are sick and tired of being confronted with the reality
of bullying at schools and in communities. The thing is, many parents get
bullied at work as well and it would then make it hard to really think
rationally about it when their own children are involved – whether their
children are the one who bullies or gets bullied.
Many
conversations, discussions, and meetings have been held globally to discuss
bullying as a social phenomenon and it barely looks like much has changed if we
look at what gets broadcast on social media on such a regular basis,
including videos where children get badly assaulted or even killed by fellow
learners. In America, it has somehow gone so far that learners get shot at
schools, leaving the whole country to scratch their heads, trying to strategize
what they will do and how to prevent this from happening. In our country, it is not that different. There
is however not a quick fix for this issue.
What always
strikes my attention when we conduct specialised socio-emotional assessments on
children from various age groups and come across information where the child
discloses being bullied or being the one who bullies other children, is that
most of the time both parties have quite a sad background, including some past
trauma like loss, domestic violence, regular verbal arguments between parents
that frightens the child that they will end of getting divorced and then when
parents actually get divorced, amongst other things as well.
In my articles to
come, the reasons for children practicing bullying behaviour, signs to look out
for that could indicate that your child might get bullied, what you can do if
you find out your child gets bullied and how to try to prevent this, will be
discussed.
In a nutshell,
bullying can be described as a repetitive and deliberate act to harm another
with the unconscious attempt to gain control and dominate.
Types of
bullying:
Direct:
Physical –
aggressive act towards another such as punching, kicking, slapping, pinching,
throwing an object towards another etc.
Emotional – to
humiliate another, exclusion, intimidation and threatening
Verbal –
swearing and using degrading or discriminating words towards another
Cyber – making
use of social media to verbally and/ or emotionally attack or humiliate someone
– the attempt here is to degrade someone in a large crowd or to scare and
degrade someone specific through direct individual text messages or to threaten
someone to expose inappropriate or sexually explicit photos of them
Indirect:
To incite people
against someone specific with the intention to cause the other person to feel
isolated or to spread gossip with the intention to turn others against someone.
It is important
to never underestimate the impact of bullying on a child and to be attentive to
the possible signs that could indicate a red flag that a child gets bullied. I
will therefore cover all the signs of bullying in my next article.
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