How to Prevent Bullying in Schools? A Guide For Parents & Teachers

Bullying hurts. It hurts both physical and mental. It affects many aspects of the victim’s life for as long as he can remember. Imagine seeing your once a happy, ambitious child coming home with a solemn, gloomy face. Without a word, he continues his daily life as usual but you noticed that something is off.

Just look at this appalling data that shows how many cases of bullying in school in Malaysia alone:

• Between 2012 and 2015 – 14,000 cases of bullying, which most of them are physical bullying.
• 2015 – 2,968 cases are reported (According to the Ministry of Education’s statistics).
• 2016 – 3,448 bullying cases.
• 2017 – In just four months, 221 cyber harassment cases recorded according to CyberSecurity Malaysia.

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Perhaps your child just went through one of his traumatic experience at school – which is a victim of the bullies. As a parent, what would you do to prevent bullying in school, specifically for your child?

Let Us Prevent Bullying in School!

• The Parents

One of the most important thing for a parent to prevent bullying and dealing with bullies is to know (and realize) when your child is one of the victims. Here are the things that you should do to prevent or to deal with bullying:

1. Establish good communication with your children.
   Often ask questions and get your children talking about their social situation everyday.
   
   
2. Get to know who they are friends with – the one they get along and which one they don’t. Listen attentively when they are talking about their friends and colleagues at school.
   
   
3. Listen to understand before you respond. Listen carefully to what your children are saying. Typical parents often feel annoyed or easily irritated when their children are talking, but please, keep your emotions in check. All your child need is your understanding, reassurance, and support.
   
   
4. Always communicate.
   And let your child knows that it is okay to share everything with you. You should check in everyday to know how things are going on at school. Speak in a calm, friendly tone and emphasize that his safety and well-being are important to you.
   
   
5. Practice simple and direct phrases with your child to stop bullying behaviour. Remember, it should be simple and direct, instead of antagonistic phrases.
   
   
6. Build his confidence. Reinforce positive behaviour, encourage hobbies and extracurricular activities and social skills to enhance his confidence. Praises also help to boost this confidence.
   
   
7. Role-play “what if” scenarios. This is one of the most effective ways to teach your children to stop bullying. Well, action speaks louder than words isn’t it? Role-play a few important scenarios by teaching him to speak in a strong, firm voice. Avoid whining and crying as it will only encourage bully.
   
   
8. Promote positive body language such as tell your child to always looking directly at the eyes when he is talking to anyone, especially anyone that is bothering him. Tell him to hold his head up so he appears more confident and braver.
   
   
   

• The Teacher

1. Building a good relationship between the teacher and the students. By doing this, the students will have the potential to be more open to talk about their bullying experience. The formation of trusted relationships and continuous communication will create a safe and comfortable environment for the students, thus reduces and prevent bullying in schools.
   
   
2. The role of trained counsellors and certified psychologist at school. Counsellors at school should be more understanding of the students while having a certified psychologist helps to promote “sharing concern” practices and treatments.
   
   
3.  Whole school intervention by changing the culture. It is important for the teachers and the school to change the culture surround bullying, harassment or any negative incidences. Once such behaviours become unacceptable within the community, the do-er becomes an outlier and thus, it takes away the motivation to engage in this type of activity.
   
   
4. More and more awareness on bullying. Hold a campaign on bullying, where teachers can highlight the clear definition and understanding of what constitutes bullying behaviour and a code of conduct of unacceptable students’ behaviour. Always educate and create an awareness in the school about bullying.

My children encountered one of the bullies. What should I teach him to prevent bullying in such situation?

Teach and remind your child to react in these ways when dealing with a bully.

• Don’t let the bully make him feel bad. If the bully makes him feel bad, remind him to think of only the positive things about himself. Ignore all the bad things that are being said by the bully.
  
  
• Just tell the bully! In a calm but determined voice, tell the bully his feelings, why he is feeling that way and what he wants the bully to do.
  
  
• Follow your instincts. If the bully asks for his homework, and he knows something bad is going to happen, just give the bully his homework and walk off with confidence. Remind him to immediately tell an adult of what just happened.
  
  
• Treat others the way you want to be treated. THIS. Be kind and respect other children just like how he wants to be respected. Tell him to stand up for the other victims and ask them to stand up for him as well.

Take Action & Prevent Bullying in School Starting from Today!

If your child or anyone around you are the victims of the bullies, please know that he or she is not alone. There are plenty of people that are always there to help you. Act today and let’s prevent bullying together. Help end the vicious cycle by reporting it and know that the situation can be helped as long as you reach to these good Samaritans:

1. Talian Kasih

2. BeFrienders

Don’t let your child be the victim of the bullies and don’t let them be a bully! Educate your child with more parenting articles and baby products only at Motherhood.com.my.