If there is a worse feeling than seeing your child get off the bus with a bloody nose and scratched face, it's the one you get as you listen to your sweet little kindergartner tell you how he was beat up "by a big bully, Mom!" I was so upset I was shaking as I dialed the school. I want my kids to learn, to have fun and to work at school, but most of all I want them to feel safe and in one fell swoop that illusion was shattered.
I think all of us remember some incidents from our childhoods of being bullied in some way. As a girl I never got my nose bloodied, but I did have a group of older boys hawk loogies into my hair every time I walked down the hallway to my locker, but things have changed in just a few short decades. Thanks to the advent of the Internet with its warren of chat rooms, anonymous websites and Facebook comments and the increased sophistication of cellphones, bullies have a whole host of newer and subtler ways to torment their victims. A spate of recent suicides due to bullying, called "bullycide," has only underlined the severity of the problem and society's slowness in catching up.
And yet here's an interesting statistic: While 90 percent of 4th to 8th graders say they have been the victim of a bully, 60 percent of the same respondents say they have bullied someone else. To make it even more complicated, only 56 percent said they had witnessed an act of bullying. Clearly bullying is as confusing to kids as it is prevalent.
There are not a lot of clear answers about what works best in preventing bullying and bullycide but one thing is for sure: the more parents, educators and children are aware of the problem, the less likely they are to stand by and let it happen. Which is why this week,Anti-Bullying Week, is so important. Parents and teachers all over the country are taking this opportunity to talk to their kids about what bullying means, what it feels like and what to do about it. I know I am. Because in my son's case the school responded saying that since no one had seen "the fight" that both children would be disciplined. My son got a "ticket." And I got a hard lesson about how bullying works these days.
Has your child ever been bullied or bullied another kid? What are you telling your kids about bullying?