Bullying is not a new phenomenon, but it has become intense and more magnified among children today. Bullying is not new to our society, to our world, or even our history. However, thanks to social media with all of its various outlets and resources, the bullying can continue twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
When many of us were children, if you were the child being bullied, you usually got a break when you got home after school, safe with your family. Now thanks to social media the bully can have continual affect through our electronic devices. Our various forms of hand held media screens have brought the world to our fingertips, but that unfortunately includes the bully. Many times the bully takes advantage of the opportunity to hide behind the screen and can be even more brutal than they might otherwise be in a face-to-face situation.
Luckily, there are ways to help your child deal with bullying and steps you can take to alleviate the situation. As a parent, you can work to keep the lines of communication open. You can also give your child some practical guidelines and tools to deal with a bullying situation. Below are some facts to help understand the issue as well as a video resource to help stop, or at least avoid it.
To help get the conversation started you can bring your family to see Shrek the Musical, Jr. at Center for the Arts at Wesley Chapel on Saturday, November 19th. For more information and to purchase tickets click here: tbttt.org/shrek-jr-musical
Facts & Information about Bullying:
55 Interesting Facts about Bullying
http://www.factretriever.com/bullying-facts
If your child is experiencing bullying, here is a wonderful short video on:
Ways to Stop Bullying
Where you can learn even more:
“Over 13 million American kids will be bullied this year, making it the most common form of violence experienced by young people in the nation. The new documentary film BULLY, directed by Sundance and Emmy-award winning filmmaker, Lee Hirsch, brings human scale to this startling statistic, offering an intimate, unflinching look at how bullying has touched five kids and their families.
BULLY is a beautifully cinematic, character-driven documentary. At its heart are those with huge stakes in this issue whose stories each represent a different facet of America’s bullying crisis. Filmed over the course of the 2009/2010 school year, BULLY opens a window onto the pained and often endangered lives of bullied kids, revealing a problem that transcends geographic, racial, ethnic and economic borders. It documents the responses of teachers and administrators to aggressive behaviors that defy “kids will be kids” clichés, and it captures a growing movement among parents and youths to change how bullying is handled in schools, in communities and in society as a whole.
Parents play a vital role in supporting their kids, promoting upstander rather than bystander behavior, and teaching and modeling empathy in the home.”
From The Bully Project