Before We Start
Do you know that nearly 30% of children who are in school face some form of bullying during their academic years? Are you aware of the fact that cyberbullying contributes equally as physical and confrontational bullying?
It is almost impossible to stop your kid from getting bullied without teacher or parental intervention. There are various ways to stop bullying in the physical as well as the online world.
If your kid is getting bullied, it is important to detect it earlier because the longer it goes, the risks associated will be more impactful. Therefore, parents should understand the different types of bullying and the risks associated with them.
In this article, we will focus on the solutions of bullying to protect your kid from bullying and how you can increase your kid's awareness about bullying.
Table of Contents
Part 1: Types of School Bullying
Part 2: What Are the Risks of Being Bullied?
Part 3: What's the Solution of Bullying?
- Using Professional Parental Control App
- Help Kids Understanding Bullying
- Teach Kids about the Anti-Bullying Tricks
- Contact the Authorities
- Talk to Kids about How to Treat Others
Part 4: Conclusion
Types of School Bullying
Before jumping on to the possible solution of bullying, you should understand that your kid can face different forms of bullying in school as well as in the online world.
1. Verbal Abuse
The most common form of bullying in school, especially in the lower classes, is verbal bullying. Verbal bullying is all about harming the sentiment of a kid by using offensive words and phrases.
This includes calling by humiliating names, belittling in front of others, using swear words and racial slurs, belittling and insulting, passing offensive sexual remarks, and much more. Basically, the victims get insulted publicly based on how they look, act, behave, and anything particular about them.
2. Physical Bullying
Unfortunately, it is quite common in school for physically strong students to physically hurt weak students. This could be students in the same as well as students from higher classes making students from lower classes their victim. Starting from strong shoves to kicks and punches, physical bullying has no limit.
Lack of defense from the weak students and victim make the matter worst as they can get physically hurt to such an extent that they may need immediate medical attention.
3. Sexual Harassment
Sexual harassment could be both verbal and physical. The bully can verbally abuse the victim with humiliating sexual terms in front of others. The practice of slut-shaming is quite common with the use of derogatory phrases to describe the physical appearance of the victim.
But things get even worse when the bully starts touching the victim forcefully without consent. This can go as far as forcefully undressing, publicly molesting, and even worse.
4. Online Bullying
The online world is full of bullies and trollers, especially on social media platforms and instant messaging apps. The bullies could be complete strangers as well as known faces. Anything that is intended to hurt, insult, embarrass and harass another online user can be termed as cyberbullying.
This includes messaging the victim privately and in group chats, trolling on posts and photos, and creating memes, and much more.
Related Read: [Solved] 10 Signs of Cyberbullying
What Are the Risks of Being Bullied?
The reason why parents need to know how to stop bullying is that the risks of their kids being bullied are extreme.
Unless detected at the earliest, the risks could propagate to deep levels leading to permanent mental and emotional issues. Here are the common risks of being bullied.
1. Social Isolation
When a victim is bullied in front of his classmates, he gets humiliated to a deeper level. Out of shame, he starts to isolate himself from others, and others start avoiding him as well.
This eventually leads to social isolation not just from classmates but also from society. The victim starts to lead a lonely lifestyle, and he starts to get social anxiety as he grows up to face the world.
2. Depression
When a person is lonely and has low self-esteem due to recent bullying incidents, he starts to get depressed. If the bullying continues for long, a sense of hopelessness begins to develop in him, and he is likely to stay in a very low mood all the time.
Depression can bring a permanent change in the victim's mental, emotional, and behavioral aspects of life.
3. Contemplating Suicide
Once the victim stays depressed for a long-time and a permanent sense of hopelessness grows inside his mind, he starts considering himself worthless for living.
Naturally, he starts contemplating suicidal thoughts, and if no mental support arrives in time, he may attempt suicide as well. Suicide from depression and bullying among kids is not uncommon.
4. Aggressive Behavior
A victim of bullying shows aggressive and unpleasant behavior with his family members without any reason. In fact, the victim will stay agitated all the time because he is under high stress thinking about what the bullies will do next and what his classmates and friends are thinking.
Deep inside, he is angry as well for getting bullied constantly, and behaving aggressively with the family members is a way of giving out his frustration.
5. Poor Performance
When under high stress, anxiety, and depression, it is not possible for anyone to concentrate on anything. Therefore, the academic performance of victims of bullying is slowly but steadily starts to deteriorate. He will make excuses not to go to school to avoid bullies and classmates.
What's the Solution of Bullying?
The first step of bullying solution is to know about your kid being bullied. Only when you know that your kid is getting bullied or bullying others, you can take steps to educate them about bullying and anti-bullying tactics.
Similarly, you can intervene and ask the parents of bullies to get involved. Here is the plan of action to follow to protect your kid.
1. Using Professional Parental Control App
Kids get bullied in their schools and even online, but they do not share it with parents out of shame and hesitation. That is where a professional parental control app can be extremely useful. This is because you can monitor your kid's phone activities such as calls, text messages, social media interactions, and even browser history.
From these, you can come to a conclusion if he is a victim of bullying not just online but also in the physical world. We recommend KidsGuard Pro parental control app for complete monitoring of your kid's phone remotely from your phone or computer.
KidsGuard Pro parental control app supports Android and iOS devices. Here we will introduce KidsGuard Pro for Android in detail including its features and installation steps.
If your kid is an iOS user. You can click the "View Demo" button to know more features about KidsGuard Pro for iOS.
How Professional Parental Control App Help?
Here are the features of KidsGuard Pro for Android that help you understand if your kid is being bullied.
View Kid's Social Media:
Cyberbullying takes place mostly on social media platforms and instant messaging apps. KidsGuard Pro lets you monitor the messages sent and received on your kid's phone.
By analyzing the messages, you can clearly understand if your kid is getting bullied, and you can have the identity of the person who is bullying him.
Capture Live Screenshots:
Cyberbullying takes place on social media posts, on gaming chats, educational forums, and likewise. Therefore, KidsGuard Pro has the feature of taking real-time screenshots so that parents can check what their kid is doing on his phone.
By analyzing the screenshots, you can definitely come to a conclusion if he is bullied or if he is bullying others.
Read Kid's Text Messages:
Apart from social media interactions, your kid can get bullied directly through text messages. Not just that, when your kid is bullied, he may share it with his close friends through text messages for some respite.
That is why KidsGuard Pro for Android allows parents to check their kid's text messages in the proper format.
Take Secret Pictures:
It is not possible for you to monitor your kid when he is away from you. However, KidsGuard Pro for Android lets you check your kid's surroundings using his phone camera in real-time.
You can check t from your phone or computer and find out if he is bullied, and you can even take pictures to get evidence for future actions.
View Call Logs and Record Phone Calls:
Your kid can get bullied on phone calls as well. In fact, when your kid has been bullied, he is likely to share it with his close friends on phone calls. That is why KidsGuard Pro for Android lets users record the phone calls on the target phone remotely.
You can listen to the recorded phone conversation of your kid and understand his state of mind. Besides, you can always check the call log and see who called and who he talked to.
Check Phone Browsing History:
The most effective way of knowing if your kid is being bullied in school or other places is by checking his browser history. This is because when a person is being bullied, he looks up the internet to find a solution.
If he is depressed and entertained suicidal thoughts, you can get to know by the searches he made through his web browser. Therefore, KidsGuard Pro for Android allows users to know the target phone's browser history with complete details.
Track Kid's Location:
Finally, you can track your kid's location live as well as check his location history. You can also set a Geofence so that you can get alerts when he crosses that Geofence.
This can prevent physical assaults and sexual harassment by bullies who often lure victims to visit their homes and to safe places for bullying and harassment.
2. Help Kids Understanding Bullying
You should make your kid understand everything about bullying so that he/she can identify when he/she is bullied and share the incident with you on the same day. The act of making them understand different forms of bullying makes you an open option for your kid to share the story without any hesitation.
Besides, let your kid know that you are always there to solve any bullying issue that he/she may face in the online as well as the physical world.
3. Teach Kids about the Anti-Bullying Tricks
Teach your kid not to let the situation get out of the hands so that the bullying act escalates. Tell them that if he/she is bullied in front of others for the first time, he/she should laugh at it with everyone else and not react badly so that the situation escalates.
It is generally found that bullies prey on those who keep quiet when they are being bullied. Therefore, ask your kid to be cheerful all the time rather than being shy and introverted.
Besides, make your kid understand about staying with a group of friends all the time because bullies prey on isolated kids. They should ask the bullies to stop politely by making eye contact.
Humor is a great tool to ask bullies to stop rather than being aggressive and picking up a fight. Moreover, make sure that your kid involves the teacher when the bullies persist with their act of bullying.
4. Contact the Authorities
The possible solution of bullying in most cases is to get the authorities involved. Let the teachers know about the bullying situation and get the parents of the victims involved so that they can take steps on their sides.
You can also face the bullies and bullies are always afraid of the parents of their victims. You can ask the teacher to keep an eye on the victims and bullies and change seats and sections if required. You can also get the official local authorities such as Civil Rights Division if required.
5. Talk to Kids about How to Treat Others
It could be quite possible that your kid is not a victim but a bully instead. Rather than getting humiliated by teachers and parents of those victims whom your kid is bullying, you should educate your kid and take strict actions to change his/her behavior and mental thoughts. Tell your kid why bullying is wrong and that he/she should apologize to all those whom he/she has bullied and make them friends.
Teach your kid how to treat and behave with others with politeness and compassion. Ask your kid to stop himself from any aggressive and offensive act. Your kid should choose the words properly. Ask your kids how they will feel if others bully them, and if the problem persists, you can rebuke them in front of others to give them the taste of their own medicine to restore the sense in them.
Conclusion
If you have kids, you should take bullying seriously. Don't take it for granted that every kid has to face bullying in their academic years, and this makes them strong. Everyone's capability of handling bullying is not the same, and there are various risks and adverse effects associated.
The best way on how to stop bullying is to install a parental monitoring app on your kid's phone and KidsGuard Pro parental control app is the best app. Besides, always have an open conversation with your kid every day to know if he/she is being bullied.