Tips for Helping your Child Handle Bullying
As the school year progresses, chances are your child will experience bullying. He or she may not be the victim, but could still witness it in the classroom, hallway or on the playground.
October is National Bullying Prevention Month, and Drama Kids International is here to share valuable tips on how to help your child handle bullying.
How common is bullying?
Bullying is a very common thing, with more than one out of every five students having reported being bullied. Female students are more likely to experience a form of bullying.
There are three types of bullying—verbal, social and physical. Students who are bullied report that they are called names, insulted, pushed, shoved, tripped, spit on and excluded from activities on purpose. Bullying is reported to take place in the hallways or stairways at school, in the classroom, the cafeteria, outside on school grounds, on the bus, or in the bathroom/locker room.
How to help your child
First, your child must know how to identify bullying. It’s likely that he or she has been teased by a sibling or friend at some point, which is usually not harmful and done in a playful manner. But your child will need to know that when the teasing crosses the line into being hurtful, unkind and constant, it has become bullying.
Be sure children know it is not their fault if they have been the victim of bullying and reassure them that together you will figure out what to do about it. It’s also important for your child to know that it’s OK to speak to a teacher, principal or counselor about what is going on. Keep the lines of communication open and support your child.
ACT UP! to Stop Bullying
We know how detrimental bullying can be for children, which is why we created the ACT UP! to Stop Bullying program. This is a series of workshops designed for third through fifth graders, which utilizes student participatory drama activities and group discussions to teach children about the various forms of bullying and how they can properly respond. In ACT UP! to Stop Bullying, children will learn things like:
- The different forms of bullying, including physical and verbal attacks and more subtle forms like leaving someone out from a group on purpose
- Different roles they can play when bullying occurs, such as silent participant, observer or preventer
- How to model good behavior
Bullying is something that must be taken seriously. If you would like to learn more about our ACT UP! to Stop Bullying initiative, reach out! Our Drama Kids team would love to see it come to a school near you!