Let your child know that it's not their fault. Bullying says more about the bully than the victim. Praise your child for doing the right thing by talking to you about it. Remind your child you're in this together. Reassure your child that you'll figure out what to do. Notify the school. Tell the principal, school nurse, or a counselor or teacher about the situation. Many schools, school districts, and after-school clubs have rules for responding to cyberbullying.
These vary by district and state. But before reporting the problem, let your child know that you plan to do so, so that you can work out a plan that makes you both feel comfortable. Encourage your child not to respond to cyberbullying. Doing so just makes the situation worse. Keep records. Keep screen shots of the threatening messages, pictures, and texts. These can be used as evidence with the bully's parents, school, employer, or even the police. Get help. If your son or daughter agrees, meeting with a therapist may help work through feelings.
Save, screenshot and print out all the messages as proof and evidence of cyberbullying. If you are being bullied, tell an adult immediately to get help solving the problem. Adopt a zero-tolerance policy for all types of bullying. Make it clear that any intimidation, harassment, or threatening behavior will be dealt with swiftly and seriously. School districts should have anti-bullying policies in place and everyone school administrators, teachers parents, and students should be aware of the policies at the start of every school year.
Incorporate Internet Safety Awareness classes into the curriculum. Engage students, parents, and teachers in discussions about bullying prevention. Have student councils or student panels address the issue to their peers at school-wide assemblies, PTA meetings, and other school-wide events.
Get everyone involved! Adapted and reprinted from safelyeverafter. By Pattie Fitzgerald. Save Pin FB More. Be the first to comment! No comments yet. Help another child who is being bullied by confronting the bully if they feel comfortable; or reporting it to an adult. We can help bully-proof our children by building self-confidence. Teach your child the skills of problem solving, decision making and assertive behavior. Model healthy self-esteem by valuing yourself, assertively standing up for yourself, and not allowing others to put you down, so your child knows what healthy self-esteem looks like.
Take a strong, unequivocal stance against bullying so your child knows exactly where you stand on the issue. Realize that in cyber world, the victim one day is often the bully the next.
Hold your child accountable when rules are not followed. Be careful about how you handle self-reported behavior. Children may not report behavior if they are afraid of being punished. In most cases, what children really need are help and guidance. The following rules may help:. Finally, keep computers in common areas of the house so monitoring can occur more easily and naturally. Restrict incoming communication with the use of software or programs designed to filter out bad or unknown internet users.
But remember, filtering software is not perfect. Our children are savvy. We cannot rely solely upon outside programs to keep them safe. Even though they may trust that friend implicitly, the reality is that friends come and go and there is no guarantee they are going to be friends forever. No matter what your teen does online, make sure they are aware of the privacy settings and tools offered by the organization. Go through each account with your child and help them set their privacy settings to the most secure settings.
This means making accounts private, preventing people from tagging them, requiring other people to get permission before sharing one of their photos, and so on. Kids should never share their address, cell phone number, or email address online. They should be careful about sharing too much information about where they go to school, especially if they have friends or followers online that they don't know really well.
Remind them that people are not always who they claim to be online. Even though the profile photo is of a teenage girl, that doesn't mean the person behind the account is actually a teenage girl.
It could be someone pretending to be a young girl in order to gather information on other teens. Some smartphones allow users to share their location with friends. This means that if they share their location with people, these people will always know where they are. Have a discussion with your child about who they can share their location with or if they can share it at all.
Likewise, some photos taken with smartphones already contain geotags that indicate where the photo was taken. People can use these photos to determine your child's location, even if they never mention where the photo was taken.
Your child needs to be mindful about which photos they are sharing and when. For instance, you may want them to refrain from posting vacation pictures until you have returned from vacation.
This way, you are not letting the entire online world know that no one is at your home for the next two weeks. Help your tweens and teens get in the habit of taking some time before posting.
For instance, they could create a post offline and then come back to it in an hour and decide if they still want to post it. Doing so will keep them from posting things that they may later regret. Cyberbullies may take what your child posted and use it against them in some way, so it might be helpful to encourage your child to take time to think before posting.
Of course, if someone wants to use something against them, it won't necessarily matter what the content is. But by taking their time to craft a post, your child will be able to think through what they are posting and determine whether or not it's something they want to say publicly. This is a good practice for kids in order to maintain a healthy relationship with social media.
You also need to teach your tween or teen how to practice digital etiquette. Using social media and other online tools is a privilege, not a right, and one that can be taken away if they are unable to use it responsibly.
Every month or so, sit down with your tween or teen and go through their social media accounts. Together, determine what posts may need to be deleted from their account. This exercise is especially important as they prepare to apply to college or look for a new job.
Many times, college recruiters and hiring managers will look through an applicant's social media accounts to get a feel for their personality and character. Together along with your teen, be sure your teen's posts and photos are sending the message they want others to receive. Remind your tween or teen that when they are using public computers or laptops at school or the library, they should log out of any account they use. This includes logging out of email, social media accounts, their school account, Amazon account, and any other account they may open.
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