Science and Education

Bullying In School: This Could Happen To Your Child

April
25

As parents, a lot of us are residing in our personal kind of utopia or “wonderland” when it comes to bullying in schools. Upon hearing news of school bullying, we nod our heads or make other understanding gestures, perhaps voice how bad the rise in school bullying incidents are becoming, and after that turn away and proceed on with our lifestyles believing “bullying will never affect my child”.

Does this sound like you? Well, it was me, until that life altering day some years ago involving my eldest daughter who was enrolled in elementary school at the time.

I arrived home from work to find my spouse an emotional disaster and our daughter mildly sedated in her bedroom. Our daughter had came home from school, wandered into our residence and fell on the floor, sobbing and crying uncontrollably.

Over the next few hours we discovered about the tragedy which had been playing out right under our noses for in excess of a year. A crowd of girls had targeted my daughter and persistently, every day, made her the victim of put-downs, ridicule and threats while at school.

She was too scared to notify us what was going on and for our part, we were too preoccupied to identify many of the warning signs of bullying in school that she had exhibited time and again such as missing school, headaches, not sleeping, and just a string of on-going illness to avoid having to attend school each day.

Within a small number of days, our child became severely stressed out to the situation that she started to speak about suicide and at this point we finally “got it”, that this was more than just juvenile wrangling, and contacted the school and sought after professional help. Within a week, our child, who was only age 11 at the time and who had never been away from home over night was in hospital on a “suicide watch”!

It took nearly 6 months of weekly therapy, and being home schooled, before our youngster could return to school (a different school in our town) and start to rebuild her self-esteem and self-belief in herself as a worthwhile person.

The real “sadness” in all this was that I was her half-time classroom teacher during the early stages of her distress and never suspected what was occurring!

So I implore you, please be proactive about bullying in school and learn what the signs of bullying at school are and how to defend and look after your child against sort of social terrorism. As my account illustrates, you can’t always rely on your child to say “Help me, I am being bullied!”

It no longer would seem to be a case of “if my child is going to be bullied in school” but rather “when my child is going to be bullied at school”.