The best thing you can do to keep your child safe from bullying

Follow me on Twitter @drClaire If you want to stop your child from being bullied — or better yet, prevent it in the first place — there is a very simple thing you can do: talk to your child. I don’t so much mean talk to your child about standing up to bullies, or about letting a teacher know if they see or experience bullying, although both of those are important messages for your child to hear. I mean literally just talk to your child, so that you can better get to know him or her — and better get to know what their daily life is like. As parents, we like to think that we know this already. But the reality is that once our children head off to school we don’t know everything about them. We don’t know what all of their interactions with others are like; we don’t know all the details, such as who they sit with at lunch, what happens in the locker room, or what happens when they get on the bus. That’s where the talking comes in. According to stopbullying.gov, talking to your child for 15 minutes a day can make all the difference when it comes to helping keep them safe from bullying. As any parent will attest, talking with our children doesn’t always go the way we think or hope it will. The answers to “How was your day?” or “What did you do today?” tend to be “Fine” and “Nothing,” neither of which are conversation starters. In general, our interactions often tend to be logistical and closed-ended, like “Did you get your homework done?” or ...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Behavioral Health Children's Health Parenting Source Type: blogs