Has your child experienced bullying at school? Or do you suspect your child might be the bully sometimes?

Bullying is awful to see and destructive to the victim and perpetrator alike. It is an inappropriate use of power by one individual or group over another. It is often motivated by fear or a sense of inadequacy and expressed by the need to control.

Your children can give you some indicators that things are not right at school, by their behaviour at home. A friend of mine has a child of preschool age. He became very tearful and distressed at home after days at preschool. It appeared that he was being bullied at preschool. She spoke to the teachers about this and they said they would keep an eye on him and his interactions with other children. She was challenged to consider his need to build resilience by learning to manage the bullies at preschool, and on the other hand to consider the cost to his emotional well being of expecting him to do so at such a young age. Eventually after nothing changed and the preschool teachers gave her the message that "this is just the way boys are" she decided to change preschools and she now has a much happier child.

In NSW the Department of Education encourages schools to develop their own locally based anti-bullying policy as part of their broader student welfare policy. Advice for parents generally follows. The NSW Education Department website gives an example of an anti-bullying policy at Barrenjoey High School that I think contains some sound advice for parents and children.

However any bullying policy is only as good as its implementation. When teachers are dismissive of the impact of bullying or just too busy to follow up on looking out for the bullied child, parents need to take action. Christian parents need to speak out when they see or hear that children are being bullied. Another friend of mine, observed a child being bullied after school as he waited for his parents to collect him. After speaking to the bullies, she also spoke to the child's parents and told them that she had seen him being bullied. She felt that as a Christian parent she needed to follow up on what she was observing. This made a significant difference in that little boy's life as the solution was as simple as changing the place where he waited for his parents to collect him.

In recent times the ways in which young people can be bullied has expanded to cyberspace to include social networking sites such as facebook and MySpace as well as to the ubiquitous mobile phone. The following advice about cyber-bullying is from the Australian Government website:

Stand up and speak out!
If you see or know about cyber-bullying happening to a friend, support them and report the bullying. You'd want them to do the same for you.

Don't forward on messages or pictures that may be offensive or upsetting to someone. Even though you may not have started it, you will be seen to be part of the cyber-bullying cycle.

Remember to treat others as you would like to be treated when communicating online.

We can be thankful that much of this advice reflects the Bible's teaching on how to treat others and to love our neighbours as ourselves. Have your children been bullied and what did you do?