How can we stop bullying?

Bullying is a repeated act of aggressive or harmful behavior toward another person. It can be done in many forms such as violence, rumors, mocking, cyber bullying, threats and many more. Bullying has become a major problem in our schools and has even caused multiple deaths. Why does this happen? Because children arent receiving the support they need and supervision. Any child is at risk for bullying, some more than others. Signs of bullying I found on stopbullying.gov include:

• Unexplainable injuries
• Lost or destroyed clothing, books, electronics, or jewelry
• Feeling sick or faking illness
• Changes in eating habits
• Difficulty sleeping or frequent nightmares
• loss of interest in schoolwork, or not wanting to go to school
• Sudden loss of friends or avoidance of social situations
• Feelings of helplessness or decreased self esteem
• Self-destructive behaviors

What do we do if we see these signs in a child? We must not ignore it. Many children being bullied are afraid to admit it. They fear that the child bullying them may become worse or that others would think he/she was a tattle tale. Bullying has three people: the bully, the victim and the bystander. The bully may show aggressive behavior and get in trouble alot. Bystanders are just as bad because they stand there and watch another person get bullied without helping them in any way. Bullying is an epidemic and needs to be stopped immediately. In the U.S. alone there have been atleast 14 cases of suicide due to bullying. (abcnews) This is an unnaceptable statistic. That most likely isnt all the deaths that have been caused because of bullying. This epidemic must be stopped with help from many people. Teachers now must report any case of bullying to higher-ups in the school and the school reports it to local officials if needed. On Violencepreventionworks.org it lists a lot of ideas for teachers parents and administrators to prevent bullying. Some ideas for teachers are make a safe environment, address rules, take immediate action if something is wrong, notify parents, and many more.No case is taken lightly anymore. Parents also need to get involved. If parents arent involved, their children may be bullying others or could be the one being bullied.

In my opinion, bullying is not okay in any way. Schools need to really follow through with these new regulations and make sure that children are not getting away with bullying others. The reasons kids commit suicide because of bullying is because nothing was done about it. Nobody was there to help them. I believe if a child is being bullied they need to speak with the school counselors in order to make sure that they are okay. They must be evaluated and need to know that they are not alone. They need to feel comforted and know that it wont happen again. The person bullying needs to be punished. A detention wont do it. Getting the police involved may teach the kid a lesson.
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/TheLaw/school-bullying-epidemic-turning-deadly/story?id=11880841
http://www.stopbullying.gov/
http://www.violencepreventionworks.org/public/bullying_tips_for_teachers.page