Childcare – Stop bullying
Parents of children concerned about the critical issue of bullying in daycares, schools and playgrounds will likely be interested in the findings of a recent Canadian bullying-prevention study. The good news, according to Canadian bullying-prevention research organization PREVNet, is that a majority of young people are aware of the most effective methods to stop bullying. However, while increased awareness is cause for encouragement, experts caution that real progress lies in empowering children with the tools to turn knowledge into action.
Standing Up to Bullying: What are Children and Youth Saying? was conducted by Dr. Debra Pepler, M. Catherine Cappadocia, and Dr. Joanne G. Cummings at PREVNet. The study was designed to examine the top ways Canadian youth intervene in bullying situations, and released to coincide with Family Channel's seventh-annual Bullying Awareness Week, which ran mid-November 2009.
Through surveys and interviews conducted with 108 children in July 2009, the study revealed that six out of 10 (63 per cent) had witnessed bullying at least once in the past three weeks, and 16 per cent had witnessed bullying two or three times per week over that same time period.
Given the role of bystanders in the bullying dynamic, respondents were then asked to list the most effective ways to intervene during a bullying incident. Three out of four respondents (76 per cent) indicated that the best strategies were to tell a trusted adult and to stand up to the child who is bullying and encourage him/her to cease the activity – methods advocated by PREVNet. However, when asked to describe what they actually did the last time they saw someone being bullied, only 42 per cent reported that they told an adult and 37 per cent reported that they intervened in the situation.
According to Dr. Pepler, these findings suggest that while parents and educators are making progress with respect to educating children about effective strategies to diffuse bullying situations, more emphasis needs to be placed on providing children with the skills and practical examples that will help them take action and stand up to bullying.
“We know that bullying is a relationship problem where one child has more power than another,” says Dr. Debra Pepler, Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology, York University. “What this research highlights is that to correct that power imbalance, children must be assertive and speak up, and adults must do more to help children by giving them the tools and support they need to put theory into practice.”
Previous PREVNet research into the role of bystanders in bullying situations indicates that bullying typically occurs in front of a group of peers who have the power to either stop or prolong the bullying episode based on their actions, and that when bystanders do intervene in bullying situations, bullying stops within ten seconds a majority of the time.
