Bullying awareness has come a long way in the past two decades, but prevention still has a long way to go.
FOX’s Lisa Brady has part one of a special series for National Bullying Prevention Month in this week’s FOX on Family:
How can we stop bullying? There’s no single answer, but the we is important:
(Hertzog): “We need to have our educators, we need to have our parents and our students all on the same page about how they’re viewing bullying.”
Julie Hertzog, director of the National Bullying Prevention Center for the nonprofit PACER, says number one is a common understanding that it’s not acceptable and that the silence perpetuating it is broken:
(Hertzog): “What to you do when you do see it happen and you want to be having that conversation about, you know, if somebody is being bullied, number one they have the right to tell somebody.”
She says kids often describe bullying as making you feel like less, so outreach from a peer can mean a lot:
(Hertzog): “Hey I saw what happened, you know, you didn’t deserve that, you didn’t deserve to be treated that way. Or, hey if you don’t have anywhere to sit tomorrow, come and sit by me in class.”
Advice for parents next week, as National Bullying Prevention Month continues.
With FOX on Family, I’m Lisa Brady.
PACER is a nonprofit center that helps families of children with disabilities from birth through age 21. The group’s National Bullying Prevention Center started a prevention week in 2006 and it was expanded to bullying prevention month in 2010. Much more information about bullying awareness and prevention is available at pacer.org/bullying, including interactive resources, information for children and teens and an online module for parents. That includes conversations to have from a young age, how to help and protect your child and an outline of laws in each state designed to help protect children.
