Prevention of Bullying in Early Childhood

Preventing Bullying In Early Childhood

Bullying in young children and adolescents has never been justified by any party. Besides making children feel uncomfortable, bullying can also have a serious psychological impact on children. As an effort to prevent bullying behavior in early childhood, parents can do the following things;

1) Building Children’s Character

The first step you can take is to build a child’s character. This is because usually, children who are the object of bullying tend to have characters who are shy, introverted, and not good at socializing.

Therefore, parents must teach their children how to socialize, so that they can get along and adapt well in a new environment. To start with this, you can invite your child to take a walk around the complex so that he can meet his peers and establish good friendships.

When this character has been formed from a young age, the possibility of getting bullied will be even smaller.

2) Teach an Open Attitude to Children

Usually, victims of bullying tend not to have the courage to tell the truth when they have experienced bullying both physically and mentally. They usually tend to keep it to themselves to the risk of experiencing depression.

As a parent, of course ,you don’t want your child to experience a worse impact due to bullying behavior. Therefore, it is very important to teach openness to children from an early age. Emphasize to him that an open attitude will make children get full support from parents and teachers so that children don’t have to worry about the impact of bullying that occurs.

3) Establish Friendship

Sometimes, bullying behavior in early childhood can occur because they do not understand how to make friends or establish more intense friendships. In this case, parents can teach their children about strategies for socializing and making friends with their peers.

When children have strong intensity and cohesion in their friendships, the potential for bullying to occur can be suppressed. Even when bullying occurs, of course, the child will get more support from his friends.

In an effort to make new friends, you can direct your child to join positive and popular activity groups. For example, like art, sports, or other fields that are in accordance with children’s favorites.

4) Teach Children How to Take Care of themselves

You need to make sure that your child can take care of himself, especially when hanging out with his friends. Apart from that, you also have to make sure that your child is able to maintain healthy food, sleep for sufficient duration, and maintain their health when you are not with them.

When the child is able to take care of himself, then you don’t need to worry too much when the child is out of reach. This is because, a child’s habit of taking good care of himself can be a reflection of the response he will make when he gets bullying behavior.

5) Tell Inspirational Stories to Children

Children generally really like when they have to listen to stories. Therefore, every message conveyed through stories can be easily understood and remembered by children. This can be one of the parents’ strategies in instilling values that must be understood by children.

For example, in bullying behavior, parents can tell stories that have the theme of bullying against friends. Also, explain to children that bullying behavior is never justified and needs to be prevented or ended because it will have quite a big impact on the victim.

6) Teach Children to Be Courageous

In making friends, of course, there must be certain moral boundaries that must be obeyed by children. This is so that children can respect others. But when these limits are violated by other people and even tend to harm the child, then at that moment, he must be able to be brave.

Being brave will also reduce the risk of bullying or bullying of children. However, if this is not enough to prevent bullying behavior, then asking for help from teachers and parents is the most appropriate way to do it.

That’s the way to prevent bullying in early childhood. In practice, the role of parents is needed to be on the side of the child, so they can apply it better.