I need to talk to you about something sad and important — school bullying . I, too, have been a victim of that growing up, and from that experience, I can attest it isn’t fun.
Unfortunately, even as we grow as people, bullying still happens today. According to the National Bullying Prevention Center , one in every five students reports being bullied. Just imagine how many more don’t report it!
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One father is trying to open a discussion about it on Twitter as his child just got home from school after two days of bullying . So let’s find out more about this story.
Matthew Beard from London is a father of three.
His son recently came home from his first two days in high school, and it wasn’t a happy moment. Beard noticed hand-drawn pen marks on this kid’s arm and asked about it. As it turns out, his son marked all the times he got bullied during only two days.
OMG, what?
Yes, that’s right. And get this — his son had a total of 21 marks which means that he was bullied both physically and verbally by other students a total of 21 times. Wow! That is truly sad, no?
Here’s what the father did next.
Matthew was so shocked by what he heard and saw that he decided to share his outrage online. So he went on Twitter to vent about it. He said in his post that schools need to come down harder on bullies and that their parents should get fined.
What do you think about that?
I tend to agree with Beard. This kind of behavior shouldn’t be tolerated by anyone, including the school. And the parents should take some responsibility for teaching their kids to do the right thing.
Matthew followed his post up with another message.
He said that the reason he shared the picture was that it was powerful. His son wanted to show his parents how often it happened in only two days of him being in high school. Indeed, parents often don’t know what happens to kids when they’re in school.
Beard hopes that it will sort itself out.
But can you really know for sure? People praised Matthew’s son for speaking out to his parents. After all, some kids will hide things like bullying incidents for fear of being looked upon as weak. What Matthew’s son did was courageous.
Here’s a responsible parent who responded to Matthew.
I really like what this man said here. The problem is parents often don’t even know that it’s their kids who are the culprits. They have this perfect image in their head and would never think their child was the instigator.
This must be a sentiment of many parents.
I can’t even imagine how worried some parents must be when they drop their kids off at school. You think that the school would be a safe place for those young ones, but many times, that isn’t the case.
What’s your take on this story?
Do you believe more needs to be done about school bullying? Is it the school that should be responsible for ensuring a safe environment for its students? Or do you think it’s the parents that need to pay closer attention to their kids’ behavior?
Honestly, I think it’s a combination of both. No matter what, this isn’t a problem that’s going to go away soon if collectively, everybody doesn’t do something about it.
