What Parents Can Do About School Violence
By Chick Moorman and Thomas Haller
The shootings continue. So do fights, arguments, pushing and shoving. We think we are sending our children off to a safe place when they get on the school bus in the morning. Then we hear more distressing school violence news on the television or radio.
So what's a parent to do? Can you really keep your child safe in this world? Can you make a difference in regard to school violence? We think you can. Consider the following.
Begin locally in your home and school. Implement the ten suggestions which follow.
- Stay involved in your child's social life. Know his or her friends. Have them over to your house frequently. Become familiar with what they talk about and how they think.
- Get involved in your child's school life. Get to know the teachers and other school staff. Monitor homework. Volunteer. Attend school functions. Be visible, so your child sees you frequently in school settings.
- Find the school discipline policies and review them. Discuss the polices and rationale with your child. Discuss how they are the same as or different from your family discipline procedures.
- Create structure around your child's television, video, and electronic game playing. Talk about why violent content is prohibited in your family. If you are not creating this structure, you are allowing advertisers and marketing executives to control your family values.
- Teach and model problem solving and conflict management strategies. Demonstrate how to accomplish goals without physical violence. Support school programs that teach staff and students about conflict resolution. If your child's school doesn't have such programs, ask why.
- Research the anti-bully programs in place at your child's school. Support those programs by creating dialog around them with your child. If there are none, your child's school has its head in the sand. Give them a swift kick in the portion of the anatomy that is showing. Some schools are so caught up in the craze to raise test scores that bullying and conflict resolution are pushed far into the background. Don't let this happen at your child's school. Make your feelings known.
- If you spank your children, stop. Learn parenting skills that enable you to refrain from teaching them that might makes right. Stop modeling that the way powerful people get what they want is through physical force inflicted on less powerful people.
- If you own a gun, get rid of it. If you are an avid NRA member, keep the weapon locked up and out of the sight of children. Weapons are not toys.
- Teach your child the difference between tattling and reporting. Children need to learn what to report and who to report to. For more information see our special report, Tattle Tales, at http://www.mynewsletterbuilder.com//refer.php?s=95237388&u=17627632.
- Use every incident that involves school violence, nationally or locally, as a springboard to discussion. Talk about the violence, the choices children make, and the other options that are available to them. Listen more than you talk. Pose hypothetical situations. Ask questions. If it's mentionable, it's manageable.
Of course, there is no guarantee that your child will not be a victim or a perpetrator of a violent act at school. But implementing the strategies above will lessen the chances that violence will occur at your child's school
Thomas Haller and Chick Moorman are the authors of The Only Three Discipline Strategies You Will Ever Need: Essential Tools for Busy Parents. They are two of the world's foremost authorities on raising responsible, caring, confident children. They publish a free monthly e-zine for parents. To sign up for it or to obtain more information about how they can help you or your group meet your parenting needs, visit their website today: http://www.mynewsletterbuilder.com//refer.php?s=95237388&u=17627633
