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 About one in 10 children are victims of bullying, and many
anti-bullying programs are focused on getting bystanders to
intervene, researchers note in the Journal of Clinical Child and
Adolescent Psychology. While previous research has linked certain
parenting practices to higher odds that kids will be victims or
perpetrators of bullying, less is known about how parents impact
what children do as bystanders.
For the current study, researchers surveyed 1,440 fourth and fifth
grade students about how their classmates behaved in bullying
situations and also did home interviews to see how parents told kids
to respond to hypothetical incidents.
In school, kids whose classmates said they might intervene to stop
bullies and to comfort victims were more likely to have parents at
home who told them getting involved was the right thing to do, the
study found. At the same time, kids whose parents told them to stay
out of it were both less likely to help victims and more likely to
become perpetrators.
“We were surprised to find that when parents told children not to
get involved, children were actually more likely to join in the
bullying,” said lead study author Stevie Grassetti, a psychology
researcher at the University of Delaware.
The study didn’t explore why parents’ advice to steer clear of
bullying translated into encouraging or participating in this
behavior.
“It could be that when parents told children to stay out of it,
children perceived this advice to indicate a lack of empathy for
victims and, in turn joined in bullying because they believed doing
so really was not very bad,” Grassetti said by email.
“Alternately, it could be that children believed that they were
following their parents advice to stay out of bullying because they
did not realize that watching, laughing or cheering a bully on
during a bullying situation is actually reinforcing the bully and
making bullying worse,” Grassetti added.
Kids in the study were around 11 years old on average.
During home visits in the study, pairs of caregivers and children
were presented with five hypothetical bullying examples, and then
parents were asked to explain to their children how they should
respond if they witnessed the situation take place.
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Based on the study results, it makes sense for school anti-bullying
efforts to involve parents and endeavor to give children consistent
messages about prevention in both settings, the authors conclude.
One limitation of the study is that during school visits,
researchers didn’t define what constitutes bullying the authors
note. With home visits, researchers assumed parents gave kids the
same advice about the hypothetical incidents that they would offer
in real life, which might not always be the case, the researchers
also point out.
“Parents can talk with their kids about what experiences they may
face in each of these roles of bystander, target and perpetrator,
and help the child understand how the role may feel,” said Dr. Megan
Moreno of Seattle Children’s Research Institute.
“Parents can ask their kids to consider possible actions if they are
a bystander, or a target, or if they are provided with the
opportunity to be a perpetrator,” Moreno, who wasn’t involved in the
study, said by email.
“This gives the child a way to think through their options ahead of
time, and practice things to say or do with a parent when they are
not in the heat of the moment of the actual situation at school,”
she said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2nIL4Lg Journal of Clinical Child and
Adolescent Psychology, online March 20, 2017.
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reserved.] Copyright 2017 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
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