Question:
Recently, my daughter in middle school has been getting bullied online. The
people who are bullying her are classmates. They say she only gets good
grades because she is the teacher’s pet. What can she do? What can I do?
Answer:
You definitely need to be aggressive in fighting these bullies. You need to
report what is happening to the social media site or sites where the
messages are coming from. After receiving a report, most social media sites
will block their email address with your email provider and block their
number from being able to send your child text messages.
You should also contact the appropriate person at your child’s school. The
school needs to be aware that cyberbullying is occurring and deal
appropriately with the cyberbullies. You should also check the laws in your
state against cyber harassment. There is a lot of information out there to
help you know what to do, and the people mentioned above will provide you
lots of information to get started.
Make sure that your daughter knows to never, never respond to a message,
text or post that contains bullying remarks. Doing so usually only makes
the situation worse and is providing the reaction cyberbullies want.
However, you might want to reply once telling the sender that this has been
reported and make sure that you do the reporting. You also can change your
child’s email address.
Make sure that you keep a record of all the bullying messages. If you are
unable to print out a message, you should take a screen shot. You will
definitely need all this information to back up your words if you need to
pursue a criminal or civil lawsuit.
Remember that often the child being cyberbullied is also being bullied in
school. You need to make sure that your child knows how much you love and
support her and are willing to help her.
