Bullying gets put in its place

A policewoman who has dealt with more than 6800 schoolchildren in her one-woman anti-bullying campaign has found that most parents ignore their children's first cries for help.

Children who completed Captain Louise le Roux's programme, created for Durban's Brighton Beach, told her that their parents merely advised them "to get over it" when they reported being teased and bullied at school.

"It is concerning that, when children tell their parents, they tend to brush it off as nonsense. They pay attention only when physical injuries are sustained.

"In my opinion name-calling and harassment are just as severe [as physical bullying].

"An injury heals, but not emotional or verbal abuse," Le Roux said.

She created her interactive anti-bullying programme when the government said it was concerned about violence in schools.

A study by the Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention released in 2012 found that 22.2% of children had experienced some form of violence while at school.

"In our policing area we have criminal [prosecutions] arising from bullying. We even have protection orders against bullies," she said.

In the final stage of her programme Le Roux distributes booklets to parents containing tips on dealing with bullying.

"If your child comes home and says his classmate called him 'fat' don't just brush it off. Get to the bottom of it and then send a letter to the school to request that the teachers deal with the situation," she said.

Gauteng educational psychologist Fatima Adam was not surprised by Le Roux's findings, which she said applied globally.

"A lot of parents don't understand the proper definition of bullying. The context and the environment seems almost to normalise aggression. If someone pushes you or punches you, it's not a big deal. We don't understand that that is where the bigger problem originates. Because we live in a society in which aggression is acceptable, parents say it's not a big deal and brush it off."

She warned parents to act even if a child reported being teased at school only once.

Bullies will always "go one notch higher" if a child shows that he is going to accept what is being done to him.