The Importance Of Teaching Children To Identify Violence
Violence comes in many forms. It may be physical, psychological, and even perpetrated through technology. Violence can spread and affect entire generations of children and adults, which is why we must work together to break the cycle.
Bullying is one of the many names that violence has. In this case, this is a specific form of abuse that usually happens among children and teenagers at school or in extracurricular activities. But bullying doesn’t happen out of nowhere. It is deeply influenced by many factors related to the social or economic environment and situations within the family.
The first step to stopping bullying and other forms of violence is recognizing them.
The Connection Between Bullying And Domestic Violence
Many studies have shown that bullying is deeply related to domestic violence, as children imitate the behavior they see at home. Research from the University of Washington and Indiana University found that children who experience or witness domestic violence are more likely to harass other children or experience bullying themselves. The study also found that 34% of the children studied were involved in harassment, and 73% reported being bullied. More alarmingly, 93% of the bullies reported that they experienced bullying or other forms of violence at some point.
This data clearly shows that violence doesn’t stop by itself. We need to work together to help children identify bullying and violence.
Here are a few points for teachers to look out for; those can be signs indicating that a child may be experiencing domestic violence:
- Poor grades or school failure.
- Destroying or hiding the belongings of others.
- Inability to express their feelings or even use violence to express themselves.
- In the case of pre-teens or teenagers, they may run away from home and not show up for several days, destroy public property, or develop drug problems.
Why is it important to teach our children to identify violence?
If we help our children identify these patterns, we can help them to become aware of violent situations at home. Thus, they can learn to ask for help and an intervention can follow.
Let’s say we teach our children what bullying is and why it is so harmful. In that case, we would not only be helping to prevent a bullying situation at school, but we would also be helping children identify what violence is and if they are experiencing it at home.
The Toley Ranz Goes Library campaign focuses on helping children learn inner strength and self-love in the safe environment of community libraries. These two values are the key to building a violence-free childhood by being aware of self-worth from a young age. This can help to avoid bullying situations, and by stopping violence at this point, we help build a future adult generation that is more aware of and opposed to violence.
Click on toleyranz.com/toleygoeslibrary, and you’ll find everything related to the anti-bullying campaign that you can take back to your community – get in touch with us!
