You can help create the process. Rather than criticize the school or the police department for being “behind the tech curve,” you can be part of creating a better process to keep kids safe online in your community. Simply being committed to bringing the issue to light is critical.
Remain calm. Regardless of your emotion around a cyberbullying incident you can get to a resolution sooner with a calm manner rather than frustrated demands. It’s easy for these conversations between parents and officials to go bad quickly if one party doesn’t see the other resolving the problem fast enough. Be kind, calm, and politely persistent.
Be prepared before it happens. The best way to deal with a cyberbullying incident when it arises is to be prepared before it arises. This means staying alert to your child’s online life, reading publications (like this blog and others), and keeping online safety a conversation point in your home.
React appropriately. If someone simply makes a rude comment or posts an inappropriate photo, don’t over react. It’s simply time to block that person. If there’s a pattern of such posts aimed at one person or if the comments escalate to threatening, slandering, intimidating, or become sexually explicit, then it’s time to take action.
Maintain perspective. While cyberbullying is a huge threat to the physical and emotional health of kids today, the reality is that the perfect process has yet to evolve. Wrangling the issue with any degree of success will take parents, students, schools, and law enforcement developing long-term guidelines. In the interim, it’s everyone’s role to commit to increased awareness and growing skills around the unpromising task of helping teens communicate, and manage conflict, in the online world.
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