Do
- Tell someone
- Choose someone who can help sort it out; friend, teacher, parent or carer
- Try to avoid the person who is bullying you
- Stick around people you know
- Help stop bullying by reporting it
Don't
- Suffer in silence
- Sink to their level and start bullying yourself
- Try to harm yourself
- Try to have a go at them it could make it worse – retaliation can make things worse
- Don’t be kept in the dark – search for a spark and step into your life
Remember...if you are being bullied...
The most important thing to do if you are being bullied is to tell someone. People who bully rely on the fact that you will feel so upset, scared and vulnerable that you won’t tell anyone what they are doing to you. If you tell somebody, then you no longer have to deal with the problem on your own or the bad feelings that being bullied creates.
It is up to you to choose who you tell, but if you can tell someone who is in a position to help stop the bullying in a calm and controlled way then you will get the best results.
For example, if you are being bullied at school it’s a good idea to tell a member of staff that you trust to listen to you and ask you what you want and don’t want done to put a stop to it. It’s also a good idea to try and tell the people that you live with, because they can support you if they know. Also, being bullied can cause changes in you that will worry people at home. If they know what is going on, they will be more understanding.
See how peer mentoring can help young people who are being bullied >>
Peer listening training is a very important part of what we did during the panels. We did many exercises, including looking at how we all judge people initially on their appearance and then started to break down our own prejudices.
We decided important qualities in a peer listener:
- To be approachable
- To have patience
- Being aware of confidentiality
- Being trustworthy
- Having relaxed body language
- Being able to put the person at ease
- Being interested
- Maintaining eye contact
- Not grinning/smirking/yawning/chewing gum during sessions
- Using open questions
We also discussed child protection issues in a lot of detail and decided that there are some very important issues that should be reported to a child protection officer, like:
- Sexual abuse
- Physical abuse or violence
- Neglect
- Domestic violence
- Substance abuse
- Alcohol abuse
This in turn led to more discussion about issues such as depression, which many of us discovered we had direct experience of. All of this led to a better understanding and was then extended to role plays to continue our training as peer listeners.