After receiving a bullying complaint at a school in Randfontein the herald decided to step in and help pupils deal with bullying.
The herald spoke to Charmaine Haggard, social worker and member of GRIPkidz – an organisation that specifically deals with bullying in schools and goes around doing workshops for those affected by bullying.
According to Haggard, “Bullying comes in many forms.
“It can be seen through physical, verbal and emotional bullying with the latest to hit schools being cyberbullying,” she said.
GRIPkidz teaches pupils the difference between bullying and teasing. They provide pupils with the acronym ‘STOP’ to identify whether they are being bullied. STOP stands for Several Times On Purpose.
Once pupils know what bullying is, they need to understand how to deal with it. Haggard says that the answer is not easy as it depends on the situation. In the case of most bullies, children are told not to fight back. However, it would help if pupils empower themselves through self-defence classes not to fight but to teach them to block physical attacks.
GRIPkidz hosts four hour anty-bullying workshops to teach kids to respond to bullies. They also do awareness campaigns at schools on request.
Haggard states that the best way for parents and pupils to deal with and do away with bullying is to talk about it. It should be brought up with a teacher at a school. Schools are supposed to have school safety framework provided by the Department of Education and should adhere to it.
Lastly, what are schools to do if they receive various complaints about bullying and the problem still persists?
Haggard states that GRIPkidz will gladly assist to get to the bottom of the problem.
• For further enquiries contact GRIPkidz on 076 6619 076 or 083 2878 942.
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I am so glad that someone managed to get the bullying problem out there. We have had to to my boys out of school because nothing was getting done about the bulling.