5 ways to protect your Child from Cyberbullies

Protecting your Child from Cyberbullies

From hate pages to extreme humiliation on the digital space, cyberbullying has caused severe stress, depression and anxiety among today's youth.
While it is more prevalent in the US, cyberbullying has started creeping among children and teens at an alarming rate.
With the high penetration rate of kids on the internet, the risk of cyberbullying is also heightened. The thought of your child being bashed and bullied in the cyberspace is a nightmare for most parents. But it is worse for the child being cyberbullied who could suffer from extreme depression that could lead to fatal consequences.


Here are some ways to protect your child from being cyberbullied:

1. Pay Attention To Your Child's behavior

Kids who suffer from cyberbullying give out signals that they need help. And parents should watch out for these signals. The child may suddenly become moody and constantly angry or begin to distance himself from the family or even his friends.
Sometimes parents mistakenly see this as a normal growing up phase not knowing that these sudden change in behavior are actually cries for help. If the parent is attentive to these behavior, the problem may be resolved at once before it gets any bigger.

2. Level Up!
If your child is active in the social network scene, you should be too. Create your own Facebook account if you still don't have one and make sure to add your child as "family." That way, you'll be able to see what your child is posting in cyberspace and the response that he or she is getting. Make sure, though, not to be intrusive in your child's social network activities.

3. Have one-on-one talk with your child
As soon as your child mentions the word cyberbullying or any Internet threat that tends to bother him, sit down with him for a serious one-on-one talk. Listen to what he has to say, try to find out how he feels and what exactly disturbs him. Assure him that you are always there to support and help him/her in whatever he/she is going through. After he's or she's done talking, make him/her understand what cyberbullying is and how seriously it affects teh victim.
At the same time, if your child happens to be the cyberbully, immediately step in and resolve the problem. make your child understand that it is never right to tease, offend or bash someone, online or otherwise. make the child understand the consequences of his/her actions.

4. Show Support
Take cyberbullying seriously and support them through the next steps. This is very difficult situation for your child so he/she will be needing your guidance to help him/her get through this. You may also tap professional help to work with you and your child on this problem.
As parents you should always there to listen to your children. Show them that they are not alone in facing this kind of problem.

5. Encourage your child

Help your child find safe and better thing to do online. We all know that you can used Internet to research and even learn some things that we cannot find in a simple textbook. but on the other hand, protecting your child against Internet threats, it does not mean that you will stop him/her fro exploring the cyber world where he/she could also learn and discover new things from if guided accordingly. There's also a lot of things that your child can learn using internet.