Bullying is not a joke and it should never be overlooked or regarded as a “kid’s play”. However, more and more children are victims to bullying, to a point where they become depressed and anxious or unwilling to attend school or any other social gathering.
The bullying can be both physical and verbal and both cases are as harmful and dangerous as the other one. It’s true that bullying starts with a simple physical contact or a few rude words, nevertheless it may lead to serious harassment, which is later on evident in the victims’ development in life.
As a matter of fact, many suicide cases have been connected with bullying or similar type of harassment and this is quite concerning, because some cases are even happening among younger children.
Now, that we’ve entered the grey area or the fragile topic, it’s time to look for signs of bullying and ways to prevent them.
Wisconsin Town puts a law accounting parents whose children are bullying others
Studies often suggest that as nearly as 6,000 children have committed suicide due to bullying and most of them were aged between 15 and 24.
This fact is quite shocking, especially if we bear in mind that bullies are mainly the victim’s classmates or someone at their school or neighborhood.
For this purpose only, Wisconsin Town has decided to take matters into their own hands and put a large fine on the parents whose children are bullies or participants in the verbal, cyber or physical bullying. The fine starts at $366 for first offence and gets to $681 for a second offence within the same year.
By incorporating this law, Wisconsin Town is hoping to lower the death of children, victims of bullying as well as raise awareness in parents.
However, besides suicide, bullying can trigger many other problems connected with the development of the victim and even though parents and schools in general, try to overlook some situations of bullying and characterize them as simply “child’s play”, it ends up in creating depressed kids who are often finding the rescue in suicide.
The city council of Shawano tends to warn the parents of their child’s behavior before they give the fine, however after the first case of bullying they receive a fine of $366, which if not stopped within a year, the fine reaches to $681.
This law is applied to any bully under the age of 18 who has committed any type of harassment, including physical, verbal or cyber bullying.
However, even though parents are fined, it doesn’t have to mean that parents in general raise kids as bullies. In many cases, parents are not even aware that their kids are bullies. Bullies are often detected at schools or on the social media.
Bullying is taking an enormous part in our lives, affecting not only the parents of the victims, but also the parents of the bullies.
Dealing with bullying requires a lot of patience and therapy, so even though the fine may be helpful or useful at some point, this doesn’t mean that the child will learn to behave or stop to misbehave and harass other children, making them inferior and stepping over their confidence.
It’s no wonder this law drew so much attention in the public, especially to those who are affected by it.
So, despite the fact that everyone agrees that something should be done in order to prevent such situations, other will disagree with fining parents or blaming them for their child’s misbehaving. Many people believe that this misbehaving or so characterized as bullying may stop at any moment through a natural course simply because children do have the habit to tease each other.
However, the officers in Shawano emphasize the fact that any type of harassment, regardless of the intensity should be stopped immediately and any type of hurting others should not be regarded as “child’s play”, but regarded as bullying.
So, regardless of the criticism or the supporting of this implementing of the law, it’s up to parents and schools to decide whether bullying should be punished with a fine or other methods of punishments should be implemented.
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A professional writer with over a decade of incessant writing skills. Her topics of interest and expertise range from health, nutrition and psychology.
