With children spending more time online, the rates of cyber bullying continue to increase; in fact, 60% of children have experienced various forms of cyber-bullying, and one out of three teens have faced cyber threats. Unfortunately, 90% of these cyber bullying victims have not informed their parents or other trusted adults about the abuse. Research also shows that cyber bullying can lead to depression or worse, suicide. This is because parents are often the last people who learn about this problem. Children fear getting into more trouble if they talk about this.

 

It is difficult to protect your child from cyber bullying if you do not understand this problem. That is why you should have more knowledge regarding cyber bullying. Your children will then be comfortable in approaching you first when faced with this issue. As a concerned parent, you must communicate; get involved, set rules. Parents, children, and school administrations can take several steps to prevent cyber bullying and here’s how you can do it:

 

 

Pay Attention to Your Children

 

Respond to your children appropriately when you see them dealing with cyber bullying. Do not ignore or under-react by telling them to shrug it off. Also, don’t tease them by saying “kids will be kids”. Bullying has real and long-lasting emotional and psychological effects, so pay close attention and help them face this problem. Also, do not threaten to take your children’s gadgets away if they approach you with a problem since this will force them to be more secretive and distant.

 

 

Learn and Teach the Proper Responses

 

As a parent, you must learn how to respond to cyber bullying and teach children how to do so as well. When it comes to this problem, the first rule of thumb is to avoid responding since engaging with a bully only makes things worse. In case your children experience cyber-bullying, tell them to block the bully from future communication and change their contact information, especially if the bully is pretending to be them. Also, remind them to save all bullying messages and comments and to share these with you, your internet provider, as well as the authorities if needed.

 

 

Build Trust with Your Children

 

To have a healthy relationship with your children, having an open, honest communication with them is essential. Make sure that you set aside some time to talk to them about cyber bullying. Let them know that you’re aware of this and that you don’t want them to experience this. If they are, show them that you are there to help them stop this. More importantly, make them feel that they can approach you anytime and that you will not judge them even if there are potentially embarrassing elements such as pictures and foul language involved.

 

 

Work with Your Children’s School

 

A lot of schools teach children about bullies in real life but do not focus on cyber bullying. Inform the authorities in your children’s schools that you are concerned about this and want to prevent it from happening. Ask them to include cyber bullying in their discussions and school regulations. If more parents speak up about cyber bullying, more schools will provide more information and knowledge about this issue.

 

 

Get Involved

 

If you pay attention to the places your children go to after school and the people they hang out with that will help. Also extend your supervision to their online activities as well. Find out which social media sites they use and learn how to utilize these so you can create accounts there and follow theirs. This will help you keep track of your children’s activities while also seeing who they interact with. However, you must keep in mind that tech-savvy children might know how to change their privacy settings to hide their posts from you even if you are following their accounts. So to effectively monitor them, you can install parental control programs on the devices that your children use. Also, place the computer in a common area at home such as your living room and do not allow them to have one in their bedroom.

 

 

Create and Follow House Rules

 

Create rules at home such as time limits for going online then discuss the importance of this. Ask your children to also establish some rules so they will be more encouraged to follow them. When setting time limits, be sure that your children will have other activities they enjoy so they will refrain from getting back to their devices; encourage your children to play with amazing toys outdoors.

 

 

The Whistlecopter is a great LED toy that is fun for everyone as it encourages physical activity while spending quality time with the family. What makes this one of the best toys in the market today is that it is easy to use and is made from high-quality, safe, and non-toxic materials. With the Whistle Copter, you can strengthen your relationship with your children while helping them instill a healthy online life. Whistle Copter also has another LED Copter called the Original Copter which does not whistle on the way up and does not have a Patent and is also less expensive to buy. The Original Copter will fly as high and is as bright in the sky because no other LED Copter’s light is as bright as Whistle copter and Original Copter.

 

 

For younger children that cannot use the Whistle Copter or Original Copter, have fun in the evening or day with Whistlecopter’s Nemo Dory Bubbleguns. Fill the air with hundreds of small bubbles with this NEMO or DORY BUBBLE GUN; the Disney movie was a smash hit so all children know this bubble gun! Two bottles of bubbles for each gun and high-performance batteries are included. Even Flow so the flow of bubbles does not stop as most other bubble guns do! There are 4 led lights in this transparent bubble gun: one is in the mouth of the fish so bubbles come out blue! There is no better Bubble Gun on the market! Check out the video of the Bubble Gun that works nonstop!