Looking through this website, gives me a nice feeling inside as it gives direction on what people can do to help children with emotional abuse.
From the website:
What can you do?
Since writing this article I’ve got a lot of email from parents whose kids are experiencing emotional abuse at school, and teachers witnessing their colleagues perpetrating abuse. If you are a parent, here are some things you can do.
- First thing you should do is educate yourself about the horrible consequences of all forms of child abuse. The internet has made that sort of thing easy, and I regularily post articles on this site discussing the consequences of what I would call Toxic Socialization. See for example this article on the long term consequences of child abuse.
- Second, talk to the teacher. If that doesn’t work, talk to the principal. Teachers and administrators often don’t see their actions as harmful so part of your job is to educate them about it. Print out this article and show it to them. Be confident when you approach them and make it clear to them that you feel they are hurting your children.
- Pay attention to the initial reactions of teachers and principals. In some cases they’ll be sympathetic, but in other case they will react in strange ways. If you sense a note of weirdness, I strongly recommend recording any conversations and keeping any email transcripts you have. Tell them you want to record. If they refuse, refuse to meet or insist on email. And don’t let them tell you that email is no good, and they’d rather do it in person, because in person is better, because it is not. Email is the best way to discuss things happening at school because it allows you time to calm down, think, and consider, and it provides you with a legal record of anything they say to you. It is because of the record it provides that some school administrators, the ones who act weird, don’t like it. At some level they know what they are doing is wrong, don’t let them hide that reality away.
- If the school doesn’t allow you to record the conversation, do it anyway, but check your provincial and state laws first. In many locations it is totally legal to record conversations as long as one person knows about it. In some states, no. Don’t do anything illegal in your area, but do whatever it takes to protect your kids.
- If you can’t get no satisfaction, and if you are able, or if your kids are old enough to be home alone, pull your kids out of school temporarily. Send an email to the principal telling them what’s happening. Tell them to arrange for your child’s work to be sent home and then allow your kids to do the work at home. Tell the principal and the teacher that your child won’t be coming back until they have sorted out their abuse. If the principal threatens you with truancy action, tell him to “bring it on.” Say you’re happy to go talk to a judge and tell the judge why you’re pulling your kids out. Nothing stops an an abuser faster than the possibility they might have to explain their abuse to others.
- If that doesn’t work, and you have the option, pull them out of school permanently and home school them. You’ll have to check the options that are available to you but it is becoming more and more of a viable possibility. My kids are now fully home schooled and they love it. They aren’t exposed to the abusive students or the abusive teacher, they are happier, healthier, and are doing way better than before. There are challenges, of course, and as a parent you have to have the time and the resources to do this, but if it is an option, consider it. The more people who do this, and the more we are vocal about why we are doing it (abusive schools), the more schools will be forced to think about, and change, their actions and behaviours.
- Publicly humiliate your school. Download this article, write a short paragraph about what is happening to your children, and send it to your local media outlets. We all know the outcome of chronic bullying can be horrible violence, either self inflicted in the case of suicide, or inflicted on others in the case of school shootings. Remind your media contact of the long term consequences of emotional abuse and see if a little media attention doesn’t shame the bullies into stopping. At the very least the media attention will draw other concerned parents and teachers out of the woodwork.
- If you have the resources, talk to a lawyer. It is becoming increasingly easy to build a case for serious long term damage caused by teachers abusing in schools. It will take just one successful lawsuit against a teacher that abuses your child, or a school that enables it, to really start to change things.
- Build a website and sue the schools. The quickest way to stop all this is to build a website and populate it with articles and research that proves damage. Once this is done lawyers and litigators have a resource they can use to argue for damages! It won’t take more than a law suit or to force legislators and lawmakers to make it illegal for schools to abuse our children. It can cost as little as 20 dollars a month for a website, and research assistants tasked with collecting, collating, and summarizing articles can be had for $20.00 an hour or so. A few thousand dollars is all you would need. I will personally help anybody who has the time and resources to do this in any way I can."
I would really like to see people coming into schools and talk about there own experience with emotional abuse to tell children what it means and to get children who feels like they have this kind of abuse to step out and tell someone like a teacher or the parents if there not the abuser.
I really want to design something simple for children to understand what emotional abuse means.
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