Traditional Master, Education Insider and Retired TAFE Director Gives Parents the Tools to Help their Teenager’s Battle to Beat the Bully. Bullying is fuelling a broader community epidemic of assault on young people, growing at a rate of 5% each year across Australia.
Schools do not have the tools to combat this, yet provide the nursery ground for our future perpetrators. A former school teacher who has worked across all 3 sectors of education, at the grass roots and been an adviser to the Director-General and Minister, in Queensland education, is running free seminars to support families who are being bullied in schools on a daily basis.
After hearing countless stories from parents who feel helpless on a weekly and sometimes a daily basis, former school teacher, father of two, and Factor10 Martial Arts CEO,Damien O’Flaherty, is conducting a Free Anti Bullying Education Seminar for Parents, Saturday 5th October at 11.30am.“Being the parent of a bullied child is one of the most difficult and emotional situations to deal with.
Your natural instinct is to protect your child, unfortunately the education system forces parents into the background leaving the school to take control of the situation’, says CEO Damien O’Flaherty, who after 30 years of teaching across private and public sectors, sees it’s time to take action. “Many parents are experiencing frustration and resorting to desperate measures to get others to stop bullying their child. Parents don’t know how to deal with schools and feel schools have lost control of the situation”.
“We absolutely need to give parents the tools they need to address bullying”, insists Damien, “parents need somewhere to turn to in their desperate moments when the schools just don’t seem to be providing the answers.”
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics:
- APPROX 800 PER 100 000 AUST MALES AGED 10-14 ARE ASSAULTED ANNUALLY
- THIS TRANSLATES TO OVER 35 000 AGED 10-14 IN QUEENSLAND EACH YEAR WHO ARE ACTUALLY ASSAULTED BASED ON NATIONAL AVERAGE
- IN 2012 QUEENSLAND HAD 239 300 PEOPLE WHO EXPERIENCED PHYSICAL OR THREATENED ASSAULT – 6.6% OF QUEENSLAND POPULATION IN 2012, VIC WAS 5.7% AND NSW 5.3%
- 5% GROWTH EACH YEAR IN VIOLENT ASSAULTS ACROSS AUSTRALIA 8500 IN 1995 AND 16 500 IN 2007 – MASSIVE GROWTH
Parents need to be able to give a bullied child support and strategies that will help the child move through this turbulent time. A parent without answers feels like they have failed. It is vital that the parent has the information to be able to set some examples for the child on how to problem solve. Although it is very difficult for a parent to deal with the issue of their child being threatened; it is absolutely vital that you do not retaliate against the bully.Damien, a former teacher and education insider will teach strategies to parents on:
- What involvement should parents have in bullying incidents
- The legal implications of becoming involved
- What advice to give your child / teenager
- What and how to report the incident to school administrators
- The support role Factor10 will provide as a “knowledgeable friend”
- The Factor10 “run away, get away, find a teacher 3 times” policy
- Managing less than satisfactory teacher responses
This is a great follow up to the Child Protection Seminars which ran during Child Protection Week 1st to 7th September. Factor10 Martial Arts is a recognised industry authority in how to keep our children safe. Damien O`Flaherty has written several articles on the subject and was interviewed in recent weeks on 4BC radio station discussing how to keep our youth safe. Factor10 Martial Arts also supports the Matthew Stanley Foundation and is currently working on a high school visit program, talking teens about making the right decisions.For more information on the Factor 10 Martial Arts Free Anti Bullying Information Seminar for Parents please contact Damien O’Flaherty on 0433 428 858.
