Tag Archives: violence prevention

The Role of Parents in Preventing School Violence

MADISON COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT Posted on by

The Role of Parents in Preventing School Violence

Parents and/or guardians play an essential in school violence prevention. Demonstrating an interest in their children’s lives is one of the most important steps parents and/or guardians can take to help prevent youth violence. Open communication between children and their parents or guardians is critical.

Topics for Parents to Discuss with Children

  1. Their school’s discipline policy. Parents and/or guardians should know the policy, communicate their support for it, discuss the reasons behind it, and expect their children to comply.
  2. Their school’s safety and security procedures. Parents and/or guardians should know the procedures, make certain their children know them, and communicate why they expect their children to follow them.
  3. Their own positive household rules, family values and traditions, behavior expectations, and the reasons behind them.
  4. Violence in television shows, video games, movies, and books. Talk about the impact of violence in the media and its real-life consequences.
  5. How to solve problems peacefully.
  6. The value of individual differences.
  7. Their children’s concerns about friends and other people who may be exhibiting threatening or violent behavior. Parents and/or guardians should share this information with the friends’ parents or guardians, a trusted adult at the school, or other appropriate authorities in a way that protects the confidentiality of their own children as needed and possible.
  8. Personal safety issues and appropriate responses to them.
  9. Their children’s day-to-day activities, accomplishments, concerns, and problems.

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Ways Parents Can Supervise Children’s Use of the Internet

MADISON COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT Posted on by

Ways Parents Can Supervise Children’s Use of the Internet

Today, adults and children are exposed to a world of information that is only a click away via the Internet. Literally anything can be found on the online. Much of it is very very good and assists adults and children with their daily tasks be it work, social interaction, entertainment, or home work.

But there is a darker side of this wealth of information. Violent content, pornography, political propaganda, hate speech, and other radical ideas are only an online search away. Once accessed, this information can flood a data stream and infect the computer or other online device, along with the adult or child looking at it.

Children need guidance and monitoring while online. The distinction between right and wrong is less obvious in the virtual world. The anonymous nature of the online society can lead  adults and children to believe they can “get away” with something they wouldn’t do in their normal life. This generally isn’t the case as online actions can have a devastating impact on family, work, school, and finances.

Here are some ways parents or guardians can help keep a child out of trouble online:

  • Consider placing computers in locations where parents/guardians can observe what their children are seeing.
  • Establish family rules for internet use and inform children that their use of it will be monitored.
  • Use filtering/blocking software to restrict their children’s access to inappropriate sites and material.
  • Search their home computer files to see what sites their children have visited.
  • Look for signs that their children may be involved with online criminal activityor be interacting with potentially dangerous people.
  • If training is needed, attend classes.
  • If training classes are not available, ask school administrators, law enforcement, or their local Parent Teachers Association to consider offering them.
  • As parents, sometimes just paying attention to your child’s online activity is enough to discourage inappropriate activity.

Listening to your child and being engaged in their life, online and off, can make all the difference.

*Some information derived from Security Research Center’s “Guide For Preventing and Responding to School Violence”.