And that does not count the weight of some teens that never have the guts to actually say or report anything to their parents or teachers. Because they fear retaliation or worry about making it worse between the relationship of the bully and their victim, they tend to stay quiet or the victims would have the horror of encountering more consequences.

The bullying issue can affect every person that is involved in the scenario: the bullied, the bully and the witness of the bullying. The bullied and the witness may develop mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. The behavior of teenagers these days became violent as they could not differentiate between good and bad acts based on what they experience and observe at home or from the people around them. Therefore, they cannot control themselves when portraying and dealing with their dissatisfaction or feelings towards other people. This problem becomes worse when the parents, who are supposed to prevent it from happening, do not put extra concern and attention into what they show and characterize in front of their children.

In this regard, observational learning solution can be applied as the concept is able to modify the behavior. For example, this can be done by having a good parenting environment at home. In addition, this solution also has proven to be effective as teenagers tend to follow or imitate the behaviors done by the people around them especially the parents as they are the people whom they trust and stand as life models to teenagers. Thus, observational learning concept is the effective solution in improving the teenager’s behavior in dealing with their friends or other people.

Those categories are a priority for parents to educate their children to not be involved in bully or victim problems at school or other negative activities. The approach can help parents build positive relationships with their children and teach skills like responsibility, cooperation, and self-discipline. The evidence is clear as bad parenting like shouting and hitting simply does not work and can do more harm than good in the long run. Repeated shouting and hitting can even adversely impact a child’s entire life. The continued “toxic stress” it creates can lead to a host of negative outcomes like higher chances of school dropout, depression, drug use, bullying, suicide, and violence. Parents have been identified as a factor that is associated with how well or badly a child interacts with peers at school. Thus, the categories of good parenting are in relation to struggling parents rather than all parents in general. Even so, this information is relevant to forming a more comprehensive parenting capacity assessment, which deals with poor parenting. Furthermore, the research may be helpful in developing intervention programs for struggling parents, with a focus on developing aspects of good parenting, such as insight. Insight was defined as an awareness of one’s role as a parent, including understanding their individual child, their needs, and their ability to provide for those needs. All professionals except one psychologist stressed concepts relating to insight. ‘Insight’ included two sub-categories, knowing the individual child and acknowledging limitations as a parent. (Philippa M. Eve, Mitchell K. Byrne, Cinzia R. Gagliardi, 2014).

Albert Bandura’s classic study in observational learning involved having a preschool child in a room in which the experimenter and a model interacted with toys in the room in front of the child (Bandura et al., 1961). In one condition, the model interacted with the toys in a non-aggressive manner, completely ignoring the presence of a “Bobo” doll (a punch-bag doll in the shape of a clown). In another condition, the model became very aggressive with the doll, kicking it and yelling at it, throwing it in the air and hitting it with a hammer. When each child was left alone in the room and had the opportunity to play with the toys, a camera filming through a one-way mirror caught the children who were exposed to the aggressive model beating up on the Bobo doll, in exact imitation of the model. The children who saw the model ignore the doll did not act aggressively toward the toy. Obviously, the aggressive children had learned their aggressive actions from merely watching the model with no reinforcement necessary. The fact that learning can take place without actual performance is called learning or performance distinction.

The concept will be the same as the solution, good parenting towards children at home. Parenting is one of the toughest tasks but the one way of making it easy is by being role models to the children. Parents are already role models to their children. The children observe every action of their parents and try to imitate it. In one situation, when parents act to violence and quarrel with each other, the tendency for the children to be violent is increased and it can also be found that the children are bullies at school. Meanwhile, when parents act to caring and loving with each other, the tendency for the children to bully others is less as it encourages the children to be compassionate to other people. In this case, most of the bullies are learning by observing the situations around them by the acts of violence from parents. The children learn anything through observation and pay attention to their parents and they can retain the memory of what was done. So, the violent actions induce the children to imitate or reproduce again by themselves at school. Also, the children have also motivated when they have a desire to perform violent actions with their members without being witnessed by their teachers and parents. It is obvious that if parents act otherwise, it will prevent bullying cases to happen at school as well as produce well-being children who are compassionate and loving with each other.

The statistics goes to show that bad parenting or example portrayed by parents has a huge impact on their children’s behavior and upbringing. Violence creates more violence. For this reason, parents must stop exhibiting violence all the time especially at home, so that children also would not be violent with their peers.

On the other hand, parents who display good behavior such as kindness and respect to others, their children are more likely to do the same. Although it may seem like they are not paying attention, children observe closely on how their parents manage their stress and treat their colleagues (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). Teaching students ways to be tolerant and compassionate to their peers is the first step in preventing bullying. They need to understand that everyone deserves respect and they have no rights to hurt others intentionally no matter what the circumstance is. Once they are able to grasp this concept, it is crucial to teach them what counts as bullying and what to do if they are involved in one. 

In addition, parents must recognize bullying behavior and the possibility that their children will be involved in one (Smith & Myron-Wilson, 1998). They need to accept if their children are involved in bullying whether as bullies, victims, or even bystanders. If their children happen to be bullies, they need to investigate the cause and address bullying effectively instead of immediately giving punishment or harsh discipline (Smith & Myron-Wilson, 1998). As a result, the bullies will learn to manage their anger properly and prevent themselves from further bullying others. Next, parents of victims must let their children know that it is safe to talk about bullying to them. Parents must also give their full support to their children whether emotionally or psychologically rather than belittling their problem (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador). Bystanders might not get directly harmed by bullying. However, it can take a huge toll on their mental health. Bystanders of bullying might feel anxious, fear, and guilt from witnessing bullying (Cameron Pediatric Counseling,2020). Hence, parents need to nicely encourage their children to report bullying if they ever witnessed one and provide the needed support.