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Family Involvement in a Whole-School Bullying Intervention: Mothers’ and Fathers’ Communication and Influence with Children

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Abstract

Research indicates that involving families in school efforts to prevent and manage bullying behaviour is essential to success. Parents can influence their children's involvement in bullying situations by modelling positive social behaviour, offering advice about appropriate responses to bullying, and encouraging help-seeking. This paper reports family-related findings from the three-year group randomized control trial of the Friendly Schools Friendly Families (FSFF) intervention, which provided training and whole-school, classroom and family resources to build the capacity of schools to prevent bullying victimization and perpetration. Over 1400 parents and carers of Grades 2, 4 and 6 school students completed a survey at baseline and two post-tests. Parents exposed to the FSFF parent component received resources about ways to reduce bullying, build parenting skills and enhance parent–child communication; they also completed home activities with their children; and were encouraged to engage with their children’s school to reduce bullying. Mothers and fathers reported significant increases in the frequency of discussions with their child about bullying. Mothers were more likely than fathers to give pro-social, passive and help-seeking advice compared to fathers, who were more likely to encourage their child to ‘fight back’. The intervention improved fathers’ perceptions of their influence on children’s responses to being bullied. These results highlight the importance of working with both male and female caregivers when addressing children’s bullying behaviour. The findings also demonstrate that a parent intervention can have a positive impact on parent–child communication about bullying when it is an integral part of a whole-school approach.

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Funding

This study was funded by the Western Australian Health Promotion Foundation (Healthway) (grant number 10574) and NHMRC (grant number 1119339).

Author Contributions

L.L.: analysed the data and wrote the paper. N.P. collaborated with the design and execution of the study and editing of the final manuscript. S.W.: collaborated with the design and execution of the study and editing of the final manuscript. A.B.: collaborated in the editing of the final manuscript. S.B.: collaborated in the editing of the final manuscript. D.C.: designed and executed the study and wrote the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Health Promotion Evaluation Unit, The University of Western Australia, Stirling Highway, Nedlands, Australia

    Leanne Lester

  2. Telethon Kids Institute, The University of Western Australia, Subiaco, WA, Australia

    Natasha Pearce, Amy Barnes & Donna Cross

  3. Curtin University of Technology, Bentley, WA, Australia

    Stacey Waters

  4. Edith Cowan University, Joondalup, WA, Australia

    Shelley Beatty & Donna Cross

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  1. Leanne Lester
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  2. Natasha Pearce
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  5. Shelley Beatty
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  6. Donna Cross
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Correspondence to Leanne Lester.

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Lester, L., Pearce, N., Waters, S. et al. Family Involvement in a Whole-School Bullying Intervention: Mothers’ and Fathers’ Communication and Influence with Children. J Child Fam Stud 26, 2716–2727 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-017-0793-6

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