Parents and Guardians

Violence is the use of force with the intent to hurt someone. It can take many forms: it can be verbal (insults, yelling); written (text messages, e-mails, etc.); physical (hitting, injuring); psychological (threatening or putting someone down, gossiping, excluding someone); material (stealing or breaking something belonging to another person); or sexual (language or behaviour that is inappropriate, embarrassing, humiliating, etc.).

Violence, when it occurs, is no accident. Someone can be attacked for many reasons: the perpetrator may want to make his or her friends laugh, gain social status, or frighten, threaten or dominate another person.

Acts of violence can traumatize not only the victims, but witnesses and peers as well. Violence can be experienced as outright aggression or threats, or as actions intended to dominate, oppress or even cause physical harm. There are also different degrees of violence, each of which can harm an individual physically, socially, materially and psychologically, or undermine his or her rights and freedoms.

Bullying is when a person or a group of people insults, humiliates or excludes someone, hits or threatens them, or steals or breaks something of theirs. Bullying can be done to someone’s face or behind their back, on the Web, through text messaging or on the phone. It’s no accident; nor is it teasing or joking, because it’s no laughing matter. It’s not just bickering or some disagreement between friends that ends and is soon forgotten. It happens over and over again. When someone’s being bullied, they can feel afraid and alone. They feel powerless and defenceless around the person, or persons, hurting them. And they don’t know how to make the bullying stop.

To learn more about violence and bullying, click here.

Did you know that in June 2012 the Québec government passed a law to prevent and stop bullying and violence in schools?