School bullying is a scourge. In 2023 and according to the PISA survey, nearly 20% of 15-year-old children admitted to having been teased. A sadly widespread phenomenon that can lead to real tragedies. On Wednesday, French therapist Emmanuelle Piquet had a full house in St-Imier. The specialist in brief therapy from American Palo Alto distilled her method and advice in front of a packed room made up mainly of teachers and parents. Emmanuelle Piquet focuses her approach on the child victim, a child who must be equipped to face this difficult situation. Change is notably induced by discussion, questions, the prescription of concrete actions and not passive listening. The entourage of course plays a major role, but above all it is not a question of acting as a bodyguard between the harassed and the harasser. “This could be a normal reaction from a parent who wants to protect their child. But the result could be totally counterproductive,” she warns.
Another existing approach is to focus efforts on the child bully. Emmanuelle Piquet believes that this is a waste of time. “Generally very comfortable in his or her own skin, the child bully is often a child who behaves well with his parents, his teachers and his friends. He also knows that when you harass, you don’t get harassed. Which he is actually very afraid of,” she comments.
When asked whether harassment is on the rise since the advent of social networks and smartphones, Emmanuelle Piquet qualifies this. If cases of violence can be transposed onto the digital level, they are sometimes only an extension of what is happening in reality. The author of “I defend myself from harassment”, published by Albin Michel Jeunesse, insists on the importance of quickly detecting cases of harassment, and of approaching the subject with the victim in total confidentiality. It is then possible to train the child to defend himself, to retort, something of which he is by definition little capable, hence his situation. Reacting can take courage, Emmanuelle Piquet admits. “But the bullied child often has courage in spades, quite simply because he can no longer bear living this hell. » /oza
World
