A push to stop bullying: Local parent helping raise awareness

Pulling a classmate's hair until she cries. Saying someone stinks and needs a shower. Laughing when another kid shares sad news. Even physically assaulting another student. These are common forms of bullying the kids may experience in the classroom, lunchroom, bus, or online.

According to the American Psychological Association (APA), bullying is defined as an aggressive intentional behavior that involves an imbalance of power or strength. It is a repeated behavior and can be physical, verbal, or relational.

Bullying has been part of school, and even workplaces, for years, though more recently, technology and social media have created a new venue for cyberbullying that has expanded its reach. YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat have made it easier to allow kids to send hurtful, ongoing messages to other children 24 hours a day. Some even allow messages to be left anonymously.

Putting a stop to bullying, and sharing tools and practices to stop bullying behavior before it becomes too much has become the mission for one local parent, Shelby Axberg, who shared her daughter’s story of bullying.

“Starting in sixth grade, she was told to kill herself by another student. I brought it up to the school because she had a class with this person. And until I pushed, they said they would seat them separately. But when someone tells me daughter to take that kind of action, they aren’t going to be in the same class as my daughter. That is going to stunt everything.”

Axberg says that since that incident, her daughter and the other student have made amends and that person has apologized. But her daughter was later involved in a different altercation in which she was physically assaulted in the hallway of her school.

As she tells it:

“My daughter was walking in the hall. My daughter doesn’t yell at people, she doesn’t make faces…she’s sweet. She doesn’t have social media to talk to people privately without me knowing, or engage in bullying. But she was physically assaulted. We had to take her to the doctor.” She says her daughter was grabbed by the head and punched three to four times. A teacher did intervene, and the incident was captured on surveillance.

“We had to do a short-term restraining order, then was granted a long-term restraining order. At school, the victimizer has to do all the precautions to stay away from my daughter.” She says she is still stunned that they had to get a restraining order against a student, “That’s the only way I could guarantee it. I know it’s a piece of paper, but it has kept the student away from her physically and verbally.”

Axberg says the student who assaulted her daughter had previously engaged in similar activities in the past, and that even after the assault, the student contacted Shelby via cellphone.

That experience led her to become the administrator of the “MatSu Parents Against Bullying” Facebook page.

“It started with me and one of my best friends, and one of her daughters was suspended for sticking up for another kid that was being bullied out on the playground,” she says, adding that the daughter wasn’t upset by the suspension, that the school was following guidelines, but it lit a fire in trying to address bullying.

“We created it, but she stepped aside and told me to run it,” says the tenacious Axberg “It’s been wonderful. I’ve had people write me, thank me for what we’re doing.”

One area she has been trying to focus on is preventing bully retaliation. For instance, not sending a horrible message back to someone, not embarrassing and hurting the other person, or fighting back. She doesn’t believe in physical altercations or hitting back if they are assaulted as it perpetuates the cycle and does not lead to addressing any underlying issues. Instead, Axberg wants people to use the page to share the facts, what’s happening, and what solutions are available.

“I’m really working on that as a leader. I’m not here to bully the bullies. I’m just sharing the information.” She says that if it irritates people or if people don’t want anything shared, she simply says don’t do the action that leads to bullying.

“I try not to post one side of things, but I share a lot about mental health and technology.”

She does share that she herself experienced her own bullying incident from childhood when she was overweight. As a result, she developed an eating disorder and noticed how differently people treated her based on her weight loss.

“People treated me better when I was skinnier, I felt more liked, I felt more…everything from people accepting me, and it was terrible.” She says now that she has children of her own, she doesn’t want them to go through similar experiences. One step she has personally taken is not giving her daughters a cellphone, and is pleased that the school district restricted the use of cellphones for students as schools

She worries about the use of AI and how it could affect children as it becomes easier to access and use to create unhealthy ideals but also isolation. “Social media has already been so detrimental to kids, isolating kids or damaging their ability to be themselves by chasing clicks.”

Axberg says that in the future, she would love to see schools have classes or seminars to highlight bullying behavior and steps that can be taken to address behavior before it becomes an incident that needs to go to court.

She also praises groups like Thrive Mat-Su and Youth 360 as afterschool programs that work to reduce youth substance use and improve wellness throughout the Mat-Su, while promoting positive youth interaction and development for positive outcomes for young people.

“Schools don’t have counselors like they used to. They’re there for classes and to keep things rolling. So what do you when the kids spend six to eight hours in school without a parent? They need some support.” She has been collaborating with Thrive to address bullying and the need for having someone to talk to. “I was able to speak with (Thrive Youth Programs Coordinator) Matt Clayton who wants to do a program where every school had a small group of people dedicated to provide a safe space for students to talk about anything, from something going on at home to someone picking on them on the bus. Even just talking, taking that information up the line if it needs to be addressed further. We need that.”

The APA recommends students and parents need to be a part of the solution and involved in safety teams and anti-bullying task forces, similar to what Axberg envisions. Students can inform adults about what is really going on and also teach adults about new technologies that kids are using to bully. Parents, teachers, and school administrators can help students engage in positive behavior and teach them skills so that they know how to intervene when bullying occurs. Older students can serve as mentors and inform younger students about safe practices on the internet.

While there is still a lot to think about as far as launching a program like that--funding, cooperation from the district, making it an elective or volunteering aka peer counseling--she is happy to just see discussion happening. “Anything that can help people, feel a little safer, that would help their brains focus on academics.”

The Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District (MSBSD) utilizes STOPiT, MSBSD’s anonymous reporting tool that allows students to anonymously report safety, misconduct, or compliance concerns to help others or connect with trained Crisis Counselors from the Crisis Text Line™ to help themselves.

The district also takes online safety seriously and have incorporated Digital Citizenship into school curriculums and offers resources to help with Online Safety for your family at home. Please visit www.matsuk12.us/programs/msbsd-tech-information/online-safety-for-parents-and-students

Preventing and stopping bullying involves a commitment to creating a safe environment where children can thrive, socially and academically, without being afraid.