Parental Coping Strategies as Predictors and Outcomes of Bullying: Longitudinal Relationships Between Child Victimization, Parent-Child Communication, and Parent-Teacher Consultation.

Abstract

Parental actions, such as parent-child communication and parent-teacher consultation about a child's social adjustment, have been addressed as predictors, but not as outcomes of victimization. This study, based on the Bronfenbrenner's social-ecological model, considered them as outcomes as well as predictors of child victimization and examined their longitudinal bi-directional relationship with child victimization. Data were drawn from the Seoul Education Longitudinal Study, where a total of 4005 Korean youth (female = 43.6%, age mean = 12.43, SD = 1.48 in the first wave), and their parents (female = 87%) were surveyed for six waves (when the youth were 7th to 12th grade). Autoregressive cross-lagged analyses revealed that child victimization positively predicted parent-teacher consultation and negatively predicted parent-child communication, and of these strategies, only parent-child communication was a statistically significant negative predictor of subsequent victimization. The results of this study suggest that parents tend to talk with teachers instead of their own children when bullying occurs, but it is ineffective in preventing further victimization. Communicating with one's children, which is a less common reaction, appears to be a better preventative measure.