“If you dare not to bring the money I asked you to, you’ll see!” Dewi, not her real name, was shocked to read the threat message from her oldest son’s email account. Her eldest son, Dodi, was only 4th  grader. With a little investigation here and there, Dewi soon found out that the email sender was one of Dodi’s schoolmates who was famous by his naughtiness - lots of his friends were afraid of him. And Dewi also found out that this was not the first time that Dodi received the threat message from the bad boy of the school and that Dodi had been giving his daily allowance to the boy diligently these past two months. Dodi had been afraid to tell her mother or his teacher since the bad boy had threatened him if Dodi ever told one of them he would get punched. Luckily Dewi happened to read the message from Dodi’s email account when Dodi forgot to turn off his PC at his room. The next day, without wasting so much time, Dewi went to see the school council and told the story of the bullying. It turned out that the school council had received lots of similar complaints about the bad boy. At the end, the bad boy was expelled from the school by the school council.

Recently the number of bullying amongst children via internet like what happened to Dodi is increasing. Moreover, the majority of children of these days are internet literate, each one of them has an email account, and even some of them actively join an e-community like Facebook, Twitter, etc. These children’s personal information are exposed openly through these e-communities, and this, whether they aware or not, make them vulnerable to bullying from friends or even strangers.

But, what is bullying anyway? According to Kidshealth.org from Nemours Foundation*, Bullying is intentional tormenting in physical, verbal, or psychological ways. It can range from hitting, shoving, name-calling, threats, and mocking to extorting money and treasured possessions. Some kids bully by shunning others and spreading rumors about them. Bullying can leave deep emotional scars that last for life. And in extreme situations, it can culminate in violent threats, property damage, or someone getting seriously hurt. The effects can be serious and affect kids’ sense of self-worth and future relationships. In severe cases, bullying has contributed to tragedies, such as school shootings.

Based on a series of Focus Groups done by Polling Center to women around 35 – 40 years old from A and B class in the early year of 2009, it reveals that the majority of respondents are afraid their children to experience bullying at school or out of school. In an extreme case, one of the respondents found a bullying case done by a male teacher at 1st grade in one institution where her son went to school. The teacher threatened and did sexual harassment to some of his boy students. One of the boys’ mothers, which was the respondent who told us the story, only noticed that there was something wrong when she saw that his son had a new habit; playing with his cock. When she asked to her son who taught him to do that, the son innocently confessed his teacher at school did it.

In the same FGD, all the respondents that consisted of working moms and housewives also noticed and felt apprehensive about bullying done via internet or sms (short message service). Most of the moms said that they intentionally placed their family Personal Computer (PC) with an internet link in a family room where most of the members of the family could come in and out anytime so that their children could not open their email account secretively, if they happened to receive any threat or bullying message from their friends, it could be detected right away by the parents. Learning from everyday life; usually most of children do not tell their parents when they receive threat or get bullied by their friends. The first reason is they are afraid should they tell their parents the people who bully them will really do their threats, another reason is they reluctant to tell their parents since by doing so they feel like proclaiming their weakness (the latter usually happens to boys). Some of the respondents, the working moms, confessed they joined some e-communities where their children were members, in this way they hope they can indirectly controlling their children’s activities. Yet, as a whole, the respondents agree that the most lethal weapon to anticipate bullying is open communication between parents and children (eky)