Bullying perpetration among youth: The contributions of child disclosure and parent–teacher connection.

Despite research emphasizing the importance of parents in addressing children's bullying perpetration, there has been little prior research that explored how parental knowledge, particularly from child-initiated disclosure of their daily behaviors and experiences, may impact the child's overt, relational, and cyberbullying perpetration longitudinally. The current study examined the longitudinal relations between parent-reported child disclosure and the child's overt, relational, and cyberbullying perpetration, and the roles of parent-teacher connection in moderating the relations. This study utilized data gathered from 110 fourth to 5th grade children (M age = 10.35 years, SD = 8.75 months) and their parents/caregivers from 2 urban public schools in the United States. The analyses revealed that for children with high disclosure in the fall, stronger parent-teacher connection in the fall was significantly associated with less relational and cyberbullying perpetration in the spring. These findings suggest that high child-initiated disclosure itself might not be adequate in addressing children's bullying involvement and strong parent-teacher connection serves to protect children from increased covert bullying when they openly communicate with parents about their behaviors. This highlights the long-term importance of connections between teachers and parents in addressing relational and cyberbullying behaviors in underresourced urban schools. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).