Years ago, before I had my three children, I remember reading newspaper stories about children whose young lives were made a misery because they were systematically isolated and targeted by a gang of bullies.

The tactics were not just name-calling but kicking, punching and thumping, sometimes in school and sometimes outside of school.

My reaction was clenched fists and the thought that if I ever had a child living under the same kind of threat, I would go to any lengths to follow my child at a safe distance to keep a protective eye on them, track down the bullies and confront them, and take my child out of school if necessary.

Well, since my three have been at school, I have carried out at least one of those things and I am still prepared to do all three if the need arises.

Last week, The Argus reported how children with learning difficulties or disabilities expect to be bullied at school. Quite rightly, Brighton and Hove City Council has set up an investigation to improve things for those children, who can often be reluctant to report bullying at school for fear of being stigmatised. In other words, if you’re known as a telltale, things will just get worse for you.

Talking to the bullies is an effective solution to an immediate problem for a particular child but it is a short-term solution.

The long-term solution can only come from adults. In particular, parents, teachers, head teachers, politicians, television programme makers, newspaper columnists, celebrities and the users of mobile phones all have a role to play because they all contribute to a child’s life, some, obviously, more than others.

Children copy their parents, so if a parent is a bully, openly mocking people for their looks or their disability or their opinions or anything else, their children will become a bully.

Crackdown

Teachers and head teachers are in charge of all pupils in their school and should exercise that control at all times in school. In class, they should crack down on verbal abuse from pupils, whether aimed at the teacher or at another pupil and should not condone bullying carried out under their noses.

Control and discipline should be taught at teacher training level far more effectively because, as a survey in 2010 of members of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers found, “verbal abuse of teachers, in terms of insults, threats and derogatory comments, is distressingly common…”

And teachers should be backed up by a good school behaviour policy because, as the Government says, it “is the basis of an effective approach to managing behaviour”.

Good not bad behaviour should be rewarded, and teachers too should exercise control over their own behaviour. In particular, they should not do things such as mutter “Gove’s an idiot” in scathing tones in the hearing of an entire class, as one of my children’s teachers did last week.

Not only is this bringing their own political opinions into the classroom, it is also encouraging 30-odd children to think it’s okay to openly despise an adult using a childishly unreasonable insult without any accompanying debate that would enlighten the youngsters about what Education Secretary Michael Gove has done.

Jeering

And they should stop instances where a child who puts their hand up to answer a question and gets the answer wrong is then jeered at by the rest of the class without as much as a weak “No, stop it” from the teacher. Yes, that also happened to one of my children.

But teachers have had their hands tied by politicians when it comes to discipline, as one by one their powers to impose punishment have been eroded.

The Government must restore greater powers for disciplining children at school to teachers, and then it is the job of parents to support a just punishment for their child.

I blame Simon Cowell for introducing a culture of openly and publicly sneering at the ordinary members of the public who auditioned first for Pop Idol and then for The X Factor.

Famously rude, which is why the programmes became so popular, he introduced to children the idea of criticising someone to their face, no whispered comment behind a hand that the victim couldn’t hear, but right in their faces instead.

It spawned a generation of children who feel entitled to insult others about anything that takes their fancy, a culture of hate that subsequently took to Facebook and Twitter like a duck to water.

Social websites have given adults and children alike the conduit through which they can not only target people they know, but anyone, including celebs.

Feuds

And they’re doing it too. To each other, mainly, with feuds between stars fuelling nastier and nastier insults: recently, Azealia Banks tweeted that Lily (Allen) Cooper’s husband is “ugly” and looks like a “thumb”, Lily retorted that Azealia is a one-hit wonder, spurring Azealia on to call Lily’s children “ugly”.

And there you have it. Two so-called “role models” in a public spat that is so childish it has reduced two grown women to an infant-school-level “you’re ugly” insult.

But one of these grown women has aimed the insult at innocent small children and the other is a mother exposing her children unnecessarily to it.

And it is all reported word for word by tabloid newspapers and gossip mags, splashed all over the front pages so there isn’t a cat in hell’s chance of missing it.

Commentators such as columnists comment on the trading of insults by celebrities by repeating them word for word before commenting on them by insulting them for doing so.

(And, yes, I’m aware I’m a columnist who has just repeated a celeb spat word for word but that’s to make my point. And you’ll notice that I have not used a personal insult to comment on their behaviour.)

You can hear the effect it has when you hear the one-sided conversations people have on their mobile phones, no longer constrained by the need to keep a private conversation private, but openly carrying out their arguments, including insults and swearing, anywhere they feel like it: on a bus full of schoolchildren, walking down the street, in shops, restaurants, cafes, pubs and bars, in the park, children’s play centres, everywhere. 

No restraint, just let it all out.

And if adults set the example to let it all out, no matter what you are saying, then so will children. It is adults who have created, and continue to create, bullies.