Georgie Gardner's warning to Ben Fordham about schoolyard bullying: 'It will happen'

Though society's understanding of bullying has progressed leaps and bounds over the last few years, has it been overused to the point where it has lost some of its meaning?

This is the topic Talking Honey panelists newsreader Georgie Gardner, Nine Entertainment editor Richard Wilkins and 2GB Radio Host Ben Fordham, as well as host Shelly Horton, tackled this very topic in the latest installment.

Fordham began by speaking to his experience as a father of three school-aged children.

Watch the video above.?

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"It scares me, the idea that they're bullied at school or could be bullied at school, and it also scares me that they could bully kids at school," the dad said.

Though there hasn't been many instances, he did say another mum told his wife Jodie about an incident involving their children that they didn't know about.?

"That was our first big test of it, of sitting down with them discussing it, going through the options."

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"The first option we gave them was, 'Do you want to try handling it yourself?', which is what they ended up doing and it worked."

After listening to Fordham's experience, Gardner gave him the sobering truth: "It will happen... and it is just part of growing up."

Gardner, who is mum to two teenagers, ?explained, "It will happen and it's part of life and I'm not suggesting that it's ideal, but it's part of just the rough and tumble of growing up

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"It's about teaching your kids how to handle that as the 'victim', a word I also think is overused, and how to model behavior."

She added it should be parents who we are targeting rather than the children that lean from them.?

"Bullying is learnt behaviour. A kid who comes to school and throws their weight around, I bet nine times out of 10 is experiencing that sort of behavior on the home front," Gardener said.

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Fordham seemed a bit disappointed in her response,? saying these things can't be dismissed as "part of growing up".

"I think that there are examples like that where there's an evil element within the school and... why don't we get rid of the evil element and allow the other kids to remain?" he asked.

Gardener quickly clarified, "?That is absolutely an example of bullying," and provided an example of "things that happen that don't constitute bullying", such as a child saying, "He sat in my chair and he knows that that's where I like to sit, and so therefore I'm being bullied."

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"That's my point about [how] I think it's losing its currency," she explained.

She says more serious "situations like [the one Fordham described] are heartbreaking and we've all experienced them as parents with our children and you want to go in there and you want to absolutely take control of the situation."

Gardner firmly believes the solution to this is to model behaviour to kids to help them defend themselves.

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"The most effective thing is to never lose sight of the fact that they are watching your behaviour, they're watching other role models and adults in their lives because it is learnt behaviour," she says.

She gives the example of parents at sports fields "bullying" the referees and umpires, saying that the "perfect" way to model behaviour is to "actually call that behaviour out with the adult, because the children are watching that, aren't they?"