A. Bullies
B. Violence Prevention: Bullying
C. A Comprehensive Approach
D. Bullies can be a Serious Problem for Kids
E. Who are the bullies and who are the victims?
A. Bullies (Back to Top)
Bullies harass and terrorize their victims, driving many into depression and isolation. Aggressive behavior and bullying are learned early. Early prevention is essential.
Bullying can be direct or indirect and varies between boys and girls. Direct bullying is the kind of action the word generally brings to mind, including physical violence, taunting and teasing, threats of violence, and extortion or theft.
In recent years, the academic definition of bullying has been expanded to include indirect bullying, such as name-calling, spreading rumors, and exclusion from a peer group. Indirect bullying socially isolates children. Both forms of bullying occur repeatedly and over a prolonged time. Boys typically engage in direct bullying while girls tend to use indirect methods, though girls are less frequently either bullies or victims.
Approximately 15 percent of students are either bullied regularly or are themselves bullies. (This translates to approximately 5 million elementary and middle school students.) Direct bullying seems to increase through elementary school, peak during middle school or junior high school, and decline during high school. While physical assaults decrease with age, verbal abuse appears to remain constant. Variations between schools seem to have little affect on bullying, with size, racial composition, and setting (urban, suburban, or rural) making little difference.
Bullies identified by age eight are six times more likely than non-bullies to be convicted of a crime by the time they reach age 24 and five times more likely to end up with serious criminal records by age 30. Children who are chronic bullies seem to remain bullies as adults.
Fear leads many victims to turn against school. Some 7 percent of America's eighth-graders stay home at least once a month because of bullies. Being bullied often increases isolation, depression, and low self-esteem, problems that can affect victims for the rest of their lives
B. Violence Prevention: Bullying (Back to Top)
www.yesican.gov/drugfree/prevention.html
Educators, parents, and children concerned with violence prevention must also be concerned with bullying and its link to other violent behaviors.
Strategies for Children
Children may not know what to do when they observe a classmate being bullied or experience such victimization themselves. Depending on the situation and their own level of comfort, students can:
- Seek immediate help from an adult;
- Offer support to the victim, when they see him/her being bullied with words, through other acts of kindness or condolence (for example, picking up the victim's books and handing them to him or her);
- Express disapproval of bullying behavior by not joining in the laughter, teasing, or spreading of rumors or gossip; and
- Attempt to defuse problem situations either single-handedly or in a group, for example, by taking the bully aside and asking him/her to "cool it."
Strategies for Parents
The following suggestions are offered to help parents identify appropriate responses to conflict experienced by their children at school:
- Be careful not to convey to a child who is being victimized that something is wrong with him/her or that he/she deserves such treatment. Convince your child that he or she is not at fault and that the bully's behavior is the source of the problem;
- Offer support to your child but do not encourage dependence on you. Rescuing your child from challenges when things are not going well does not teach your child independence. The more choices a child has to make, the more he or she develops independence, and independence can contribute to self-confidence;
- Help your child to develop new or bolster existing friendships. Friends often serve as buffers to bullying;
- Do not encourage your child to be aggressive or to strike back. Rather, teach your child to be assertive. A child who does not respond as the bully desires is not likely to be chosen as a victim;
- Work with your child's school to address the problem. School personnel may be able to offer some practical advice to help you and your child. Keep records of incidents so that you can be specific in your discussions with school personnel about your child's experiences at school;
- While it may help to talk with the bully or his/her parents, be careful in your approach. Speaking directly to the bully may signal to the bully that your child is weak. Parents of bullies may fail to see anything wrong with bullying, equating it to "standing up for oneself."
If the problem persists or escalates, you may need to seek an attorney's help or contact local law enforcement officials.
C. A Comprehensive Approach (Back to Top)
Many communities have been successful in reducing school violence through an integrated, comprehensive approach that involves everyone - schools, students, parents, mental health providers, law enforcement, faith-based and youth-serving organizations, business leaders, and other local partners. A safe school is the result of careful planning, research, and a thorough understanding of the school's environment, and community support is critical to its success.
What Students Can Do
Students have an important role to play in ensuring that their schools are safe and orderly. They can take steps to help make their schools places where learning can take place without disruption. For example, they can:
- Participate in the development of school safety planning through student government organizations and advisory committees;
- Become involved in programs such as peer mediation, conflict resolution, peer assistance leadership, teen courts, or anger management;
- Report weapon possession, drug use or sale, bullying or intimidation, gang activity, or vandalism to school authorities and parents;
- Work with teachers, principals, and other students in developing community service programs;
- Encourage their parents to come to the school and be involved in activities that support the school;
- Serve as a big brother/big sister, tutor, or mentor for a younger student.
What Parents Can Do
Without the active support and participation of parents, schools and communities cannot be safe. Parents must be part of a school's effort to create a safe and orderly learning environment. Some of the actions parents can take to assist schools are:
- Set standards of behavior, limits, and clear expectations for children both in and out of school;
- Be involved in their children's school life by reviewing homework, meeting their teachers, and attending school functions such as parent-teacher conferences, PTA meetings, class programs, open houses, plays, concerts, and sporting events;
- Build a network of other adults with whom they can talk about school safety issues and alcohol and drug use;
- Join a community association to ensure that issues related to alcohol, drugs, and violence are made part of the organization's agenda and that community groups work together to create a safe school corridor by supervising walking routes to and from school;
- Talk to their children about the consequences of drug use and violence;
- Work with the school to develop a comprehensive safe school plan;
- Encourage their children to participate in school-sponsored, after-class activities.
D. Bullies can be a Serious Problem for Kids (Back to Top)
www.mcgruff.org/bullies.htm
Bullying can be a serious problem for kids.
Bullying behavior may seem rather insignificant compared to kids bringing guns to school and getting involved with drugs. Bullying is often dismissed as part of growing up. But it's actually an early form of aggressive, violent behavior. Statistics show that one in four children who bully will have a criminal record before the age of 30. Bullies often cause serious problems that schools, families, and neighbors ignore. Teasing at bus stops, taking another child's lunch money insults and threats, kicking or shoving -- it's all fair game to a bully Fears and anxieties about bullies can cause some children to avoid school, carry a weapon for protection, or even commit more violent activity Although anyone can be the target of bullying behavior, the victim is often singled out because of his or her psychological traits more than his or her physical traits. A typical victim is likely to be shy, sensitive, and perhaps anxious or insecure. Some children are picked on for physical reasons such as being overweight or physically small, having a disability, or belonging to a different race or religious faith.
About Bullies
Some bullies are outgoing, aggressive, active, and expressive. They get their way by brute force or openly harassing someone. This type of bully rejects rules and regulations and needs to rebel to achieve a feeling of superiority and security. Other bullies are more reserved and manipulative and may not want to be recognized as harassers or tormentors. They try to control by smooth-talking, saying the "right" thing at the "right" time, and lying. This type of bully gets his or her power discreetly through cunning, manipulation, and deception. As different as these two types may seem, all bullies have some characteristics in common.
They:
- are concerned with their own pleasure
- want power over others
- are willing to use and abuse other people to get what they want
- feel pain inside, perhaps because of their own shortcomings
- find it difficult to see things from someone else's perspective
What You Can Do
- Listen to children. Encourage children to talk about school, social events, other kids in class, the walk or ride to and from school so you can identify any problems they may be having.
- Take children's complaints of bullying seriously. Probing a seemingly minor complaint may uncover more severe grievances. Children are often afraid or ashamed to tell anyone that they have been bullied, so listen to their complaints.
- Watch for symptoms that children may be bullying victims, such as withdrawal, a drop in grades, torn clothes, or needing extra money or supplies.
- Tell the school or organization immediately if you think that your children are being bullied. Alerted caregivers can carefully monitor your children's actions and take steps to ensure your children's safety.
- Work with other parents to ensure that the children in your neighborhood are supervised closely on their way to and from school.
- Don't bully your children yourself, physically or verbally. Use nonphysical, consistently enforced discipline measures as opposed to ridiculing, yelling at, or ignoring your children when they misbehave.
- Help children learn the social skills they need to make friends. A confident, resourceful child who has friends is less likely to be bullied or to bully others.
- Praise children's kindness toward others. Let children know that kindness is valued.
- Teach children ways to resolve arguments without violent words or actions. Teach children self-protection skills -- how to walk confidently, stay alert to what's going on around them, and to stand up for themselves verbally.
- Provide opportunities for children to talk about bullying, perhaps when watching TV together, reading aloud, playing a game, or going to the park or a movie.
- Recognize that bullies may be acting out feelings of insecurity, anger, or loneliness. If your child is a bully, help get to the root of the problem. Seek out specific strategies you can use at home from a teacher, school counselor, or child psychologist.
E. Who are the bullies and who are the victims? (Back to Top)
Victims of Bullying
www.kysafeschools.org
Bullying happens when a person with greater power takes unfair advantage of a less powerful person and these negative actions are repeated into a pattern of behavior
Bullying means there is an imbalance of power so that the victim cannot successfully defend himself or herself. Power can be physical size, strength, numbers, social standing, verbal skill, economic power, cultural or ethnic power, level of intelligence, popularity, gender, etc. Bullying is the persistent abuse of an underdog. The bully watches for opportunities to pick on the victim and the victim feels tormented and defenseless.
According to statisitcs, every seven minutes a child is bullied and 85% of the time no one is there to intervene. In a way, you could say that everyone in the community suffers when bullying behavior occurs. Many episodes of violent crime have their roots in a bully/victim struggle. However, there are certain individuals who are most often targeted for bullying. Traditionally, we have thought of these victims as the passive type. Research has revealed that there is another group of individuals who are often targeted as well. These have been "provacative" victims, because they provoke, or hassle,others.
Characteristics of Victims
Rarely tell about being bullied because they think it will make
matters worse.
- Don't think adults can or will help.
- Are repeatedly teased in a nasty way, called names, belittled,
ridiculed, intimidated, degraded, threatened, given orders,
dominated. - Are made fun of and laughed at by others.
- Get picked on, pushed around, shoved, punched, hit, kicked.
- Are involved in "quarrels" or "fights" in which they are unfairly
defenseless and from which they try to withdraw (maybe crying). - Have their books, money or other belongings taken, damaged or
scattered around. - Have bruises, injuries, cuts, scratches or torn clothing that cannot
be given a natural explanation. - Are (often) alone and excluded from the peer group during
breaks and lunch time, do not seem to have a single good friend. - Are chosen among the last in team games.
- Sometimes carry weapons to protect themselves from bullies.
- Show sudden or gradual deterioration of schoolwork.
Kentucky Center for School Safety