The shortest day, the darkest day is behind us and, as we come out into the light, slow as it is at first, we can begin afresh on addressing the most common and dreaded issue among children, junior youth, youth, parents and teachers — bullying and being bullied.
Every school year the aggressive behavior of a few children, junior youth and adolescents runs off cooperative and academically capable students. Students who are bullied have excessive absences and often, eventually, leave public school looking for refuge in charter schools, online and home school programs.
The extent of the problem
• 33% of U.S. elementary students reported being bullied while at school.
• 20% of kindergarten students reported being bullied often.
Elementary school bullying takes all forms, physical, verbal and social. Physical bullying includes locking in a confined space, inappropriate touching and extortion. Verbal bullying includes taunting, rumors and racial and gender based slurs. Social bullying includes exclusion from a group, threatening notes and words and, in higher elementary grades, with weapons.
• Statistics show that one in five middle and high school students report being bullied.
The prevalence of bullying is higher in middle school (26.3%) than in high school (15.7%). The prevalence of bullying is higher among female students (21.8%) than among male students (16.7%).
Children who are bullied are more likely to experience: Depression and anxiety, increased sadness and loneliness, troubles with sleep and eating behaviors and loss of interest in activities they previously enjoyed. These issues may persist into adulthood. Adult intervention is vital.
In the social world of children, junior youth and also youth, today, there is increased pressure from social media and cyberbullying. Junior youth and youth/middle school and high school students are dealing with the desire to fit in. Social media encourages comparing and easily contains falsified information and pictures. The pre teen and teenage adolescents are subject to sexual harassment and hazing both in person and through cyberbullying.
What is bullying behavior?
To resolve a problem, it is necessary to understand the problem. Bullying and harsh teasing are different. Friends and siblings tease each other. It can be part of their bonding. As children, junior youth and adolescents are still developing, sometimes teasing can unintentionally be harsh and inappropriate. What sets teasing apart from bullying is intent and the outcome. When friends or siblings tease the intent is to connect through humor, and they feel sincere remorse when someone gets hurt. When a peer bullies the intent is to harm, and the peer feels triumphant when the victim is hurt.
The most common types of bullying reported by students ages 12–18 have been:
• Being the subject of rumors.
• Being made fun of, called names, or insulted.
• Being bullied online.
• Being pushed, shoved, tripped, or spit on.
Why do kids bully?
What drives the aggressive and predatory behavior of a child, junior youth or youth? Understanding bully behavior can be a powerful armor against personalizing the bullying behavior and becoming a disempowered victim. When families get to know each other, their numbers can become an effective advocate for the unmet needs of the bully, the core driving the bully behavior, and they can seek help from people in a position to help, teachers, school counselors and team coaches.
Research and experience show there are many reasons a child begins to bully. The most prominent include lack of positive attention from those who are important to the child and the child’s own undeveloped sense of empathy. These children feel disempowered in their primary relationships with caregivers and/or disempowered over their circumstance. They are seeking power. They may feel rejected and dismissed. This can happen to a child who is being neglected or abused and to a child living with cancer or a child whose parent has a chronic illness or a parent who has died. The child feels no power over her/his/their circumstances. They feel abandoned and alone.
Also, the bully can be a child, a junior youth or youth who has a negative view of anyone with differences from her/his/their group. It can be anyone different, as in height, weight, or those who wear their hair short or long. It can be anyone who has a different skin color, or different type of hair, curly or straight. It can be someone who is quiet or who is loud and boisterous. It can be someone who plays an instrument or someone who is an athlete. The more differences, the more there is to attack.
The power of nurturing and attentive parenting
To help your child if she/he/they has aggressive tendencies, take an honest inventory of your relationship with her/him/them. If you come home from work and order your child to do homework, shower and go to bed, it is likely that an important routine is missing from your child’s day. When children come home from school, or parents come home from work to children already at home from school, the first five minutes of contact is very important. The child needs undivided positive attention. “What was the best thing that happened today at school?” “What is something new and interesting that you learned today?” “Are you hungry for a snack?” A parent’s loving attention in this proactive manner can set a positive tone for after-school demands, like homework, chores and bedtime routine.
Communication with your child is key. Acknowledge a problem and talk it through. Talk to seek understanding of what is missing for your child or youth that might have led to their aggression. You can help your child see the empowering effects of doing good deeds. You can notice when your child does a good deed and celebrate it. You can read books and articles about positive people who are honored as heroes. Because aggressive and predatory behavior is about low empathy, you can help your child notice the hurt feelings of others, of pet and animals, too.
Parental management of bully behavior
It is necessary to set reasonable consequences for misbehavior. School age children can be included in setting up the consequences, once they learn how their behavior has hurt another person. Consequences should be related to their aggressive behavior. To build empathy for others, the consequence can be doing an act of service for a neighbor or elder, or grooming, feeding, and walking the dog. The bully can take an action that would restore what their victim lost. If the victim lost trust in the bully, adults can help the bully find how she/he/they might restore trust. The same with a sense of safety.
At the same time, often additional help is needed when a child has low empathy and aggressive behavior toward others. As parents are the most influential person in a child or teen’s life, parent counseling can help tame the bully or soothe the bullied. Whichever the child needs and at whatever age, the parents may need help knowing how to effectively intervene. Professional child and adolescent counseling can give your child a neutral person to express her/his/their feelings to, and a trained person who can help the child strengthen empathy and prosocial skills.
Children who do not bully
The child who does not bully is often one who is a mentally alert, intuitive child who acts with compassion for others and a sense of service to the greater good. Such a child often has the capacity to view peer differences as interesting and potentially an asset, even, potentially, as a friend. A child growing up in a neighborhood and society that does not model these qualities needs a parent or caregiver who will intentionally teach these qualities and stop the development of bullying behavior.
Practical Interventions
Safety first. If there is ever a point where your child's safety is in jeopardy, go as far up the ladder and as fast as you can to report the incident. It could be the school board, the superintendent, or the police. We now know that bullying can cause physical injury to a child or youth, like being kneed in the kidney or having their head shoved against the locker. And, it can be lethal. Get help for your child and do not deviate. Be vigilant until your child gets the safety she/he/they deserve.
Anti-bullying strategies for students — Adults can assist students in using these strategies.
If your student or a student you know is being bullied, you can help them learn to use these tools and strategies to stop or diffuse continued threats:
1. Ignore the bully
When bullies do something hurtful, many are looking for a reaction, like making the victim cry or get angry. This reaction can escalate the bullying. By staying calm, a student being bullied may cause a bully to lose interest.
2. Tell the bully to stop
Often, bullies don’t expect someone to stand up to them. By firmly and confidently telling a bully to stop, the bully can be surprised and unprepared for what to do next.
3. Know how to exit
Students need to know how to get out of a bullying situation before it gets worse, especially if it turns physical. Students should look for opportunities, like leaving the encounter or creating a lot of noise to draw attention.
4. Stick with friends
Bullies often target students who are alone or who are socially isolated from their peers. Having even one friend can help protect a student from being singled out by a bully.
5. Stand with others
Witnesses play a powerful role in shutting down the bullying. More than half (57%) of bullying incidents stop when a peer intervenes on behalf of the student being bullied. If a student sees someone being bullied, they should stand with that person, so they can help the victim with a bystander intervention.
6. Tell someone
Encourage students to seek help from somebody they trust, like a friend, teacher, or parent. Talking it out can help a victim feel safe and supported. Caring adults can help prevent bullying from continuing or escalating.
7. Collect information and report the incidents
Adults can help the student document the facts of what happened so they can report the incident to the school or district. These facts may include: the names of people involved, when and where the incident occurred, what was said and what happened, and any relevant evidence, like videos or screenshots of cyberbullying.
Stand Up to Bullying
Being bullied is difficult for many students to deal with, both the one bullying and the one being bullied. Bullying is an aggressive abuse of power that can leave the victim feeling hurt, helpless, isolated, and confused. Growing research shows that college students are being bullied, too. We are all responsible for providing a safe, bullying-free environment for children and youth, as well as emerging adults in our community.
