| Everything you ever wanted to know about Bullying What is bullying? Bullying is deliberate psychological, emotional and/or physical harassment of a person. It can be by one person or a group. Bullying can either be physical - hitting, kicking, punching and so on; or it can be verbal - threats, name-calling, gossiping or ignoring. You can explain this to younger children by telling them that bullying is when you hurt someone or hurt their feelings. Some examples of bullying to tell younger children might be: hitting, biting, kicking, pulling hair, taking toys or saying unkind things like ‘you’re dumb’, ‘you’re fat’, or ‘you’re ugly’. Bullying is different from ordinary teasing, rough-and-tumble or schoolyard fights in two critical ways: 1) because it almost always involves an imbalance of size, strength and power between the children involved and 2) because incidents are ongoing. This is not to say that there are not isolated, one-off instances of bullying but generally harmful bullying occurs repeatedly and is so persistent that the victim does not have time to recover from one episode of bullying before being confronted with another. The research tells us it is the repetitive nature of behavior that is the really important thing about bullying. Most children can deal with isolated instances of teasing. Many children (particularly brothers and sisters) may tease each other unmercifully. Generally, this does no harm as long as it is not the only way they interact and there is no malice in the teasing; and it can help young people to learn how to deal with others if they learn how to shrug off teasing. Obviously, if I child is clearly distressed, teasing is not okay. Physical harm, on the other hand, should simply not be tolerated. Types of bullying Bullying can take many forms, including:
How frequent is bullying? The research confirms that bullying is widespread. Most research suggests that the level of persistent bullying, where a child is bullied at school on a weekly basis, ranges between 8% (in the USA, the UK and Norway) and up to 15% in some countries. The level of bullying increases, however, at various times of the school year. For example, there are some reports that up to 22% of students report being bullied in the first few weeks of a new school year. According to the research, boys report being bullied overall more frequently than girls. The most commonly reported form of bullying is verbal, such as cruel teasing and name-calling. This is experienced by boys and girls about equally. Unlike physical bullying, which tends to reduce with age, verbal forms of harassment show comparatively little change over time. The main contrast between boys and girls is that boys are more often bullied physically and threatened by their peers whereas girls report being more commonly the victims of indirect bullying, such as being excluded from their peer group. In fact, even though boys are more likely to experience physical bullying, direct verbal bullying is still the most common form of bullying for both girls and boys. In a research project from Australia called the Gatehouse Project, the researchers found:
Perhaps surprisingly, the research tells us elementary/primary school children of both sexes are generally bullied more often than students in secondary schools, although there is a notable increase in bullying when students first enter junior high school. Some research in the UK has shown that bullying also occurs in different locations depending on grade level. The research found 70% of bullying at primary level occurs in the playground, where it is more difficult for teachers to detect. Elementary /Primary School Location/ Percentage (%) Playground -- 70% And while at secondary school a high percentage of bullying occurs in the playground, it also frequently occurs in class, when walking home from school and in school corridors. Secondary School Location/ Percentage (%) Playground – 26% Research from a variety of countries around the world concludes that really violent bullying at school is rare, with most violent incidents happening well away from the school grounds. However, often the violence occurs because something that happened at school is carried on after school is over; or because some problem from home is brought to school. Some of the factors that appear to cause excessively violent behavior have been identified as:
How do I know if my child is being bullied? If your child is being bullied you may notice the following signs. Your child:
Of course, children can have some of these symptoms while not being bullied but if a number of these signs are present over time, it is wise to consider that bullying may be the cause. For more research and facts about bullying please read our FREE articles by clicking on the Articles link at the top of the page. References Craig, W. M. & Pepler, D. J. (1997), Observations
of Bullying and Victimization in the School Yard, Canadian
Journal of School Psychology, 13 |