Wikipedia’s definition of bullying is “use of force,
threat, or coercion to abuse, intimidate, or aggressively to impose domination
of others, behavior is often repeated and habitual.” Other definitions include the use of phrases
such as “perceived power imbalance, intimidation of a weaker person,
mistreating someone weaker or in a vulnerable situation.”
It’s appalling the number of bullying situations we hear
about in the news today! Unfortunately,
we often hear that the extent of the bullying has led a young person to take
his or her life.
“The research states that one in three middle school
children report being bullied. One in
ten report being bullied daily or several times a week. This is NOT a phase or part of growing
up! Bullying can happen anywhere, anytime, to anyone! It can be face-to-face, through social media,
and/or texting.
There are three
main characteristics to define bullying according to the research:
1. Harm – hurt physically,
socially, or emotionally
2. Unfair match –
one person or group doesn't have the physical, verbal, or social skills to
effectively contest the other person or group
3. Repeated occurrences
- harm and unfair match are repeated
over a period of time”
But, is this new or are we just hearing more about it
because of texting and social media influencing our young people’s lives
today? Personally, I think bullying has
always been around on some level. For example, the older kids would take the
lunch money or the actual lunch of someone younger. People would tease someone
who was “different” whether it be their size, their intelligence, their
clothing, their lack of physical adeptness, their disability etc. etc. Think about your days in grade school and
junior high (middle school), and even in high school. I would venture to guess that most of you can
think of specific examples that happened at your school. How many of you, in retrospect, would say YOU
were bullied at one time or another or maybe YOU were the one doing the
bullying.
I remember an experience with my daughter when she was
in 6th grade (middle school.) Let me first clarify that she was and
continues to be a person with confidence in herself and her abilities, was all
about making situations fair, and had a definite sense of right and wrong. I never worried about her until her behavior
began to subtly change. She was sleeping
more, had a hard time concentrating, and seemed to be distracted a lot. Easy to explain…hormones, middle school, growing
up. That is until a teacher called and
let me know that several of the 8th grade girls had been bullying
her. What I was also told was my
daughter had finally gone to a counselor at the school and asked for help. My daughter took control, asked that the counselor support her
when she confronted the girls, which then took place in the counselor’s
office. That ended the bullying.
It’s one of those stories you want to hear more about,
but what is frightening to me is one; as a parent, I explained away the changes
in her behavior as a part of growing up, and two, these things happen even to kids
who do have a measure of self confidence.
When I first started writing this I thought the answer
was simple – we need to work on the self esteem of all our kids, and we’ll have
the problem at least more manageable. That is until I remembered the situation
with my daughter. SHE had self esteem, at least, I thought she did. In retrospect, she did have self esteem - to
an extent. Growing up is hard, and we
all have that tendency to compare ourselves to others and kids can be cruel.
Obviously, there are no easy answers. I feel sorry for both the victim AND the
bully. BOTH have their own issues of not
feeling powerful in and of themselves.
That bully also is lacking in self esteem, in my opinion, and seems to
only be able to feel powerful when they put someone else down. To me the difference between the two is the
bully feels they CAN take action to show their power and the victim feels
powerless. There isn't an easy answer, there
are many layers to this problem, but yes, we still do need to work on the self
esteem of all our children!
Adding another dimension for our children (my
grandchildren), today is the effect of Facebook Twitter, texting, and how
quickly others can anonymously “jump on board.”
So what can we do?
The first step is to be aware of the characteristics and to pay
attention to our kids. Here’s an excerpt from an article written by Tanya
Beran:
Updated on Jan 24,
2012
“Effects of Bullying: Signs That A Child Is Being Bullied
All
types of bullying may have a tremendous impact on targeted children. They may
feel depressed, anxious, eat or sleep less or more, have difficulty
concentrating on school work, have trouble making friends with others, lie,
steal, run away from home, avoid school or even consider suicide (1, 3, 13,
18). Children may not want to tell anyone if they feel they deserve this type
of treatment, caused it, or that telling would make it worse (which the bully
may have threatened). There may also be long-term effects of bullying on
bullies themselves (13). Some children who bully at a young age may continue to
use aggression and control in other relationships as they grow older (13). For
example, boys may start dating earlier than other boys and be aggressive in these
relationships. Also, as adults they may be aggressive towards colleagues, use
aggression with their own children, and engage in criminal acts including
sexual assault. Girls involved in significant bullying in the early grade
school years may experience depression over a long term, attempt suicide, or
develop an eating disorder (19).”
More on this topic later, but I would appreciate your thoughts.
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