BULLYING is NOT OK!

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 6^th 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 8^th 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:

 By Tanya Beran, PhD Bullying Special Edition Contributor

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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