- A lack of warmth and involvement on the part of parents
- Overly permissive parenting (including a lack of limits for children’s behavior)
- A lack of supervision by parents
- Harsh, physical discipline
- Bullying incidences at home
Source: HRSA
Research shows that bullying can be a sign of other serious antisocial and/or violent behavior. Children who frequently bully their peers are more likely than others to:
- Get into frequent fights
- Be injured in a fight
- Vandalize or steal property
- Drink alcohol
- Smoke
- Be truant from school
- Drop out of school
- Carry a weapon
Source: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
There are many school-based bullying prevention programs. Although they vary in size and scope, the most promising programs incorporate the following characteristics:
- focus on creating a school-wide environment, or climate that discourages bullying,
- Surveys of students to assess the nature and extent of bullying behavior and attitudes toward bullying,
- Training to prepare staff to recognize and respond to bullying,
- Development of consistent rules against bullying,
- Review and enhancement of the school’s disciplinary code related to bullying behavior,
- Classroom activities to discuss issues related to bullying,
- Integration of bullying prevention themes across the curriculum,
- Individual and group work with children who have been bullied,
- Individual work with children who have bullied their peers,
- Involvement of parents in bullying prevention and intervention activities, and
- Use of teacher or staff groups to increase staff knowledge and motivation related to bullying.
Source: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
If you suspect your child is being bullied, remember to support your child, inform others and take action.
- First, focus on your child. Be supportive and gather information about the bullying. Tell your child you are concerned about him or her and ask questions.
- Contact your child’s teacher and/or principal. He or she will probably be in the best position to understand the relationships between your child and other peers at school. Ask the teacher to talk to other adults who interact with your child at school to see if they have observed students bullying your child.
- If you know your child is being bullied, take quick action. There is nothing worse than doing nothing, and bullying can have serious effects.
If, after talking with your child and staff at his or her school, you don’t believe your child is being bullied, be alert to other possible problems your child may be having. Share your concerns with a counselor at your child’s school.
Source: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
A review of bullying prevention programs and feedback from educators in the field led us to suggest 10 strategies that represent “best practice” in bullying prevention and intervention.
- Focus on the social environment of the school. In order to reduce bullying, it is important to change the social climate of the school and the social norms with regards to bullying. This requires the efforts of everyone in the school environment—teachers, administrators, counselors school nurses other non-teaching staff (such as bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers, and/or school librarians), parents, and students.
- Assess bullying at your school. Adults are not always very good at estimating the nature and prevalence of bullying at their school. As a result, it can be quite useful to administer an anonymous questionnaire to students about bullying. A number of bullying prevention programs listed in the Catalog of Resources include these measures.
- Obtain staff and parent buy-in and support for bullying prevention. Bullying prevention should not be the sole responsibility of any single individual at a school. To be most effective, bullying prevention efforts require buy-in from the majority of the staff and from parents. However, bullying prevention efforts should still begin even if immediate buy-in from all isn’t achievable. Usually, more and more supporters will join the effort once they see what it’s accomplishing.
- Form a group to coordinate the school’s bullying prevention activities. Bullying prevention efforts seem to work best if they are coordinated by a representative group from the school. This coordinating team might include:
- an administrator
- a teacher from each grade
- a member of the non-teaching staff
- a school counselor or other school-based mental health professional
- a parent
Source: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
Part of being a teen is having thoughts and feelings about different parts of your life, such as how you feel about:
- your friends and other kids your age
- how you are doing in school and in other activities
- your parents
- the way you look
While having these new feelings, many changes are also taking place in your body. It is normal to feel self-conscious or shy about the changes in your body and emotions but there are also changes to celebrate. Some cultures even have celebrations to recognize these changes. For example, the Western Apaches have the Sunrise Dance or “Na’ii’ees” and the Jewish community has the Bat Mitzvah – both mark a girl’s passage to becoming a woman. Even though it might seem tough sometimes, remember that you are absolutely great!
Source: Office on Women’s Health
Bullying is when one person or a group of people scare or hurt someone else over and over again. Bullies hurt others who are often weaker or less confident. Bullying is often done on purpose and it can happen anywhere, such as at school, in the park, on a sports team, or even at home. Often the person being bullied has a hard time defending herself.
There are many types of bullying. Bullying can be:
- Leaving someone out of group activities on purpose.
- Giving someone the “silent treatment.”
- Using the Internet, IMs, text messages, and/or e-mail to hurt others (also called cyberbullying).
- Making faces and/or bad gestures with your hands at someone.
- Using a person to get something you want, such as making friends with someone who is smart just so they can do your homework for you.
- Making fun of someone for being “different.”
- Forcing someone to do something embarrassing or dangerous in order to join a sports team or social group (also called hazing).
- Name-calling, teasing, gossiping, and/or spreading rumors.
- Hair pulling, biting, and pinching.
- Threatening and scaring others.
- Hitting, punching, and shoving.
Bullying doesn’t just happen between girls. Did you know that sometimes adults bully kids? This doesn’t happen often, but it does happen sometimes. Bullying can happen when one person has power over another person. Teachers and coaches have power over students. Anytime a person hurts another person on purpose (either with words or actions), over and over again, this is bullying.
Also, girls sometimes bully boys. Girls may call a boy “gay” or hit a boy because they know he can’t hit them back.
Source: Office on Women’s Health
Is it against the law to bully? What are the rights and responsibilities of schools, parents, and students when it comes to providing a safe environment for learning? What are a school’s obligations when a student has confided in a counselor about a bullying incident? What are a school’s legal obligations when a student says he plans to harm himself or others?
These are just a few of the legal and ethical issues schools and mental health professionals must address when working with children on bullying and family violence.
As with many complex social problems, these questions demand more than a simple “yes” or “no” answer or legal citation. Some bullying behaviors, such as racial or sexual bullying, are a violation of civil rights laws. Physical bullying can be charged as an assault. Some forms of bullying, such as teasing and intimidating, however, are not illegal. In describing bullying actions that had left her daughter devastated, one mother noted of her daughter’s tormentors, “Nothing they do (or don’t do) is against the rules.” ref
Whether or not the bullying behavior is technically illegal, creating lasting change among communities that have acknowledged the presence of bullying requires more than a legalistic response. At the same time, communities are aware of the need to use the law to protect the rights of individuals and to prevent actions for which they might be liable.
Laws that clearly define duties and rights also serve the purpose of sending the message to students, parents, and the public that bullying behaviors are not acceptable. Absent strong standards, including legal ones, schools and communities that fail to “adapt to circumstances,” as the Chinese proverb says, may find themselves in an antagonistic relationship with victims and members of the public who will seek legal and other remedies to bullying problems.
Source: SAMHSA. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
How serious is the problem? Many students fail to report bullying to teachers and other adults, making bullying an underreported problem. As researchers probe more deeply into what goes on among school-aged children, however, alarming statistics are surfacing:
- According to the results of a nationwide survey funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, ref bullying affects nearly one out of every three U.S. children in grades 6-10.
- One third of high school students polled about issues related to school size said their schools had serious problems with bullying.ref
- A review of 1999 data collected by the Federal government on school safety among 12- to 18-year-old students found that approximately 36 percent of students reported seeing hate-related graffiti at school.ref
- Fifty-five percent of 8- to 11-year-olds and 68 percent of 12- to 15-year-olds say bullying is a big problem.ref
- A nationwide survey highlighted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 6.6 percent of students in grades 9-12 had missed at least one day of school during the 30 days preceding the survey because they felt unsafe at school or on their way to or from school.ref
- A survey by the American Association of University Women found that although students today are likely to be aware of school sexual harassment policies, 8 in 10 students — both boys and girls — said they experienced some type of sexual harassment in school. The results were the same among urban, suburban, or rural schools.ref
There are signs that bullying is on the rise. According to the National Education Association (NEA), in recent years, “bullying has become more lethal and has occurred more frequently” than in the previous two decades.ref The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) has called bullying “the most common form of violence in society”.ref
Groups such as the NEA, NASP, American Medical Association, and the American Bar Association have launched major initiatives to draw attention to the issue. Partly in response to several highly publicized school shootings across the country in recent years, several State legislatures have passed laws requiring schools to adopt antibullying policies.
Source: SAMHSA, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
Questions:
- What was the best thing that happened to you today?
- What do you love about school/work?
- What does success mean to you?
- What makes you scared?
- What do you remember about your first day at school/work?
- What three things make a person popular in your school/at work?
- What makes you laugh?
- Why do you think some kids/adults dress differently?
- Talk more about this.
- What makes you angry?
- Where would you go if you could travel anywhere in the world? Why?
- What’s a skill you wish you had? Why?
- What one thing would you do to make the world more peaceful?
- If you could go back in time and live in any era, what would it be? Why?
- Do you like being challenged? How?
- How can we stop violence?
- What other cultures interest you? Why?
- If you could share anything with your best friend, what would it be? Why?
- If you could write a book, what kind of book would it be? Why?
- If you could sit down with the most powerful person in the world and give that person advice, what would that be?
- Do you learn more when you win or when you lose? Tell me more.
- If you could do one thing to make the earth cleaner and more livable, what would it be? Why?
- A blank coupon – you decide what to talk about.
Source: the National Mental Health Information Center
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