Children, teens and tweens all bully other
students their own age, but the types of bullying behaviors they exhibit change
as they get older. While there are always various strategies
used to harass and bully others, it seems that at certain developmental stages specific types of bullying behaviors are more typical
than others.
The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) published a
comprehensive national study on bullying that appeared in the April 25, 2001,
Journal of the American Medical Association and discussed age and types of
bullying.
The study, which
surveyed almost 16,000 U.S. public and private 6th through 10th
grade students, found that 13% bullied others, 11% were bully victims, and 6%
were both bullies and bully victims. Additionally, the study revealed a lot about
the timing and types of bullying including that bullying generally starts in
elementary school and peaks in middle school while remaining steady or
declining somewhat in high school. It
also revealed that boys are more frequently involved in physical bullying and
girls in verbal or relational bullying.
Similarly, a
2001 Kaiser Family Foundation study revealed that 86% of children between the ages
of 12 and 15 reported that they get teased or bullied at school, which shows that
bullying is more prevalent than smoking, alcohol, drugs, or sex among students
this same age. Clearly, bullying is a
prevalent problem that must be addressed at every age.
So how do children of different ages
experience bullying?
Children
who are targeted by bullies in elementary school are usually those that don’t
have many friends or don’t fit in socially. They are often bullied based on their
social abilities or physical traits such as looking different, having a disability
or being obese. Bullying at this age is
generally teasing, social ostracism or isolation from group activities.
Bullying generally increases toward the end of elementary school
and the beginning of middle school. It continues to get worse until
high school because of the high social needs of tweens
combined with lower maturity levels. Bullying is usually about needing social power
and children becoming accepted by their peer group. Often this intense desire to be accepted and
become a part of the popular group leads to bullying. Because
tweens want so desperately to fit in, bullying
others who don’t fit in and who look, act, talk or dress differently than they
do gives them power and social status.
Relational
aggression is a particularly common type of bullying in middle school used
especially by girls. Girls will form friendships but will then strike out at another girl in
anticipation of them thinking they are going to become the outcast. By
ostracizing the other girl first, they think they are beating them to the
punch. Relational aggression tends to diminish toward the teen and high school
years as girls learn how to control their emotions and thoughts.
Tweens and older teens in middle
school and high school years experience far less physical, verbal and social bullying
but see a dramatic increase in cyberbullying.
Stay tuned for our next blog in the series, which will include
information on cyberbullying.
Bullying is dangerous behavior and leads to violence, homicide,
suicide and bullycide. Understanding how it affects children of different ages
and developmental stages is the first step in helping educate and empower
adults and children about how to stop bullying others and how to prevent
bullying from happening in the first place.
Author:
Stacy Pendarvis, MSW, MA – Consulting Trainer and Prevention Specialist
No comments:
Post a Comment
Speak Up Florida!