Identifying, Intervening, Surviving, and Preventing Bullying – A Series: Why Adults Need to Intervene and How to Act Effectively

The simple truth is adults need to intervene because it’s too important not to. We know children don’t often report bullying, we know based on statistics how frequently bullying is happening, and we know the consequences are too great to allow it to continue unchecked. Bullying is no longer simply a case of playground harassment or whispering behind each other’s backs.

Bullying is now recognized as a significant contributor to youth violence, including homicide, suicide, and “bullycide”, the label now applied to children who commit suicide to escape being bullied. The term “bullycide” was coined by authors Neil Marr and Tim Field in their book Bullycide: Death at Playtime, which explores stories of children who have committed suicide as a result of having been bullied.

While there is no formal system for tracking suicides related to bullying, suicide is the 4^th leading cause of death in adolescents. There are many other consequences of bullying that make adult intervention essential:

• Depression
• Low self-esteem
• Anxiety
• Social isolation
• Loneliness
• Physical illness such as headaches, stomach aches
• School absenteeism and subsequently poor academic performance
• Possible violent behavior in retaliation

In other words, the consequences suffered by victims, both in the short term and long term, are too great to ignore. We can no longer hope the situation will get better on it’s own when a child is being bullied. Recall that a previous post informed us that children won’t often tell us they are being bullied so we must be alert to the signs.

In fact, there is a lot of things happening in children’s lives that they might not tell us, including about their own online behavior, even being a victim of cyberbullying. According to a McAfee study, “teens are hiding porn, cheating at school, hacking into others’ social media accounts, sharing sexy photos and cyberbullying” by closing windows when parents enter the room, deleting items on the computer and phone and clearing their web browsers. So parents have to be alert to signs that their children are doing things online and in this case, being victimized online.

The “why” intervene is the easy part… the “how” to intervene gets a little more complicated. Whether dealing with bullying or cyberbullying, there are definite steps adults and children can take to intervene appropriately.

• Remember school is a place to learn social skills and about social relationships as well as academics. In other words, some social behavior such as teasing and whispering or choosing one friend over another is actually good for children to experience. We may naturally want to protect our children from hurt feelings and suffering, but we need to ask ourselves first and foremost, “is the behavior my child describing actually bullying?” If it’s not, it’s a great time to have a conversation with your child about social skills, relationships, and treating people right. If it is, then it is time to act accordingly.

• Talk to your child. Ask questions and listen! Find out the details and document the events and any evidence and witnesses. Help your child research and practice strategies to deal with bullies effectively. Ignoring the bully or allowing the bullying to continue will not make it stop. Learning social skills and resistance strategies and telling safe adults who will act are important actions your child needs to understand. Teaching your child to be his or her own advocate is the best strategy for their own success now and in the future.

• Become a partner with the school. If your child finds they cannot handle the bullying on their own or if the bullying causes physical injuries, the school must become involved. Many times the initial contact with a school about potential bullying is adversarial but your child will benefit more by reaching out to the school in an inquiring and positive manner, rather than using an accusatory and negative approach. Explain to the school the situation as you know it and the strategies you have already tried to stop the behavior. Ask for a meeting with the administration and brainstorm solutions and next steps together. Included in those steps needs to be identifying safe adults that your child can go to if the bullying continues or escalates, and the assurance that retaliation by both the original bully and/or his or her friends for reporting will not be tolerated.

• If the school doesn’t respond appropriately seek additional help from the district and, if needed, law enforcement. If you find these steps do not solve the problem, reach out to additional contacts within the school district such as student support services, office of safe schools or even the superintendent’s office if needed. Additionally, if the bullying involves a physical assault and documented injuries, seek medical care and contact law enforcement.

• Seek counseling and other sources of support for your child. Many times bullies target kids who are socially isolated and don’t have a lot of friends or support. If your child has been bullied for a while their self-esteem might be low and they may have difficulty making friends. Seek the advice of a counselor with experience in this area who can help your child learn to feel better about themselves as well as learn how to function better in social environments. You can also seek out peer support for them through clubs and groups.

• Lastly, if your child is being cyberbullied you will need to take additional steps to ensure their safety.

Of course schools need to be involved as well. Schools are bound by the Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up For All Students Act to report and intervene in bullying situations, but they need to do more than that. They need to be alert to signs of pre-bullying behavior, teasing and harassment. They also need to teach kids empathy and good social skills in an effort to prevent bullying. Helping peers relate better is a skill that will not only prevent bullying but will serve children well throughout their lives. And of course good old-fashioned supervision is also necessary. We know most bullying occurs in places where supervision is low and social interaction is high, such as playgrounds, cafeterias and bathrooms, so schools need to increase supervision in these areas.

Speak Up Be Safe™ includes, as a part of an overall comprehensive prevention program for children, counselors, teachers and parents, bullying prevention education. If your school doesn’t have our program, it’s time to encourage them to get it.

Adults aren’t the only ones who can intervene and help stop bullying. In our next post we will address “bystanders,” or children who watch bullying take place or ignore it to some extent, and how they can help stop bullying. We will also discuss what communities can do to help prevent bullying, so stay tuned to find out more.

Identifying, Intervening, Surviving, and Preventing Bullying – A Series: Why Children Become Bullies and Why They Target Certain Kids

Have you ever wondered why some children become bullies and why they target certain kids?  Is the “why” really that important?  Do we care why a bully bullies or why a particular child is targeted?  We should! It makes sense that if we know why, we stand a much better chance of not only stopping the behavior, but also preventing it in the first place.

Bullies may be kids that are always in trouble. However, often they are good kids that are doing bad things. And why do bullies target certain kids? Bullies often pick on kids because they are somehow different; they are too tall, too short, too fat, too skinny, don’t have enough money and therefore don’t wear the “right” clothes, they aren’t athletic enough, aren’t cool enough, etc. But sometimes it makes no sense why a particular child is bullied. Bullies also target bright, funny and attractive kids; kids that aren’t so different from others.

One of the most frequently cited reasons that bullies strike out at other children is because they are insecure and it makes them feel better about themselves, so it’s not about the child being bullied but more about the bully. In some cases that may be true, but not always. 

There are a variety of reasons that children may engage in bullying:

1. They need power and control – These children need to be the leader, need to dominate their peer group and want other children to look up to them. They may come from a home where they witness abuse or dominance by one parent over another, or they themselves may be the victim of abuse or harsh, punitive behavior by a parent.
2. They lack empathy for others – Some children are naturally more empathetic toward others, toward animals, etc. while others may need to be taught this skill as they are maturing.  If parents and other adults fail to teach this skill, this may be a contributing cause to bullying behavior.
3. They possess feelings of entitlement – These children feel like the world owes them something.  They may come from a home where they are given everything they want, where consequences for poor behavior are minimal and they begin to believe they are more valued than most others. This child may also begin to internalize the belief that they can do anything they want and get away with it, including bullying.
4. They desire to be popular – These children want to be the most popular kid in school; they want everyone to know them, like them and want to be their friend. They may come from a home where parents value their children being the “popular kid” or running with the “in-crowd” and therefore feel tremendous pressure to satisfy their parents.
5. They possess feelings of jealousy or inadequacy / low self-esteem – These bullies target children and pick on them because of jealousy. Sometimes their bullying is targeted toward peers who they perceive as better than them or peers that have something they want.  Their behavior is often an attempt to make themselves feel better.

Once we understand who the bully is, it is much easier to understand why they target certain children. Most often it’s not that the victim has major differences, they just happen to be someone who is serving a purpose for the bullies own needs and feelings. It’s almost as if they are the wrong person, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, through no fault of their own. 

Research has shown however that many victims of bullying do tend to possess certain common traits:

1. They are socially withdrawn or isolate themselves from peers at school
2. They are sensitive or become easily distressed or moody
3. They seem anxious or tend to worry a lot

If a bully needs someone easy to overpower and control, it makes sense that children with these traits would make an ideal target.  It would be much easier to dominate someone who is withdrawn, usually alone, sensitive and/or anxious, than someone who is outgoing, surrounded by friends and confident.

Research also shows that children who have difficulty with the following social tasks are more likely to be victimized by bullies:

1. The inability to read the nonverbal social cues of their peers – For example they don’t notice a peer who rolls their eyes at them.
2. Difficulty understanding social meanings of behaviors – For example a peer that is tapping their feet or turning their head to hurry them along when they are telling them a story.
3.  Problems developing solutions for social conflict – For example a child who doesn’t have the social skills to resolve issues with other children and constantly tattles or uses ineffective solutions. 

Understanding why children bully and why they target certain peers for bullying is the first step to truly being able to stop bullying.  For both primary and secondary prevention, working with both the bullies and the victims, is an effective strategy.

For bullies, or children displaying the traits that may lead to bullying behavior, early intervention is essential. This would include teaching them empathy and helping them learn that feelings of jealousy, entitlement and power/control can have potentially negative consequences from an early age.

For children displaying the traits that bullies tend to target, teaching them how to not isolate themselves and function better socially is important. Teaching them skills such as how to better read social cues, understand their meaning, solve social conflicts and develop a network of supportive people may also help prevent bullying.

Helping children with these essential social skills is both important for us as individual parents and for schools in general if we hope to stop bullying and prevent bullying behavior in the future.  Speak Up Be Safe™ (SUBS) is the Monique Burr Foundation for Children’s bullying and child abuse prevention program. In SUBS we offer some of these bullying prevention strategies to children and schools. Our goal is to implement SUBS in every 1^st through 5^th grade Florida elementary class.

Stay tuned for our next few posts where we discuss the importance of adult intervention and how we as a community can come together with everyone having a role in bullying intervention and prevention.

Identifying, Intervening, Surviving and Preventing Bullying – A Series: Signs Your Child May Be the Target of Bullying

Parents may have a hard time understanding that children don’t often want them, or any other adult, to know they are being bullied or cyberbullied. There are several reasons why children and teens are reluctant to report. Understanding those reasons can help adults become more aware of indicators they need to look for to determine if a child is in fact being bullied or cyberbullied.

Children fail to report bullying for many reasons.

• They may fear based on past behavior no one is available to them or will listen to them, or they fear no one will intervene and the bullying will only escalate.
• They may fear looking like a tattletale or snitch and expect an increase in the bullying due to revenge or retaliation.
• They may fear looking weak to their parents and peers or they may be ashamed and feel like they somehow deserved the abusive behavior.
• Sometimes children aren’t aware the behavior inflicted upon them is actually bullying. This is particularly true of social and relational type of bullying behaviors.

If a child is being cyberbullied, there are additional reasons they may be reluctant to report the behavior.

• They may be afraid the consequence of reporting will involve them losing privileges such as their phone, computer or social networking accounts.
• Sometimes the victim is bullied after posting or sending something they believe they should not have posted or sent, and feel they are to blame; thus, they don’t want their parents to know and don’t report the bullying.

Because children are often reluctant to report bullying, parents as well as school employees need to be alert to signs that a child is being bullied and/or cyberbullied. These are some of the most common signs.

Signs a child may be the victim of bullying:

• Unexplained injuries upon return from school
• Frequent and unexplained lost items
• Frequent hunger upon return from school
• Request to alter school path or transportation method
• Frequent complaints of illness/not wanting to go to school
• Change/decline in grades
• Low self-esteem, depression, suicidal talk or behavior
• Loss of long-time friends or change in friends
• Change in social habits/social isolation
• Change in personality
• Deviation from normal behavior
•  Eating or sleeping disturbances
• Avoidance of family members or environments/situations once enjoyed
• Avoidance of questions related to their behaviors, actions, feelings, or school activities

Signs a child may be the victim of cyberbullying:

• Any of the above indicators
• Frequent computer or cell phone use
• Depressed or agitated behavior after being online or on their cell phone
• New contacts on phone or social networking sites on computer
• Increased amounts of text messages received
• Change in online behavior (up late online, secretive, makes new friends)
• Shuts off computer/cell phone when a parent or caregiver approaches

Staying alert to these signs will enable adults to see red flags in a child’s behavior even if the child doesn’t report being bullied or being associated with bullying. Research shows that 93% of children want adults to get involved and stop bullying. It is an adult’s responsibility to keep children safe and we must intervene, whether children act like they want us to or not.

Learning about bullying and signs/indicators is the first step to helping our children. Stay tuned for our next few posts in this series about why bullies target some children and why some children become bullies.  Those will be followed with helpful information about why adults and other children need to get involved and how to act effectively.  

Let us know how this series is helping you and/or share your bullying story.   

Identifying, Intervening, Surviving, and Preventing Bullying – A Series: How is Bullying Different in Younger vs. Older Grades?

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 6^th through 10^th 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