What Is Bullying
Bullying is unwanted,
aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or
perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be
repeated, over time. Both kids who are bullied and who bully others may
have serious, lasting problems.
In order to be considered
bullying, the behavior must be aggressive and include:
An Imbalance of Power: Kids who bully use their power—such
as physical strength, access to embarrassing information, or popularity—to
control or harm others. Power imbalances can change over time and in different
situations, even if they involve the same people.
Repetition: Bullying behaviors happen more than once or have the
potential to happen more than once.
Bullying includes
actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically
or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.
Types of Bullying
There are three types of bullying:
Verbal bullying is saying or writing mean things.
Verbal bullying includes:
Teasing
Name-calling
Inappropriate sexual comments
Taunting
Threatening to cause harm
Social bullying, sometimes referred to as relational
bullying, involves hurting someone’s reputation or relationships. Social
bullying includes:
Leaving someone out on purpose
Telling other children not to be friends with someone
Spreading rumors about someone
Embarrassing someone in public
Physical bullying involves hurting a person’s body or
possessions. Physical bullying includes:
Hitting/kicking/pinching
Spitting, Tripping / pushing
Taking or breaking someone’s things
Making mean or rude hand gestures
Where and When Bullying Happens
Bullying can occur
during or after school or in the school building and classroom, a significant percentage
also happens in places like on the playground or the bus. It can also happen
travelling to or from school, in the youth’s neighborhood, or on the Internet.
Although this website
suggested a few comeback lines, I truly disagree with any. The bully wants ANY
attention, anything to fuel their destructive and narcissist for ANY kind of attention.
But I will include some below and truthfully no snappy comeback ever worked!
Some great comeback lines against bullies are:
Whatever!
Do you feel better now?
If you're talking about me behind my back, clearly my life
is a lot more interesting than yours is!
Let’s move on!
Here we go again. This is boring. Let me know when you’re
done.
I've been called worse from better.
Wow, did you come up with that all by yourself?
Pardon me, but you seem to think that I
care
Your Rights Against Bullies
NO
MATTER, you deserve to feel safe. Everyone has the right to live in a safe and
violence free atmosphere both at home and at school.
students
who bully are lacking the skills they would need to attain status and attention
in adaptive ways—skills like emotion
regulation, self-regulation,
communication skills, and social thinking. As a result, they seek status and
attention in ways that prove harmful to others. Yes, bullies would like to
avoid detention and suspension, and they would if they could. But detention and
suspension don’t teach skills; the bully returns with no more skills than she had
when she left, and so cannot
behave any differently.
1. Acknowledge that it's OK to feel bad.
Bullying
is a form of mental abuse. In fact, it's a violation of your human rights. It's completely normal for you to feel bad about
it. Nobody likes to be mocked or treated with disrespect, so it's absolutely
natural for you to feel hurt by it.
2. Remember that it's not about you.
It's
about them. People who bully do it because they believe it makes them feel
better. Somehow, they have got it into their head that by making others feel
bad, they can feel better themselves. Basically, it's a reflection of their
insecurities, not your shortcomings. Perhaps they are threatened by you and
want to make you feel more insecure. Other times they are afraid of the kind of
change you're causing, and they try to stop it by taking you down. Whatever the
scenario, bullying is never the right way to resolve it, and it's never
justifiable. Mature adult conversations, on the other hand, are.
Preventing Bullying and Child Abuse
Who are the Bullies
At some time or another,
we all have encountered a mean kid who says something that hurts our feelings.
Is that kid a bully? Well it depends.
A bully doesn’t know when to stop. He or she hurts
someone over and over again and knows he or she is inflicting pain on
another. A bully intends to hurt another and has usually established a
pattern of hurtful behavior. A bully can be big or small, a boy or a girl, have
good or bad grades in school and can be older or younger than you.
However, there are some things that most bullies have
in common. :
like to have power and control over others
think they should always win
think they should always get what they want
intend to humiliate others
lack empathy
are very comfortable with their behavior and feel pretty good
about themselves
When Bullies Grow Up
That is the very sad
part, unless they have a life changing epiphany, they become just mean, sad and
often controlling adults and parents. Their need to control everyone in their
sphere, from family to coworkers, neighbors or the poor salesclerk at the local
stores will never cease. They will die as angry and bitter as they lived, never
attaining what they so desperately crave: Love, acceptance, peace.
Just Sad.
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