THE MANY FACES OF BULLYING

KEYCEPT: School should be a place where children feel safe and secure—a place where they can count on being treated with respect. The unfortunate reality is that many students are the targets of bullying, resulting in long-term academic, physical, and emotional consequences. School personnel often minimize or underestimate the extent of bullying and its harm. In many cases, bullying is tolerated or ignored.

The school bully has been around forever. The stereotypical bully—the schoolyard tough guy who is quick to fight, intimidate, and threaten for his own gain or to look good in front of other kids—has become so much a part of the school environment that, in some situations, school administrators consider this intrusion into the school culture as the norm. This response is unfortunate in light of today's understanding about the scope of bullying and the psychological damage it inflicts—up to the point of suicide.

Today's bully isn't just the schoolyard punk who shoves other kids around or double-dog dares them. It's the seventh-grade girl who tells lies about a classmate to keep her out of the "girl group." It's the handsome student council president who pushes a wheel-chair-bound child into a wall. It's the tenth grader who says something on Facebook about someone that she wouldn't have the guts to say to her face. It's the aide on a school bus who sexually assaults a four-year-old while sitting next to him. It's the teacher whose punishment of a student doesn't fit the "crime." Bullies can be athletic, academically smart, attractive, and cunning. School administrators don't see them in the crowd. They blend in and work under the radar. They bully when no one is looking and intimidate their victims, who are too afraid to tell.

Today, it's more urgent than ever that parents learn new techniques for dealing with these situations.

EXTENT OF BULLYING

Let's first take a look at what's happening in our nation's schools.

Various reports have established that 15 percent of students are either bullied or are initiators of bullying behavior on a regular basis. Almost 30 percent of sixth- through tenth-grade youths in the United States (more than 5.7 million kids) are thought to be involved in bullying as either a bully, a target of bullying, or both. In a 2001 national survey of students, 13 percent reported bullying others, 11 percent reported being the target of bullies, and another 6 percent said that they both bullied others and were bullied themselves.

A large survey of sixth- through tenth-grade students by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development reveals the breadth of the problem:

• 37 percent have been victims of verbal harassment.

• 32 percent have been subjected to rumor spreading.

• 26 percent have experienced social isolation.

• 13 percent have been assaulted physically.

• 10 percent have been cyberbullied.

The relationship between "traditional" (or direct, face-to-face) bullying and cyberbullying is interesting; more than 6 of every 10 cybervictims have been subjected to traditional bullying. Because most children who are bullied directly are tortured at the hands of classmates, it should come as no surprise that there is frequently a school component to cyberbullying.

Face-to-face bullying increases through the elementary years, peaks in the middle school / junior high school years, and declines during the high school years. While physical assault decreases with age, however, verbal abuse remains constant. A school's size, racial composition, and setting (rural, suburban, or urban) are not distinguishing factors in predicting the occurrence of bullying. Boys, however, engage in, and are victims of, bullying behavior more frequently than girls.

When teachers and administrators fail to intervene, some victims ultimately take things into their own hands—often with grievous results. In a recent analysis of 37 school shooting incidents, the U.S. Secret Service reported that a majority of shooters had suffered "bullying and harassment that was longstanding and severe." In many other cases, bullying has prompted suicides among our children. The use of the Internet only worsens the cycle of ugliness, with suicide victims being maligned online after their deaths and anonymous websites subsequently springing up, dedicated to berating those who still bully even after their victim's death.

Though bullying is a fact of life, it clearly has negative repercussions on children, and parents want to know what they can do to stop it. And sometimes, this requires parental intervention. That's what this book is about—how you, as a caring parent, can do something about bullying. This book is for the mother who needs to intervene when she finds out that her daughter is being excluded from the girl group that spreads rumors about her. It's for the father who needs to intervene when he finds out that his son was called a fag on the playground and had been tripped by an older student. It's for the parents who have been stonewalled by school administrators and who need to make the school live up to its duty to protect their child.

WHAT IS BULLYING?

Bullying can be a severe single occurrence intended to hurt someone physically or emotionally. More often, a key component of bullying is a series of events that, over time, creates an ongoing pattern of harassment. Either way, it always includes an unequal distribution of power between two people or groups of people. Two boys of the same age and size getting into a fight is not bullying, but a child who hurts another child in a situation where one has power and the other does not is bullying. The power dynamic may be size or age, but it also could be class, race, sexuality, gender, a disability, or something else. The success of the bully is predicated on arrogant disregard for simple decency and a willingness to brutalize an innocent, vulnerable person simply because the bully is stronger and others are unwilling to intervene.

My granddaughter is a 14-year-old child with Down syndrome. One day, on the way to the bus, the teacher felt that Victoria was not listening and took her to a "time-out" room. During a call to Victoria's mother, the teacher said, "If she doesn't listen, you'll have to pick her up from school. She won't be allowed to take the bus. By the way, when she was in the isolation room she took off all her clothes and was screaming and banging on the wall." Victoria isn't able to speak clearly because of an expressive language disorder. She wasn't able to tell her mom that the teacher had put her in a six-by-six-foot cinder-block room at least four times recently for "fooling around." Victoria's inability to communicate clearly frustrated the teacher and led her to bully Victoria.

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