Bullying
What is Bullying? It is always good to review what things mean and how others perceive them. I thought it would be helpful to revisit the definition of bullying. Bullying is a real issue that affects people at every age. It is important to know what bullying actually is. This will help when your child is talking with you about school situations to identify if it is bullying behavior or if it was an unkind act.
The definition of 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. Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.
Bullying involves an imbalance of power between the bully and the victim, is intentionally harmful and occurs repetitively. (Olweus et al., 1999)
For example, if your child comes home and tells you that another child called them a name, ask them… did you tell them to STOP? Did you walk away? If the child continued after those two steps, did you report it to a teacher? These steps usually work when the children remember to use them. If the child stopped the behavior and never repeats it again, that is an unkind act. If the child continues to call your child that name (repetitive) even when your child used these strategies, then we are dealing with bullying and you or your child should report this to a teacher right away. Please do not assume that the teacher knows about what is going on, we emphasize to students the importance of reporting (self- advocacy) any acts of bullying to an adult right away.
See examples/scenarios here to determine if an act is actually bullying.
Additional resources for bullying are below:
