April 1, 2002

Bullying has been in the news again: another death, a court case, and jail sentences underscore the impact of behaviour often discounted as harmless teasing. Of course, most instances of bullying do not attract such media attention. Nonetheless, parents, educators and the community should be concerned about the bullies among us.

The effects of bullying can be felt into adulthood, both for the perpetrator and the victim. Studies have shown that a majority of childhood bullies end up in jail by their mid-20s. And for victims, they may have lower self-esteem and face depression lasting into their adult lives. Fortunately, because bullying is a learned behaviour, it can also be unlearned. Best to start early.

Bullying can be broken down into three types: physical, emotional, and social. The first involves cases where a person or their property is physically harmed. It may start with threats and insults, but unless someone intervenes, will escalate into pushing, shoving and fighting. Another form is extortion which might involve a child having to give up his or her lunch or personal possessions.

Emotional bullying hurts people through insults, name calling and dirty looks. It seems that “names will never hurt me” is not altogether true. Emotional bullies can inflict pain by demeaning, upsetting and frightening their victims.

Social bullies shun and exclude their victims from groups and events. The process may start with dirty looks, then ignoring, gossiping and spreading rumours. Soon, a child may find they are being shunned by all their classmates and are no longer being invited to birthday parties or to play with others. Social bullying is the most difficult form to detect as there are no marks, no stolen or destroyed property as clues.

Bullying is not restricted to either boys or girls — they both do it. Where boys will often rely on verbal and physical intimidation, girls tend to use tactics like teasing, gossiping, insulting their victims and excluding them from social activities. For a long time we believed that bullies have low self-esteem, that they are loners and are usually poor students. Not so! Bullies tend to have particularly good self-esteem as bullying increases it. Nor are they loners. Bullying needs an audience so most have a small group of close friends to witness and support the behaviour. As for schoolwork, most bullies achieve average grades.

Since bullying is a learned behaviour, they must have learned it somewhere. These kids do not live in a vacuum. Some bullies are victims themselves: they may experience a power imbalance somewhere in their lives, be it between their parents or siblings. They may have learned the behaviour from another child, a parent, teacher or coach. Bullying can be a vicious cycle where victims can turn into bullies out of frustration.

Our schools are doing many things right to reduce bullying behaviour. Parents can and should be involved in helping their children to deal with inappropriate behaviours. There are many excellent resources available. The BC Ministry of Education has useful guides such as Helping our Kids Live Violence-Free, available from their website. Some toll-free numbers are also available: the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils (1-888-351-9834) and the BC Safe School Centre (1-888-224-SAFE) are two that can help.

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Call-out: “…because bullying is a learned behaviour, it can also be unlearned.”