The Bullying Problem

August 2007 Special Sections

It’s tough to wipe out the childhood memory: You’re on the playground, minding your own business, when suddenly a classmate accosts you, barraging you with insults and threats. If statistics and anecdotal reports are any indication, bullying such as this has not only persisted throughout the decades, it has escalated. More than 160,000 kids in the United States reportedly miss school each day because of bullying.

Bullying can occur anywhere adults are not immediately present—playgrounds, lunchrooms, school buses, school bathrooms, the walk between home and school, even in cyberspace via threatening or insulting emails and text messages. Bullied students often grow angry, frightened, and apathetic about school; they tend to miss more school than their non-bullied peers, feel sick more often, and their grades can suffer. Left unchecked, persistent bullying can have serious and sometimes lasting mental health consequences, including severe depression and anxiety. Kids with mental health issues and learning or developmental disabilities are often prime targets.

“Kids with disabilities often don’t have a social network, and it’s a lot easier for a bully to target a child who is alone because he or she doesn’t have the peers to back them up,” says Julie Hertzog, who fields hundreds of calls about bullying each year as a bullying prevention coordinator for PACER Center. “Because many kids with mental health challenges don’t understand social situations, they may play right into a bully’s hands by getting angry, sad, or fearful—exhibiting exactly the kind of response the bully is looking for.”

Breaking the Bullying Cycle
Julie Hertzog, developer of PACER’s bullying-prevention website for both children with disabilities and those without, offers parents advice on how to prepare and empower their children to positively address a bullying situation.

1. Help children devise a strategy for managing their emotions. “When children who bully realize that they have a vulnerable peer, they are going to try to provoke that person. Helping your kids prepare for the bullying will help them think better on their feet.”

2. Encourage children to devise comebacks for bullying comments, using humor or simple, factual statements (i.e. “Yes, I do have four eyes; they help me see better”). “It throws the bullying just a little bit off kilter, and it’s not the desired response, so the bully may discover that the child is not an easy target.”

3. If your children witness a bullying incident, support them when they try to stop it or take a stand against it. “If my daughter comes home and says, ‘So-and-so got called a name today and I told the kids that wasn’t cool,’ I tell her, ‘If that’s what you feel comfortable doing, that’s exactly what you should do.’”

4. Teach kids to understand the results of their actions. “If your child happens to be the one bullying, tell her or him, ‘What you’re doing is wrong. It is hurting someone. Here is why, and here is what I want you to do about it.’” Assign an action step that will encourage empathy. If your child is bullying someone with Downs Syndrome, for example, the action might include volunteering at a Special Olympics event.

5. Set rules for the use of cell phones, the Internet, and other technology. Cyberbullying is increasingly common and some of the best ways to thwart cyber bullies is by restricting the number of people who have your children’s cell phone numbers ande-mail addresses and by monitoring what websites they are visiting and who they are communicating with while they are online.