Thought this was a good video and wanted to share it with everyone.
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Check out some of these websites to check school policies on bullying.
New Jersey
Marblehead School, Mass.
Michigan
Broward County, FL
These are some places that have invoked Anti-Bullying policies. The more we know and the more we can help can maybe save a child’s life. Write to your local congress person to help invoke these policies in your school district.
Bullying can become so brutal that a child can be hospitalized from a beating, such as the one in the video above. So what can you do if your child is being bullied?
* Encourage your child to share his or her concerns. Remain calm, listen in a loving manner and support your child’s feelings. Express understanding and concern. Remind your child that he or she isn’t to blame for being bullied.
* Learn as much as you can about the situation. Ask your child to describe how and when the bullying occurs and who is involved. Ask if other children or adults have witnessed any bullying incidents. Find out what your child may have done to try to stop the bullying.
* Teach your child how to respond to the bullying. Don’t promote retaliation or fighting back against a bully. Instead, encourage your child to maintain his or her composure. Suggest sticking with a friend or group of friends while on the bus, in the cafeteria or wherever the bullying seems to happen. Remind your child that he or she can ask teachers or other school officials for help.
* Contact school officials. Talk to your child’s teacher, the school counselor and the school principal. If your child has been physically attacked or otherwise threatened with harm, talk to school officials immediately to help determine if the police should be involved. Don’t contact the bully’s parents yourself. You may also want to encourage school officials to address bullying as part of the curriculum.
* Follow up. Keep in contact with school officials. If the bullying seems to continue, be persistent.
* Boost your child’s self-confidence. Help your child get involved in activities that can raise self-esteem, such as sports, music or art. Encourage your child to make contact with friendly students in his or her class and develop his or her social skills.
* Know when to seek professional help. Consider professional or school counseling for your child if his or her fear or anxiety becomes overwhelming.
Parents the next time your child comes to you listen to their concerns, you don’t want them to end up committing suicide because they didn’t feel they have anyone to talk to. All a child really wants is to feel that someone is concerned about them. Don’t always assume they are tatling on another student.
So if we can’t completely stop bullying, how can we help children who are being bullied or those how are bullying others?
Seeing how most bully incidents happen or start at school, how are some schools handling this growing problem? One 4th grade teacher I spoke with said they have a NO Tolerance policy at her school here in Houston. She also went on to say that
bullying is a harsh word. Most of the time there is fault on both sides. If there is an issue I would speak with both parties separately and try to find the facts. I need to know what actually happened without emotions. If in fact one student is bullying another I would send both to the office to hash it out with the principal. Parents are always called and made aware of what has taking place. If it is a really big issue the counselor would speak to both students about their actions and why this occurred. I’m sure students can be placed in different classes if the bullying continues.
Another side to this is the Richardson nonprofit counseling service, they are trying to tackle bullying from both sides. The nonprofit is mainly funded by the Richardson Police Department referral programs, government grants and individual donations. Mark Demos, a counselor at Richardson is taking a new approach: positive psychology.
There are 3 main types of bullying:
* physical; hitting, kicking, taking belongings
* verbal; name-calling, insulting, racist remarks
* indirect / emotional; spreading nasty stories, excluding from groups
Bullies
* Are often attention seekers.
* Will establish their power base by testing the response of the less powerful members of the group, watching how they react when small things happen.
* Find out how the teacher reacts to minor transgressions of the rules and wait to see if the ‘victim’ will complain. It is important that teachers are vigilant and consistent.
* Bully because they believe they are popular and have the support of the others.
* Keep bullying because they incorrectly think the behavior is exciting and makes them popular.
* If there are no consequences to the bad behavior; if the victim does not complain and if the peer group silently or even actively colludes, the bully will continue with the behavior.
Victims
* Often have poor social skills.
* Lack the confidence to seek help.
* Don’t have the support of the teacher or classmates who find them unappealing.
* Blame themselves and believe it is their own fault.
* Are desperate to ‘fit in’.
* View is very often reinforced by the attitude of adults in their lives.
* It is highly unlikely that they will seek help.
Now that we are aware of some characteristics that both victims and bullies posses and the main types of bullying, maybe this will help us be more aware of a child’s actions and how we can help them. Debbie Walsh from Richardson says, “We can’t solve problems just with this, but we can do everything we can.”
Most people see how being bullied affects children physically and mentally but, how does being a bully affect them? What is the psychology behind why they bully others? We have all been taught that bullies have a low self-esteem and that that’s why they bully other kids but, that may not be true.
Bullies usually have a sense of entitlement and superiority over others, and lack compassion, impulse control and social skills. They enjoy being cruel to others and sometimes use bullying as an anger management tool, the way a normally angry person would punch a pillow.
All bullies tend to dominate, blame and use others, and just want attention. There is also been no apparent link between any particular religion, race, income level, divorce, or any other socio-economic factor that plays a part in a child becoming a bully. About 40% of bullies themselves are bullied either at home or at school.
We all here about kids bullying other kids but it’s not just kids that are bullies and it’s also not just boy’s. Boy’s are just being boy’s, so we say, but girl’s can be bullies and so can adults.
So in the end should we feel so far for bullies themselves? Can they help it that they are bullies? You decide.
Are there ways to stop bullying? Just because bullying has been around for decades doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about it. Maybe it will never go away but just maybe we can help lessen the hardship it brings to children. If we start by being aware of the signs, teach our children the rights and wrongs of the world, and let children know they have someone they can talk too. Then just maybe we can help prevent some of these mass shootings or suicides going on as a result of bullying.
Every year children are bullied and then having to deal with the effects of being bullied. If you’re the bully you don’t necessarily think about what you’re saying or how your actions will affect the other person. Honestly bullies probably don’t think or care who they hurt, some may intentionally bully others to hurt them and some may just do it because they are acting out because of things that have happened to them in the past.
Bullying can effect everyone in different ways. In England 703 13-16 year old’s were given a questionnaire concerning bullying and the effects of being bullied. 44% merely felt irritable as a result of being bullied, whereas approximately one 1/3 continued to feel panicky or nervous in school, experienced recurring memories of the incident, and reported impaired concentration in school.
In another study conducted in Australia 2680 8th grade and 9th grade students were surveyed twice in 8th grade and once in 9th grade. From this study we learn that adolescent girls in particular experience anxiety or depression as a result of a pattern of victimization.
We learn that in the UK 16 children commit suicide each year as a result of being bullied. As a result of being bullied any of these could happen to the bullied:
* the target starts to exhibit all the symptoms of stress as the internal pressure causes the body to go out of stasis (this happens in every case)
* the target focuses the anger onto themselves and self-harms, either by using drugs (usually alcohol), or by attempting or committing suicide (the UK has the highest suicide rate in Europe)
* in rare cases, and the target “flips” and starts to exhibit the same behaviors as the bully; in extremely rare but well-publicized cases, the target returns to the workplace to carry out a spree killing
So by knowing all these signs and symptoms can this maybe help us to help these young children be able to open up to someone and let them know what is going on before it is too late?
How do you define a bully? Bully –
A person who is habitually cruel or overbearing, especially to smaller or weaker people.
So why do people bully each other? Where do kids learn to bully other kids? Which kids are being bullied? For years, even before some of us were alive there have been all sorts of cases of kids bullying other kids in school. So why are we just now talking about it?
We are just now talking about it because in the past couple of months children suicides have been brought to our attention as a result of other kids bullying them.
What are schools doing about these situations and what are their policies on how to handle these situations? What are teachers doing to help stop bullies? How can you identify if your child is a bully or is being bullied? How can you help stop bullies?
Don’t think bullying stops when you get out of school, some group up and others don’t.
What is bullying exactly? Back when you were in school were you bullied or did you bully others? What do you consider to be the definition of bullying?
Bullying can be defined as the use of one’s strength or status to intimidate, injure, or humiliate another person of lesser strength or status. Bullying can be categorized as physical, verbal, or social. Physical bullying involves physical injury or threat of injury to someone, while verbal bullying refers to teasing or insulting someone. Social bullying refers to the use of peer rejection or exclusion to humiliate or isolate a victim. Bullying must be distinguished from other forms of peer aggression or conflict; bullying always involves a power imbalance between the bully and the victim.
So did you bully others or were you bullied in school?
An estimated 1.7 million 6th to 10th grade students are considered bullies, from a study by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. 
Bullying seems to be growing in the US in the past several months compared to prior years. As an average the United States is average among other countries for students that have bullied more than twice in the last month.
A dramatic series of school shootings between 1995 and 1999 startled the nation. Deadly violence within schools struck fear in the public and particularly school-age youth across the nation. Beginning in 1989, there had been an increase in school violence, ranging from verbal harassment, threats of harm, and violent crime.
During 1997-1999 high profile violence dominated even though violent deaths relating to school activities was down by 40%.
So how can you tell if your kid is a bully or being bullied? Try this quiz out.
Growing up we were all probably bullied in some form, as to the extent of it varies with the type of people who were the one’s bullying us. Some were just tiny remarks made by friends and you shrugged them off and others were intentional by others who were doing it out of malice. Recently we are hearing more and more about children being bullied in schools and unfortunately because nothing was ever done to stop the bullying some of these kids feel they have no where else to turn but to commit suicide.
On March 26th an 8 year old boy tried to commit suicide while at school and if front of his peers here in Houston’s Third Ward.
“My son has dyslexia. They call him stupid. They call him dumb. The things they (teachers) said was, ‘We’ll deal with it. We’ll handle it,’” said Robertson.
So why are these kids being targeted by bullies? What are the teachers and other adults doing about the bullying of students?
