Bullying in School
Bullying in school is known to occur in almost every school and kindergarten and even day care centres.
It may happen during recess or after school while waiting for buses. Bullying in school may take place around the school building, but more often in hallways, bathrooms, on school buses wherever teachers or adults may not be present.
What is bullying in school?
Bullying in school may be verbal, physical, direct or indirect. It may take the form of cyber bullying or outright sexual harassment. Bullying in school is more prevalent in ages 9-18 but it reduces as the students get older.
Physical bullying in school may take the form of punching, pushing, kicking using available objects as weapons, teasing inappropriate touching, groping and threatening.
Emotional bullying in school causes damage to a victim’s psyche and emotional well-being and can be spreading malicious rumors, ganging up or ignoring on purpose, harassment or provocating by passing adverse comments.
Verbal bullying in school causes the victim undue emotional distress by use of foul language commenting negatively, tormenting and making fun of the victim.
Cyber bullying is more common among older children where offensive and threatening sms and emails are sent to traumatise the victims.
A charity organisation survey revealed that bullying in school goes to the extent of children being bullied into providing sexual favours in exchange for protection in inner city schools gang culture.
What are the effects of bullying in school?
Some children are traumatised by bullying in school so much that the effect changes their behaviour for ever and they suffer all their lifetime from the consequences.
Short-term effects of bullying in school may lead to drop in school performance anxiety, depression, anger or even suicide.
Long-term effects of bullying in school may be feelings of insecurity, lack of trust, extreme sensitivity or hypervigilance and a compulsive need for revenge. Almost three fourth of school shootings are as result of the attacker being a victim of bullying in school.
What can we do to prevent bullying in school?
Strategies to reduce bullying in school
Researchers provide many strategies which may help reduce bullying. Some of them are to make parents aware of what may happen to their children, make and implement preventive laws and never accept bullying in school.
There should be a forum and a complaint/suggestion for bully/victim problems. Presence of adults in the yard, halls and washrooms more vigilantly will help. Teachers should be made aware with programs to include appropriate bullying interventions to use.
Schools should ensure that the concept of bullying is defined clearly and sensibly including non physical forms of tormenting leaving no scope of doubt or interpretation. They can collect relevant data by surveys and questionnaires to know what is happening and how students and others feel about it.
Schools should develop a well supported anti-bullying policy and exhibit it prominently ensuring fair treatment and support to victims and their parents. They should work with children in classrooms on how to prevent bullying and promote a responsible and better bystander behaviour.
Often the bullies have some problems which manifest themselves in such a behaviour. It is important to know them and find suitable remedies including medical, psychiatric, psychological, developmental, family problems, etc. They should also be taught caring, respect and safety and consequences of aggression and hurting others.
Sometimes it becomes necessary to press harassment charges against the family of the person who is bullying you.
There is no doubt that those children repeated targeted with offensive and threatening messages can become very distressed and need help
How parents can help to reduce bullying in school
Parents can reduce the risk that their children will be bullied through friendly and non-authoritarian parenting so that they share their problems with them. They can also help their children to acquire good interpersonal skills, especially making friends and acting assertively when necessary and supporting their children if they do become involved in bully/victim difficulties at school and work collaboratively with the school to solve it.
Scenerio of bullying in school in Europe
A British Council survey has found that bullying in secondary schools is worse in the UK than the rest of Europe.
Numbers of children who said that bullying in school is a problem
(Source: British Council)
Italy – 33%
Portugal – 35%
Netherlands – 16%
Belgium – 21%
UK – 48%
Scotland – 43%
Wales – 32%
Germany – 29%
Spain – 22%
Almost half of UK secondary school pupils think that bullying is caused by students’ language difficulties, skin colour, race and religion a problem in their schools.
The suggestions mentioned above can go a long way in reducing bullying in school which childrens’ ability to concentrate on studies and in some cases makes it difficult for them to trust people and have a normal healthy interaction with others in society.
All the best,
Natalie Dee
London Life Coach & Business Coach, London UK
Certified High Performance Coach & Master NLP Practitioner
020 3411 4888
Natalie Dee, London Life Coach works in the area of lifestyle management as a London life coach, using life coaching with confidence coaching and NLP both in London and throughout the UK, applying techniques such as NLP,EFT and Hypnotherapy to improve levels of self-confidence as well as relationships, personal health, finance and career. Life coaching London, UK and worldwide available.
