What is bullying?
What is Bullying?
(Sources:
· Coloroso, B. (2002), The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander, Harper-Collins, Toronto.
· http://www.stopbullyingnow.com/identify.htm )
Bullying is a conscious, wilful, and deliberate hostile activity intended to harm, induce fear through the threats of further aggression, and create terror. Whether it is premeditated or seems to come out of the blue, is obvious or subtle, “in your face” or behind your back, easy to identify or cloaked in the garb of apparent friendship, done by one person or a group of people.
Bullying includes:
· Physical bullying: It includes: slapping, hitting, poking, kicking, pushing, choking, punching, biting, scratching, damaging or destroying clothes and property. Although this is the most visible form of bullying, it accounts for less than one-third of the bullying incidents reported by children.
· Verbal bullying: It includes: threatening, name calling, belittling, cruel criticism, personal defamation, taunting, teasing, starting rumours,racist slurs, sexually suggestive or sexually abusive comments. It can involve extortion of lunch money or possessions, abusive phone calls, intimidating e-mails, anonymous notes containing threats or gossip.
Verbal bullying accounts for 70 percent of reported bullying and is often the first step towards more vicious and degrading violence.
· Exclusion from activities: This does not mean that a child should not have the right to choose to play, or not to play, with another child; it means that children should not be allowed to systematically exclude others: "No one play with Mary;" "No one wants to play with him;" "Don't be her friend."
Boys and girls use verbal bullying equally. Boys tend to use physical bullying more than girls and girls use relational bullying more often than boys.
(See next article on Girls and Bullying)
Bullying will always include some of the following three elements:
1. Imbalance of power:
2. Intent to harm:
3. Threat of further aggression
No comments:
Post a Comment