Bullying
Author: By MAGGIE WOLFF PETERSON

Your son comes home from school with a scratch on his face. Your daughter says the three other girls at her table called her a name and decided she couldn’t be in their group.
Are your kids being bullied?
Maybe.
Definitely so if what was a one-day attack turns into a pattern of persecution.
“It’s the deliberate and persistent physical or psychological victimization of someone by someone who is bigger and stronger, to someone who is smaller and weaker,” says John Taylor, head of the upper school at Powhatan School in Clarke County, Va.
“That’s the textbook definition,” Taylor says. “It’s what we go by.”
Taylor, a former public high school principal and school-system discipline director, has seen his share of bullies. With boys, the torment usually is physical. Girls generally practice psychological warfare.
There has always been bullying in school, Taylor says. It’s as old as humankind for an aggressor to seek the weakest member of the tribe.
But today, “we have a far greater understanding of it,” he says. Generally, schools have a zero-tolerance policy on bullying.
Additionally, adults know now to help the victim understand “life isn’t supposed to be like this,” Taylor says.
The National Education Association reports that nationwide, 160,000 kids stay home from school each day to avoid bullying. A Reader’s Digest poll says 70 percent of parents believe their child has been bullied at school.
“The child who bullies typically is bigger, older, stronger or more popular than the victim of bullying, and his or her intent is to exert power over the victim,” according to the National PTA.
For example, girls who bully through exclusion tend to have more social power than their victims. The bully is aware that his or her behavior causes distress and enjoys the victim’s reaction, and the bullying continues and escalates. Bullies hurt others in order to feel strong and powerful, the National PTA says.
Bullying is learned behavior, Taylor says.
“In almost 100 percent of cases, if the child’s mother is a bully, the child will be a bully,” he says. “The kids will learn the behavior.”
Kids use bullying to help them overcome feelings of anger or frustration, and without intervention, become stunted emotionally. Because they are used to getting their way by intimidation, bullies don’t learn to develop healthy peer relationships, blame others for their problems and brutalize the people closest to them. Ultimately, victimizing others disables the bully as well.
Kids who are bullied need to know they can get help from the adults they trust. Sometimes, the bully doesn’t understand what he or she is doing, Taylor says.
The Web site stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov offers definitions, strategies and “cool stuff,” including games that help families conquer bullying. There also is a series of 12 “webisodes,” animated episodes that depict bullying situations, followed by discussion questions.
In one, a girl is taunted because her clothing is uncool. Another features a boy who is bullied by his “own personal torture squad.” Each episode is available as text only and can be viewed with closed captioning.
One way kids can conquer bullying is to show support for the victim, making it harder for the bully to single out and harass him. The best advice for victims has changed from a generation ago, in which a parent might tell a kid to toughen up and fight back. Today’s strategies don’t include confrontation.
“Punch them in the nose and the bullies are justified,” Taylor says. “They’ll beat the crap out of you. Bullies tend to be pretty self-confident.”
It is critical to be perceptive. If your child looks for excuses to miss school, seems friendless or isolated, or is socially inept, she might be the target of a bully. Children’s lack of long-term perspective makes it hard for them to imagine outgrowing a world of bullies in school. Desperation can set in.
“Children will harm themselves before they harm others,” Taylor says. Teen suicides result when “children become so isolated they see no way out. They think things will never change.”
Or, conversely, kids can act out.
Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed 12 students and a teacher, then themselves, during a shooting rampage at Columbine High School in 1999 that was attributed to their marginalization through bullying.
It’s important for parents to keep a record of events if a child is being bullied. This must be shared with the school, school system administrators, and if necessary, the police. If a bully won’t change his ways – and when his behavior is denying others a chance to learn - he can’t be in school, Taylor says.
“You have to appeal to a bully’s better nature,” Taylor says. “But you’ve got a problem if the child doesn’t have a better nature.”

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