As kids return to school they look forward to new friends, new activities and new opportunities. Unfortunately, for some students, their return to school may involve being a target of bullying.
Recent studies show that 1/3 of all students in kindergarten through 12th grade are the subject of bullying. It may be easy to be the target of bullying; being perceived as different from “normal” is all it may take.
Bullying also can take many forms:
- Physical bullying: when a student uses physical force to hurt another student by hitting, pushing, shoving, kicking, taking a student’s belongings or stealing their money.
- Verbal bullying: when a student uses words or gestures to humiliate another student by threatening, taunting, intimidating, insulting, sarcasm, name-calling, teasing, slurs, graffiti, put-downs and ridicule.
- Relational bullying: when a student isolates another student from their peer group through leaving them out, gossiping, spreading rumors and scapegoating.
- Cyber-bullying: when a student uses a cell-phone, text messages, e-mails, instant messaging, chats and social networking sites to bully another student in any of the ways described above.
There are policies your school can implement in order to protect and prevent your child from being bullied. This mainly involves intervention. Without intervention, students who fall into the roles of bully or target are at a higher risk for truancy, mental health challenges, drug and alcohol abuse and suicide. For more information on prevention, talk to your school officials or contact us for more information.