What is bullying? And who is bullied?

Many children have a good idea of what bullying is because they see it every day! Bullying happens when someone hurts or scares another person on purpose and the person being bullied has a hard time defending themselves. So, everyone needs to get involved to help stop it.

Bullying is wrong! It is behaviour that makes the person being bullied feel afraid or uncomfortable. There are many ways that young people bully each other, even if they don't realize it at the time.



Some of these include:

Punching, shoving and other acts that hurt people physically
 
Spreading bad rumours about people

Keeping certain people out of a group

Teasing people in a mean way

Getting certain people to "gang up" on others

The four most common types of bullying are:

Verbal bullying - name-calling, sarcasm, teasing, spreading rumours, threatening, making negative references to ones culture, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation, unwanted sexual comments.

Social Bullying - mobbing, scapegoating, excluding others from a group, humiliating others with public gestures or graffiti intended to put others down.

Physical Bullying - hitting, poking, pinching, chasing, shoving, coercing, destroying or stealing belongings, unwanted sexual touching.


Cyber Bullying - using the Internet or text messaging to intimidate, put-down, spread rumours or make fun of someone.

What are the effects of bullying?Bullying makes people upset. It can make children feel lonely, unhappy and frightened. It can make them feel unsafe and think there must be something wrong with them. Children can lose confidence and may not want to go to school anymore. It may even make them sick.

Some people think bullying is just part of growing up and a way for young people to learn to stick up for themselves. But bullying can have long-term physical and psychological consequences. Some of these include:

Withdrawal from family and school activities, wanting to be left alone.

Shyness
Stomachaches
Headaches
Panic Attacks
Not being able to sleep
Sleeping too much
Being exhausted
Nightmares


If bullying isn't stopped, it also hurts the bystanders, as well as the person who bullies others. Bystanders are afraid they could be the next victim. Even if they feel badly for the person being bullied, they avoid getting involved in order to protect themselves or because they aren't sure what to do.

Children who learn they can get away with violence and aggression continue to do so in adulthood. They have a higher chance of getting involved in dating aggression, sexual harassment and criminal behaviour later in life.

Bullying can have an effect on learning
Stress and anxiety caused by bullying and harassment can make it more difficult for kids to learn. It can cause difficulty in concentration and decrease their ability to focus, which affects their ability to remember things they have learnt.
Bullying can lead to more serious concerns
Bullying is painful and humiliating, and kids who are bullied feel embarrassed, battered and shamed. If the pain is not relieved, bullying can even lead to consideration of suicide or violent behaviour

Bullying isn't just physical it can be mental,by the way you speak to one another. some examples are "you have glasses, you cant be here." or"id need 2 buses to run you over" or" i need a ride home , hey fat bus can take me home."

In schools, bullying occurs in all areas. It can occur in nearly any part in or around the school building, though it more often occurs in PE, recess, hallways, bathrooms, on school buses and waiting for buses, classes that require group work and/or after school activities.

 

Bullying in school sometimes consists of a group of students taking advantage of or isolating one student in particular and gaining the loyalty of bystanders who, in some cases, want to avoid becoming the next victim. These bullies taunt and tease their target before physically bullying the target. Targets of bullying in school are often pupils who are considered strange or different by their peers to begin with, making the situation harder for them to deal with.

My experiences:
The first time I've ever got bullied was in grade 4.  I was new to the school and was really, really shy.  Some of the kids would say mean things to me, about the way I looked or the way I dressed, or anything else they thought would hurt me.  I came home everyday feeling horrible and I thought I  was worthless.  I would talk to my Mom about it and she would make me feel better.  She always told me that what the kids said wasn't true.  And she would suggest I talk to my teacher.  I would feel bettter at night, but then the next day it would happen all over again.  My Mom would ask me if I wanted her to talk to my principal for me but I always told her that I didn't want her to and that I would.  But I never did.  I was afraid that it would make things worse. In grade 8 an incident happened on a class trip to Quebec that I finally did get the courage to tell a teacher about and she just laughed it off and told me basically to get over it.  When we got home and I told my Mom abougt it, she went to the school and talked to my principal about it.  And my principal was awesome about it, but it still happened and sometimes it was even worse!  I think what made it worse was that my school was really small so I couldn't avoid the kids that did this to me.  I had friends that stuck by me but none of them really tried to help me  until grade 9 when my friend Emma noticed a group of girls picking on me and she went and told the teacher and it has never been that bad since that day!  Having friends that have the courage to stick by me has been such an awesome thing!  I am so glad that I have friends like Emma who protect me and don't let the bullys get away with it!  I wish more people would be like that, then maybe we could put a stop to bullying altogether.  Because that's the thing, everyone knows you're supposed to tell a teacher or an adult when someone tries to bully you but it's really hard to do it.  And when it's a whole group of kids bullying you, then it's almost impossible (or it was for me at least!) 

Being bullied really changed my life and even though I wish I didn't have to go through it, I'm a stronger person now then I ever was. Because I've been bullied all these years it has taught me to stand up for myself, to cherish the friends I have that helped me and  to believe that I truly am amazing and beautiful no matter what they say.






  .

We are beautiful no matter what they say
Yes, words won't bring us down
We are beautiful in every single way
Yes, words can't bring us down, oh, no
So don't you bring me down today

Oh, yeah, don't you bring me down today, yeah
Don't you bring me down ooh... today.

  -Christina Aguilera

 

 

Another tragic event that was in the news

 
Last month, an 11-year-old boy went to his school counsellor in Montebello, California to say that he no longer wanted to live. His classmates had been bullying him, and his mother often hit him while his stepfather held him down...
He wanted to commit suicide because his life was "unbearable" and "I'm tired of people hitting me all the time," a report would later say. The records said h e wanted to either shoot himself or hang from a rope.

A social worker was sent to the boy's home later that day. What the worker didn't know is that the agency had been dealing with the family since the boy was a baby. County workers had previously noted drugs, neglect and violence in the various places the boy had lived.

The social worker also didn't know that the stepfather, who answered the door, had been barred from living in the home due to a history of drug abuse and domestic violence. Communication was so poor within the Department of Children and Family Services that none of this crucial info was relayed before the visit.

The social worker searched for a gun, but never searched for a rope. She asked the boy when his mother last hit him, but he only shrugged his shoulders. She also asked whether he was afraid of his mother, and the boy said no.

But since the worker knew nothing of the boy's family history and asked these questions with mom and step dad nearby, there was no way the boy would answer honestly. He was suicidal and scared shit less, remember?

So the worker deemed the boy's environment safe and left. Later that night, mom made dinner before the family would sit down to watch the NBA Finals. She called her son to dinner. The boy didn't answer.

She began to search the house before finding him in her bedroom closet. He'd hanged himself.

Police arrived to find him unresponsive. He would die at 1 .m. the next morning.

The department says the situation occurred due to poor communication stemming from a lack of funding, unused technology and legal limitations. That's apparently bureaucrat-speak for "incompetence and carelessness."

 

 

 

 Kristen Stewart

Kristen Stewart might be hugely popular nowadays, but she wasn’t quite as beloved in high school—she’s told the press that she got bullied by her peers: “I’m glad I could do those films and I was glad to leave school. I couldn’t relate to kids my own age. They are mean and don’t give you any chance. I was never the type of girl to be walking around talking about acting, so in the beginning I didn’t get hassled, until someone realised. I tried to play it down but I got, ‘Oh, she’s such a bitch.’ Since I was 14, I continued my education via correspondence while concentrating on my career. The day I did the graduation scene in ‘Eclipse,’ I had just finished high school myself the week before.”

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift was bullied by her classmates in junior high. Many of them she encountered again once she was famous. “They showed up, wearing my T-shirts and asking me to sign their Cd's,” she said. “It was bittersweet, because it made me realize that they didn’t remember being mean to me and that I needed to forget about it too ... Really, if I hadn’t come home from school miserable every day, maybe I wouldn’t have been so motivated to write songs. I should probably thank them!”

Jessica Simpson

Jessica Simpson got her first record deal at age 13—only her album never came out because the label went under. Her classmates, however, thought she made the whole thing up and she became the school punching bag. “I would walk down the school halls and hear people talking about me. Some of them would throw toilet paper at my house or throw eggs at my door,” she said. “They would also write things on the sidewalk in permanent marker. They really hated me.”
 

Brian McFadden

"I was bullied at school because of my weight and because I used to sing in bands. It started to make me very sharp-I had one-line answers to retaliate. I always had it in the back of my mind that they can say what they want, but I'll always have the last laugh."
 

 

Rhianna

Gorgeous singer Rhianna has revealed that she suffered from discrimination because of her skin colour all throughout her childhood. She told In Style magazine that because her skin was lighter in colour than her classmates in Barbados, she was tormented right up until high school. “Having lighter skin wasn’t a problem in my household, but it was when I went to school - which really confused me at first. The harassment continued to my very last day of elementary school.”