Here are some facts about bullying.

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What Is Bullying?

Bullying is a form of aggressive behavior that is intentional, hurtful, (physical and psychological), and/or threatening and persistent (repeated). There is an imbalance of strength (power and dominance).
The above definition includes the following criteria that will help you determine if a student is being bullied:

~ The mistreatment must be intentional.
~ The mistreatment must be hurtful (physical or psychological).
~ The mistreatment is threatening; The individual fears harms and/or fears their safety.
~ The mistreatment must occur more than once. However, some disagree with this, they say one very hurtful event is enough to label it bullying.
~ There must be a power imbalance.

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What Does Bullying Look Like?

Direct Bullying Behaviors

_{Physical Bullying (a few examples)}

~ Hitting, slapping, elbowing, shouldering (slamming someone with your shoulder)
~ Shoving in a hurtful or embarrassing way
~ Kicking
~ Taking, stealing, damaging or defacing belongings or other property
~ Restraining
~ Pinching
~ Flushing someone’s head in the toilet
~ Cramming someone into his or her locker
~ Attacking with spit wads or food

_{Verbal Bullying (a few examples)}

~ Name-calling
~ Insulting remarks and put-downs
~ Repeated teasing
~ Racist remarks or other harassment
~ Threats and intimidation
~ Whispering behind someone’s back

Indirect Bullying Behaviors

_{Social/Relational (a few examples)}

~ Destroying and manipulating relationships (turning your best friend against you)
~ Destroying status within a peer group
~ Destroying reputations
~ Humiliation and embarrassment
~ Intimidation
~ Gossiping, spreading nasty and malicious rumors and lies about someone
~ Hurtful graffiti
~ Excluding someone from a group (social rejection or isolation)
~ Stealing boyfriends or girlfriends to hurt someone
~ Negative body language (facial expressions, turning your back to someone)
~ Threatening gestures, taunting, pestering, insulting remarks and gestures
~ Glares and dirty looks, nasty jokes, notes passed around, anonymous notes
~ Hate petitions (promising to hate someone)

_{Other Bullying Behaviors}

Cyber bullying: negative text messages on cell phones, e-mail, or voice-mail messages, Web pages, and so on Direct and indirect forms of bullying often occur together. All of these behaviors can be interrelated.

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How Are Boys and Girls Different in Their Bullying?

Both boys and girls use verbal aggression (such as mocking, name-calling, teasing, mean telephone calls, verbal threats of aggression) and intimidation (such as graffiti, publicly challenging someone to do something, playing a dirty trick, taking possessions, coercion) (Garrity, Jens, Porter, Sager, and Short-Camilli, 1996). Nevertheless, there are some differences.

_{Boy Bullies:}

~ Boys may bully more than girls. However, some question this.
~ Boys bully both boys and girls (Olweus, 1993).
~ Boys use more direct behaviors (physical and verbal bullying) than girls do.
~ They usually use more indirect bullying as their verbal skills increase (Mullin-Rindler, 2002).
~ Boys may use more physical aggression than girls (Espelage, Bosworth, & Simon, 2000; Hyde, 1986; McDermott, 1966). However, more research is needed to verify this, and the research indicates that assumptions should not be made about the nature of their aggression (Espelage & Swearer, 2004).
~ Boys are just as likely as girls to use social and emotional taunting.

_{Girl Bullies:}

~ Girls are aggressive, but may use more indirect behaviors to damage relationships and can be sneaky and nasty.
~ Girls are becoming more physical in bullying than in the past
~ Girls are more likely to bully other girls, but sometimes they bully boys (Olweus, 1993).
~ Girls bully in groups more than boys do.
~ Girls seek to inflict psychological pain on their victims, which hurts as much as, if not more than, physical attacks and has long-lasting effects.
~ Girls behave well around adults but can be cruel and mean to peers.
~ Girls target weaknesses in others.
~ Girls frequently make comments regarding the sexual behavior of girls they don’t like (Byrne, 1994a, 1994b).
~ Girls attack within tightly knit networks of friends, which intensifies the hurt.

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Go To: Facts About Bullying 2

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