Here’s what adults should know about school bullying!

School bullying is defined as an incident in which one student (individual or group) bullies or insults another student (individual or group) once or multiple times intentionally or maliciously through physical, verbal, and online means, causing physical injury, property loss, or mental damage to the other student (individual or group). There are many forms of school bullying, not just the beating, kicking, and robbing of others' property that we know of, which is called physical bullying . In addition, there are two common types of bullying: one is verbal bullying , such as threats, teasing, or insulting nicknames; the other is relational bullying , which aims to harm others' social relationships, such as excluding others or deliberately spreading rumors.

With the development of the Internet and the rise of social media, school bullying seems to be more likely to occur, and its impact on individuals is becoming more severe and lasting.

It does not seem difficult to give a definition of bullying. However, in actual operations, the nature of some behaviors is not so easy to define. For example, several first-grade boys are holding brooms and mops and laughing and chasing another male classmate. The chasing classmate is very excited and has no malice, he just thinks it is fun, but the classmate being chased may not think it is fun, especially the classmate who is always forced to play the role of "being chased".

When bullying occurs, adults are often puzzled as to why the bullied children do not tell adults, teachers or parents, why do not they actively seek help, and what are they thinking?

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The psychology of bullies is a phenomenon that deserves the attention of schools and teachers. The characteristics of bullies are often that they are perceived as being in a "weak" position in some aspect, such as being socially awkward, isolated, disliked by teachers, physically weak, too fat or too thin, being considered unable to fight back, and having low self-esteem.

Note that these are relative rather than absolute concepts, and many children may meet these conditions. It should be noted that even if a child may meet one or several of these conditions, it does not mean that the child will definitely be bullied. There are online statements such as "a certain girl was bullied because she was too pretty", which is one-sided. If the girl is pretty, has many friends, and receives a lot of attention from teachers, then she is unlikely to be bullied.

Victims of bullying often know that they have these "weaknesses", which may lead them to mistakenly look for reasons in themselves . For example, they think they are being bullied because they are not liked, not strong enough, have poor interpersonal relationships, or because they accidentally provoked someone.

It's not that they don't want to seek help at all. The reason why they choose not to report their situation to the school, teachers and parents is often because they don't have 100% confidence that the school or teachers will help them, and that their parents will sympathize with them and help them instead of blaming them.

When dealing with children being bullied, adults need to give the bullied person 100% assurance that being bullied is not his fault, but the fault lies with the bully . Avoid saying things like "If you..., then how could they bully you?" Such language itself actually implies that the bullied person is responsible for the bullying behavior.

The impact of bullying on the bullied is obvious. This behavior destroys their sense of security and damages their self-awareness. They will experience extreme helplessness and deep loneliness; they are more likely to doubt themselves, and have emotional problems such as depression or anxiety; they suddenly start to overeat (usually to cope with their negative emotions); they actively cut off contact with friends, avoid socializing, feel that life is boring, and even have suicidal thoughts.

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Unfortunately, these negative effects do not disappear once the bullying behavior stops.

In fact, they may grow up with these unresolved issues in their lives, and the experience of being bullied may resurface from time to time to sting them.

Their studies may also be affected, and they may no longer be willing to participate in school activities, and may be more likely to skip school or drop out. For teenagers, this precious educational opportunity, the impact of leaving school on them is likely to be lifelong. A small number of bullied children may take risks.

In the United States, teenage perpetrators of school shootings often have experiences of being bullied. Their idea of ​​committing crimes is, on the one hand, to punish the "bad guys," and on the other hand, to declare to the world "you are responsible for your previous behavior of looking down on us," thereby gaining a sense of fairness and restoring their reputation.

Bullies are often not limited to the "problem teenagers" that many adults imagine. Adults may not necessarily understand the social status of teenagers. Some children with "out-of-character" behaviors actually have a relatively high social status in this group. Some unpopular teenagers choose bullying behavior to "establish their authority" in order to "gain" their own social status; another type of bully is much more hidden, and may be students with excellent academic performance, or students with good interpersonal relationships and many friends.

Their purpose of bullying is to "exercise" or "test" their "social influence", and they may not realize that their behavior is bullying. In short, it is important to note that bullies often have advantages in some aspects. Bullying rarely occurs when both parties are evenly matched.

When bullying occurs, we often worry about the "trauma" of the bullied person - this is indeed a cause for concern. In fact, bullying not only harms the physical and mental health of the bullied, but also has a negative impact on the development of the bully.

If your child is involved in bullying, and if he is not the bullied party but the bullying party, parents should not feel lucky and think that their child will not be "bullied" in the future.

Bullies are more likely to drop out of school during adolescence; as adults, they are more likely to drink alcohol and get involved in fights, including domestic violence. Bullies in childhood are more likely to become juvenile delinquents during adolescence and more likely to commit serious crimes in adulthood. A foreign study found that about 65% of boys who were labeled "bullies" by their teachers in the sixth grade were sentenced to death for serious crimes at the age of 24. Therefore, bullying and being bullied are harmful to children in the long run.

The identities of the bully and the bullied are not constant, and sometimes they may even be interchanged.

A one-year study abroad followed 276 children and found that among the 35 children who were considered "bullies" in the sixth grade, 2 became bullied in the seventh grade, and 9 became neither bullies nor bullied, and the other 24 were still bullies. Among the 27 children who were marked as bullies by researchers in the sixth grade, 1 became a bully in the seventh grade, 9 became neither bullies nor bullied, and 16 were still bullied. Sometimes, a child may be both a bully and a bullied.

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Bullying is hidden mainly because schools, teachers and parents often fail to see such behavior. However, some behaviors or phenomena can still provide clues to careful parents or teachers , indicating that children may be facing bullying, such as unexplained scars on the child's body, clothes or belongings are always lost; suddenly have trouble sleeping or even wake up from nightmares; academic performance suddenly drops, find various reasons not to go to school; suddenly do not want to contact friends or even avoid socializing; feel helpless and blame themselves for being useless, etc.

Clues that a child may be a bully include becoming friends with classmates who bully others; becoming more aggressive; having money or property that parents never gave them, etc. Parents need to be sensitive to these subtle changes and their children's emotional states.

Bullying is not hidden, and most bullying does not happen in quiet corners of the school. When bullying occurs, the actions of bystanders are particularly important.

In schools, especially in classrooms, if a bystander can say "Hey, XXX (bully's name), what are you doing" when bullying occurs, this simple action is very likely to effectively stop the bullying behavior.

Outside of school, when you know that a classmate is being bullied, if you judge that you cannot stop it yourself, you need to know that you have an obligation to report it to the school and teacher immediately. This behavior is not "telling tales", it is not only to help the bullied, but also to help the bully not go further down this dark road.

If no action is taken, these bystanders will not really be immune from the impact because they "do not care about it". According to Bandura's social learning theory, when bullying occurs, the psychology of the children standing by will also change quietly. Some children may learn to use bullying to solve problems; while the inner sense of security of other children will be broken.

For school administrators or teachers, I do not encourage you to assume that there is no bullying in your school or class, and there are no bullies or bullied. On the contrary, I encourage you to assume that such behavior exists or may exist.

Aggression is common among vertebrates, from fish to humans. Last summer, my family caught hundreds of small fish from the creek and kept them in a fish tank. Wild fish are much easier to keep than goldfish. However, even if we feed them normally, in the end there is only one quiet big fish left - it eats all the other small fish.

Freud, the founder of psychology, even regarded aggression as a part of human instinct. We can understand that everyone will attack, and the difference between people is only in the way, degree and frequency of attack.

Most teenagers have powers similar to those of adults, but their brains mature later.

From a cognitive perspective, they find it more difficult to control their impulsive behavior, less aware of the consequences of impulsive behavior, and prefer to glorify impulse; from an emotional perspective, they have poorer empathy and a lower ability to understand the feelings of others; from a behavioral perspective, they are more likely to imitate, and in today's television, movies, and games, aggression is a constant theme and is often highly glorified as heroism.

Therefore, it is unlikely that there are fewer attacks among teenagers than among adults. It is not difficult to find from the news that the brutality of juvenile crimes often breaks through many people's bottom line of cognition of "children".

Data from the National Center for Education Statistics in 2019 showed that about one in five adolescents aged 12-18 are bullied, and among girls this figure can even reach one in four.

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In order to prevent or deal with bullying, I personally think that theme class meetings are a good way to do it. You can discuss with your classmates what bullying is; clearly emphasize that this class has zero tolerance for bullying. Clearly discuss what the bullied and bystanders should do in different situations when bullying occurs.

Schools can also organize more group activities to create more opportunities for students to get to know each other - friendship always arises through communication.

Teenagers generally have a heavy workload, and most children in big cities do not have the opportunity to go to the playground to communicate during breaks. In fact, although they are together all day, they don’t have much time to communicate with each other, especially for introverted children. The whole class can play ball games together, or go hiking together. The experience of working together or trekking together can also bring students closer and enhance mutual understanding.

In all collective activities within the class, equal opportunities for participation should be emphasized, rather than ranking in competitions or personal talents. Through collective activities, students are encouraged to see each other's strengths, and at the same time, they should not worry too much about their own shortcomings and deficiencies, after all, everyone has shortcomings.

Author: Wang Kui, PhD in Psychology, Associate Researcher at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Level 2 Psychological Counselor

Editor: Dong Xiaoxian