If your child is being bully, time
is crucial!
Act as soon as possible.
Bullying can be defined as "A person
who is habitually cruel or overbearing", a person who intimidating to
others.
Bullying can be by individuals or
groups.
Bullying takes many
forms:
- Physical bullying - violence and attacks, includes punching,
poling, hair pulling, biting
- Verbal bullying - taunts, name-calling, teasing, put-downs and
gossip
- Emotional bullying - threats and intimidation, extortion or
stealing of money and possessions, exclusion from the peer group
- Sexual bullying - sexual propositioning, sexual harassment and
abuse involving
actual physical contact and sexual assault.
Lack
of safety is one of the top concerns of young people, and bullying is a
real and constant threat. A child's emotional development is just as
important, if not more so, than academic development. In fact, a safe,
healthy emotional environment is essential to academic growth and
success.
Humiliation,
fear, anxiety and depression are the constant companions of a child
that is bullied. It can lead to harmful, shocking and unexpected
behavior from an otherwise shy or timid child.
Victims
feel ashamed and tend to view themselves as failures. They are more
prone to stress related illnesses such as headaches and stomachaches.
In extreme cases, the victim of a bully can experience sever depression
and entertain thoughts of suicide.
When the bully targets a student
because of the student's
disability, that is a civil rights violation (akin to sexual harassment
in the workplace).
We have found several
articles and websites on this topic:
What Can Parents Do When a Child Complains of Being
Physical Bullied:
If there are cuts and bruises, attend to
them first. If the injury
merits it, or if there is damage to clothing or possessions, take color
photographs. Without overreaction, convey to the child that you
are angry about the bullying sympathetic with the problem and will take
appropriate action. Never blame your child, the target, or
suggest you cannot help. Do not promise to keep the incident a
secret. Explain that this protects the bully who is counting on the
child to remain silent. Find out what, when and where it
happened, who was involved and if there were witnesses. Ask what
response your child made and whether the incident is one of a series.
Make an appointing with the school
principal or staff member who
handles parent complaints. Give them a written report of the bullying
incident. Make detailed notes of the reaction of the school
personnel to your complaint. Include names, staff position, and date.
(Lawson, 1994) Contact the parents of the bully. Some will react in a
concerned and cooperative way and will make reparation for the damaged
possessions, but many will not. In the latter case, point out that what
has happened is an assault, that you are reporting the bullying to the
school, and it could become a matter for the police. If neither
the parents nor the school personnel show appropriate concern followed
by action, go higher in the school administration. If this proves
unsuccessful, send a copy of the report of all events to date to the
police for their files and advise them that you are seeing a lawyer.
For the complete article:
www.nea.org/issues/safescho/bullyparentscando.html
Protecting Students from
Harassment and Hate Crimes: A Guide for
Schools
(U.S. Department of Education Office
for Civil Rights and National
Association of Attorneys General).
Many children experience sexual,
racial and ethnic harassment at
school. This Guide provides guidance about protecting students from
harassment and violence based on race, color, national origin, sex, and
disability.
Schoolwide Prevention of Bullying
(Northwest Regional Educational
Library).
30 percent of American children are
regularly involved in bullying, as
bullies, victims, or both. Approximately 15 percent are "severely
traumatized or distressed" by bullies . . .
Despite these numbers, bullying
behavior is rarely detected by
teachers, and is even less frequently taken seriously (NRCSS, 1999).
This booklet provides an overview of
what is known about bullying
behavior and successful efforts to address it; profiles anti-bullying
programs and offers resources.
www.wrightslaw.com/links/free_pubs.htm#bullying
www.wrightslaw.com/nltr/05/nl.0201.htm
Understanding
Bullying and Its Impact on Kids with Learning Disabilities or AD/HD
Bullies! Every classroom has at least
one. Whose name comes to mind
when you hear the word
"bully"? Who was the kid who could upset your day
with his verbal, physical, or
emotional insults? Most adults who were
bullied remember such
childhood events vividly.
Bullying among elementary school
children and teenagers is a growing problem in many schools in the United
States. It's happening in urban,
suburban, and rural schools. Kids who
have learning disabilities (LD)
www.schwablearning.org/articles.asp?r=25
or
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity
Disorder (AD/HD)
www.schwablearning.org/articles.asp?r=26
are especially vulnerable to
bullying problems.
While bullying isn't new,
professionals today have a new level of understanding of the problem. Bullying is a
learned behavior that can
be
prevented! Effective bullying
prevention programs are being used in progressive school systems throughout the
country. It's important for
parents, students, teachers, and
school administrators to understand
and learn to manage bullying
that occurs at school and elsewhere. . . .
For the complete article:
www.schwablearning.org/articles.asp?r=692
Bullying & Kids with Learning
Differences
A national expert on bullying sheds
new light on an old problem!
(The first article in a 2-part series)
www.schwablearning.org/SchwabLearning.asp?id=1438
Bullying Behavior Quiz
How well do you understand childhood
bullying – and how to stop it?
Take their quiz and find out!
www.schwablearning.org/SchwabLearning.asp?id=1439
Bullies2buddies
A
source of help for victims of bullying. It teaches victims how to solve
their problems without anyone's help and without getting anyone in
trouble.
bullies2buddies.com/index.html
They
have a free manual for kids, Most kids can learn how to stop being
victimized by simply reading the manual.
There
is also an audio tape:
"How to Stop
Being Teased and Bullied without Really Trying".
There
is another free manual for adults that teachs how to dramatically
reduce bullying between kids with almost no effort, while increasing
students' emotional maturity and independence. It enables teachers to
go back to being teachers instead of policemen and judges.
"A
Revolutionary Guide to Reducing Aggression between Children"
This
manual can be easily printed out (also a Spanish version).
MA DOE -- Safe &
Drug Free Schools info
www.doe.mass.edu/hssss/program/sdsf.html
www.keepschoolssafe.org
www.jodeeblanco.com
familiesandwork.org/askthechildren.html
Bullying Prevention Program
www.state.ma.us/ccj/bully.htm
www.nldline.com
nces.ed.gov/forum/crime.asp
nces.ed.gov/pubs/97581.html
The Attorney General's Disability
Rights Project will also
come into
schools to speak to staff if there is
bullying or harrassment based on
disability. There is a reference
to G.L. C. 265 sec 43A
regarding
criminal harassment.
www.ago.state.ma.us
Protecting
Students from Harassment and Hate Crime, A Guide for Schools
(January, 1999)
US DOE OCR SITE, put out as a joint
publication by the U. S. Department
of Education Office for Civil Rights
National Association of Attorneys
General Endorsed by the National
School Boards Association.
A threat to kill should
be a police and District Attorney's Office (DA's) matter, no
question about
it, and a school matter as well, but it is against the law to threated
to kill someone. Contact the OCR office.
Your District Attorney's Office (DA's)
office (county based, Middlesex
County,) should have a Bullying/School Programs department.
They are also funded to provide FREE
workshops (great for a PAC topic).
You can consider asking your high
school adjustment counselor for leads
and resoures.
You can suggest this topic to your
PTA/PTG/PTO as a parent workshop
because bullying is prevalent and it parents need to have their
awareness heightened on this issue. Not only about what happens to
targets, but what happens to unchecked bullies.
What Do You Do When the
Teacher is a Bully?
Stand
up for your child. Don't diminish their concerns over a teacher's
attitude or behavior. You have the right to question school
authorities, and you owe it to your child to do so.
If you
suspect a teacher is bullying your child, request a meeting with the
teacher.
Before your meeting, get as many
details as possible from your child.
Speak to other parents to see if their
child has voiced any complaints or observed mistreatment of your child.
Take
notes and prepare yourself. When you speak to the teacher or
administrator, try to keep calm, but make sure you get answers.
If
your concerns are dismissed without resolution, take it a step further.
Document your efforts, meet with the
superintendent, write an article
for the newspaper, or attend a PTO or school board meeting to voice
your concerns.
Our children have enough to deal with;
a bully for a teacher shouldn't be one of their problems.
Books:
Schools Where Everyone Belongs:
Practical Strategies for
Reducing Bullying
by Stan Davis.
Based on research by Olweus, Davis's
book discusses practical programs
for schools to deal with bullying. He lays out the step very
clearly, and stresses that bullying is not the fault of the victim and
needs to be dealt with systematically by schools. You can
see samples from the book at his site:
The Federal Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services
Administration's
Center for Substance Abuse Prevention
has just completed a free online
tutorial for all school personnel on
school-based bullying. The
tutorial,
"The ABCs of Bullying: Addressing,
Blocking, and Curbing School
Aggression,"
offers CEU's to social workers, all
counselors, health educators, and
contact hours to all school personnel.
Two kits developed by the U.S.
Department of Health and Human
Services' Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), as part
of the HRSA's Take a Stand. Lend a Hand. Stop Bullying Now! campaign.
The "Resource Kit" includes advice
from a youth-expert panel made up of
young people. The kit also contains clear tips and important facts on
bullying and bullying prevention for parents, educators, health and
safety
professionals, law enforcement
officers, and others who encounter child
and teen bullying. A CD-ROM with tip sheets ready for reproduction and
distribution is included.
The "Communication Kit" contains
materials designed to assist your PAC
in promoting and garnering support for the Take a Stand. Lend a Hand.
Stop Bullying Now! campaign in your community. This kit also includes a
CD-ROM with materials ready for reproduction and distribution.
The free kits can be ordered by
calling (888) ASK-HRSA (275-4772) or by
visiting the campaign website:
www.stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov
The website has activities for students and resources not included in
the kits.
PACER Center's new innovative
curriculum, "Is Your Child a
Target of
Bullying? Intervention Strategies for Parents of Children with
Disabilities," addresses these and other types of bullying. An engaging
and superbly produced resource, the curriculum is meant for
professionals and parent leaders to present to parents at meetings,
workshops, trainings, and myriad other occasions.
