Text: Amanda Ndlangisa. Pictures: Gallo Images/Getty Images and Thinkstock Images. Article from the October 2012 issue of Bona Magazine.
Bullying can take on many forms. It’s important to understand what bullying is and how to help your child if they are caught in this situation.
According to the author of Life Talk For Parents, Izabella Little-Gates, bullying is constant ill-treatment and often includes a power imbalance. It happens in many forms, some of which may seem unimportant to someone else, but they can drive the victim to desperation. This includes verbal attacks, pestering via cellphones, excessive teasing, spreading of malicious rumours, physical violence, intimidation, and humiliating behaviour of many kinds. Cyberbullying (via cell phones and the Internet) is becoming a major threat to children’s well being.
Some bullying patterns can be picked up from a very young age (three to four) but most incidents occur among children from the ages of eight to 18.
Signs that my child is being bullied?
- A change in their character and personality.
- Depression
- Unwillingness to go to school
- Unexplained injuries
- Sleep disturbances
- Changes in eating patterns
- Talking about suicide
Understanding the bully
Psychologist Thomas Burkhalter says that being disliked or being a victim of bullying can lead to emotional distress and is the most common cause for teenage suicide. The victim is, however, not the only child at risk. The bully, too, is vulnerable, and perhaps is also a victim in another context. Bullies are possibly the products of dysfunctional families, or come from families with absent parents.
What causes a child to become a bully?
There are various types and degrees of bullying, and people bully for a variety of reasons such as:
- The bully may be a troubled child from a dysfunctional family, where aggression is an accepted way of getting needs or authority.
- The child may be bullied at home and so may bully at school. By dominating others they use it to boost their self-esteem and sense of powerlessness.
- The bully may cause pain, shame or humiliation on another in order to deal with those feelings within themselves. Having a victim it encourages the bully to take out their anger on them, “as long as another is vulnerable, I am not”.
Izabella Little-Gates adds that, “We’ve also been hearing from schools and parents about a different kind of bully called ‘the pampered bully’. Whereas the ‘traditional’ bullies often have had issues with low self-esteem or unresolved anger now we’re hearing about bullies who have been brought up in a stable family who are bullying others because of their own big egos. Experts believe that the reason why child-pampering is happening is because the parents spoil their children which influences them to be nasty to classmates.
It’s worth looking to see if your children:
- Are becoming increasingly aggressive.
- Are often involved in fights.
- Have a habit to blame others.
- Get a kick out of making people uncomfortable, putting them down, intimidating or hurting them.
- Feel good, powerful or in control when they use their physical strength to punish, frighten, dominate or force someone to do something.
- See someone else’s happiness, good fortune, success or cheerfulness as a threat to their own happiness and well-being.
- Find it fun to show off by victimising someone who appears defenceless.
- Are part of a group which could be seen as intimidating or which victimises an individual or another group.
- Experience a character change when they’re with their friends. When they’re part of a group, do they suddenly become unkind or cruel to someone they would be nice to if they were alone with them?
What can I do to help my bullied child? Or what if my child is the bully?
When you realise that your child is being bullied, you need to determine the seriousness of the problem. How often is it happening? Is one individual involved or is it a whole group? Is your child just a bit uncomfortable with what’s happening or is he/she quite desperate? Are they struggling to reach their full potential because of it? You then need to consider your child’s options. A priority, especially if it’s cyberbullying that’s occurring, is to tell someone who is in a position of authority, someone who is able to do something about the bullying. This may sound simple, but it can be really hard as your child may feel like ‘impimpi’ (snitch) and might also be afraid of it happening again. In addition to reporting the situation, some counsellors suggest that some children would want to handle the matter in their own way for example, the child usually makes friends with other victims and gangs up on the bully. The benefits are that: They feel better about (and more in control of) the whole process; when they report it they don’t feel like such a snitch.
If your child is the bully you need to talk to your child and get their side of the story. It may be that your child was being bullied themselves and has turned to bullying by getting involved with the wrong crowd.
Help your child understand how they are making other children feel by bullying them and the serious affects of bullying.
Questions you need to ask your child are:
How are things going at school and at home?
Are you being bullied?
Do you get along with other kids at school?
How do you treat other children?
What do you think about being considered a bully?
Izabella’s books Life Talk For A Daughter and Life Talk For A Son contain a detailed plan for addressing bullying, and Life Talk For Parents has some valuable advice for parents.
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