Showing posts with label Stand Up To Bullying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stand Up To Bullying. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Bullying: What are the Differences between Boys and Girls?

For over 50 years, researchers have been studying how boys and girls interact. Not surprisingly, they have found some differences. For the most part, boys and girls are more similar than they are different. A lot of girls enjoy playing computer games, and a lot of boys enjoy more friendship-centered activities. Researchers have found, however, that as a general group, boys spend more time with boys in physical activities such as sports and games; whereas girls tend to spend more of their time socializing with other girls in more friendship-based activities (for example, talking with other girls) (1, 2, 3). So it is not surprising that boys and girls tend to bully and be bullied differently. One of the most consistent research findings is that boys are more likely to both bully and be bullied than are girls (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9). Also, boys and girls experience different types of bullying behaviors.

Bullying is defined as a form of aggression that is repetitively exerted against an individual who feels unable to defend him/herself (10). This aggression may occur directly against someone in a physical (for example, slapping, pushing) or verbal (for example, swearing, name calling) manner. Bullying can also be indirect whereby the targeted person experiences the aggression through others (for example, gossiped about, excluded from a social activity).

How are Girls Involved in Bullying?

Through Peer Group

Girls tend to bully other girls indirectly through the peer group. Rather than bully a targeted child directly, girls more often share with other girls (and boys) hurtful information about the targeted child (4). For example, a girl may tell a group of girls an embarrassing story about another girl. They may create mean names, gossip, and come up with ways of letting the girl know that she is rejected from the peer group (for example, saying mean things about her on social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace, using her email address to send harassing messages to everyone on her email list, texting her a death threat). These are called “relational” bullying because they attack relationships and friendships.

Sexual

Another example of bullying experienced more often by girls than boys is sexual (for example, touched in private body parts or received sexual messages) (4, 11). Sexual types of bullying may occur at school, in the general community, and on-line. In recent Canadian and U.S. surveys, a significant number of girls report receiving unwanted sexual messages. Fewer boys reported being targeted in this way. This form of bullying combined with messages about rejection from friendships can be devastating to a girl’s sense of enthusiasm for school and learning, self-esteem, and hopes for the future. These forms of bullying can be particularly time-consuming and difficult to resolve given that they involve many people over a period of time and are most often done covertly. It may even involve adults who react aggressively in defence of their children. In addition, parents and school authorities do not always detect gossiping or other covert bullying behaviors because they are generally hidden from adults (12, 13). Thus, they may not be disciplined and “caught”, which may increase the severity and duration of these behaviours. It may even occur among “friends”, making it seem that it’s just typical peer conflict. However, when one girl feels powerless in how she is being treated, then bullying is occurring, and adults need to intervene.
Our evidence-based programs dramatically improve the culture of your school.802-362-5448 -- Info@StandUpToBullying.net
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802-362-5448

 
Shipping and handling is included on all orders.
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DVD Books Poster
Providing dynamic and practical anti-bullying workshops to students, staff and parents, Mike Dreiblatt teaches realistic bullying prevention strategies and best practices that can be used immediately to STOP bullying.
Bullying Prevention PSAs!!!
802-362-5448 -- 136 Clover Lane Manchester Center Vermont 05255

Friday, June 20, 2014

How Not to Raise a Mean Girl

How Not to Raise a Mean Girl
 
Just as bullying has shifted over the years, Hollywood has shifted how bullies are portrayed in film and TV. Take a look back at some of pop
culture's best-known bullies.<!-- -->
</br><!-- -->
</br>Rachel McAdams, left, plays Regina George, the meanest of the "Mean Girls," in the 2004 film, and she's particularly cruel and controlling toward her friends.

By Kelly Wallace, CNN
Editor's note: Kelly Wallace is CNN's digital correspondent and editor-at-large covering family, career and life. She is a mom of two girls. Read her other columns and follow her reports at CNN Parents and on Twitter.
(CNN) -- I am one of the lucky ones. I didn't meet my first "mean girl" until freshman year of college.

Before I met her -- let's call her "Z" -- I lived life assuming that people would for the most part treat me the way I treated them. Oh, how wrong I was.
Z was close to my freshman roommate, who was the opposite of a mean girl, but whenever Z was around, it was clear that a) she had no time for me and b) I was not welcome in anything she was doing.
To this day, whenever I think of mean girls, I think back to Z and wonder what led her to be so miserable to me and probably other girls, too.
I find myself thinking about that question a lot lately as I watch my daughters, now 6 and 8, negotiate female friendships. Sadly, I have already seen mean girl qualities in some girls in their peer group, and my kids are still years away from middle school!
Educational psychologist Lori Day says the problem is growing worse with the increasing power of the Internet and today's hyperfeminine girl culture, so we're seeing more mean girls today and at younger ages.
Here's where we as parents need to slam on the brakes. If the problem is getting worse and it's starting with girls as young as elementary school, what can we do about it? How can we avoid raising mean girls?
Day, who is out with the powerful new book "Her Next Chapter: How Mother-Daughter Book Clubs Can Help Girls Navigate Malicious Media, Risky Relationships, Girl Gossip and So Much More," says mothers really have to "model being allies to other women."
"When girls see their mother gossiping with a female friend about another female friend, putting down someone because of how they look or their weight ... it's modeling the wrong thing for girls," she said.
She recommends being explicit with young girls about this philosophy. "You can say, 'I really try not to tear other women down. I try to build them up,' " said Day, who wrote the book along with her recent college graduate daughter and devoted an entire chapter to dealing with mean girls.
Louise Sattler, a school psychologist, sign language educator and mom of two grown children in Los Angeles, knows all too well about mean girls. When she was in high school, one girl, we'll call her "C," seemed to have it out for her.
Thirty years later, at her high school reunion, C continued to be a bully, even requesting that Sattler not sit at her table. (Sattler, you'll be happy to know, did not back down. She planted her purse and her body down at that table, and C stormed off.)
"I always felt kind of sorry for her, frankly, because I knew she didn't come from a very happy household," she said.
Girls like C are always looking for something better and for recognition and validation, she added. "And so I think the way to combat mean girls is to first just validate your daughter. They may not be the cheerleader. They may not grow up to be the smartest. They may be a little chunky, but that's OK."
Mean girls often have a low self-esteem and "a feeling of mistrust and negative competition with other girls," said Anea Bogue, an author, educator and self-esteem expert who focuses her energies on helping girls.
People who truly feel good about themselves don't expend a ton of energy trying to knock others down, said Bogue, author of "9 Ways We're Screwing Up Our Girls and How We Can Stop."
"The most important thing we can do as parents to avoid raising a mean girl is instill self-value and challenge status quo messages of female inferiority and mistrust between women, a norm girls learn about from the time they are little from a variety of sources, including fairy tales," said the mom of two girls, who recently launched an anti-bullying program in the U.S. and Hong Kong called Be a REALgirl, not a MEANgirl.
Annette Lanteri, a mom of two girls in Bayport, New York, switched schools for her elder daughter in part because of the way she was being treated by some mean girls.
The key in stopping this behavior, she says is teaching children the concept of empathy. "Having the ability to step into someone's shoes and use that information when you interact with people is an amazing tool," Lanteri said. "A girl with that empathizes with others, especially her peers, (and) will never become a mean girl."
What I also heard from the many parents I spoke with is that the golden rule that we all grew up with -- treat others as you would want them to treat you -- is perhaps even more important today.
 
Michelle Staruiala has been passing that philosophy down to her three kids, including her 13-year-old daughter, their entire lives.
It works, she said. Her daughter hasn't had issues with mean girls, has been known to stand up for friends who are being bullied and feels guilty if she ever treats someone the wrong way.
"To this day, my daughter will say, 'Mom, I shouldn't have said that. I feel bad I said this about my friend,' " said Staruiala, of Saskatchewan.
Then again, maybe we're going about this mean girl policing all wrong.
Amy MacClain, lead facilitator and program developer for Soul Shoppe, an interactive program focusing on helping schools and students combat bullying, says we should banish the term entirely.
Saddling a kid with the mean girl tag means judging her in the same way she may be judging others, said MacClain, who is also the founder of a program that helps parents bully-proof their kids.
"If you turn and go, 'She's a mean girl. You better go and play with someone else,' you're teaching your child not to deal with the problem, not to see what might be the cause and not to take care of themselves."
Truly stopping mean girl behavior demands a lot of parental introspection. After all, what parent would want to admit their daughter is one?
"Part of it is we're just so blamed as parents ... for the normal things that kids can do. That's why we don't want to take any responsibility," said MacClain, who has an 11-year-son.
But denial isn't going to help anyone, parents and parenting experts say, so the best thing any mom of a mean girl can do is start validating her daughter and connecting with her, even on the playground.
"When there are girls and they're being mean to one another, get involved," MacClain said. "Go to the park where they play and jump into that play and lead it for a little while so that all the girls feel safer and they're having fun so you're not directing it. You're just jumping in and leading fun."
Our evidence-based programs dramatically improve the culture of your school.802-362-5448 -- Info@StandUpToBullying.net
  **District Tour Specials**
Competitive Rates are available when multiple schools in your area schedule together for our District Packages.
802-362-5448

 
Shipping and handling is included on all orders.
Fax purchase orders to: 802-549-5024

   
DVD Books Poster
Providing dynamic and practical anti-bullying workshops to students, staff and parents, Mike Dreiblatt teaches realistic bullying prevention strategies and best practices that can be used immediately to STOP bullying.
Bullying Prevention PSAs!!!
802-362-5448 -- 136 Clover Lane Manchester Center Vermont 05255


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Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Bullying Statistics


General Statistics

  • Nearly 1 in 3 students (27.8%) report being bullied during the school year (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2013).
  • 64 percent of children who were bullied did not report it; only 36 percent reported the bullying(Petrosina, Guckenburg, DeVoe, and Hanson, 2010). 
  • More than half of bullying situations (57 percent) stop when a peer intervenes on behalf of the student being bullied (Hawkins, Pepler, and Craig, 2001). 
  • School-based bullying prevention programs decrease bullying by up to 25% (McCallion and Feder, 2013). 
  • The reasons for being bullied reported most often by students were looks (55%), body shape (37%), and race (16%) (Davis and Nixon, 2010).

Effects of Bullying

  • Students who experience bullying are at increased risk for depression, anxiety, sleep difficulties, and poor school adjustment (Center for Disease Control, 2012).
  • Students who bully others are at increased risk for substance use, academic problems, and violence later in adolescence and adulthood (Center for Disease Control, 2012).
  • Compared to students who only bully, or who are only victims, students who do both suffer the most serious consequences and are at greater risk for both mental health and behavior problems (Center for Disease Control, 2012).
  • Students who experience bullying are twice as likely as non-bullied peers to experience negative health effects such as headaches and stomachaches (Gini and Pozzoli, 2013)

Statistics about bullying of students with disabilities

  • Only 10 U.S. studies have been conducted on the connection between bullying and developmental disabilities, but all of these studies found that children with disabilities were two to three times more likely to be bullied than their nondisabled peers. (Marshall, Kendall, Banks & Gover (Eds.), 2009).
  • Researchers discovered that students with disabilities were more worried about school safety and being injured or harassed by other peers compared to students without a disability (Saylor & Leach, 2009).
  • The National Autistic Society reports that 40 percent of children with autism and 60 percent of children with Asperger’s syndrome have experienced bullying.
  • When reporting bullying youth in special education were told not to tattle almost twice as often as youth not in special education (Davis and Nixon, 2010).

Statistics about bullying of students of color

  • More than one third of adolescents reporting bullying report bias-based school bullying (Russell, Sinclair, Poteat, and Koenig, 2012). 
  • Bias-based bullying is more strongly associated with compromised health than general bullying (Russell, Sinclair, Poteat, and Koenig, 2012). 
  • Race-related bullying is significantly associated with negative emotional and physical health effects (Rosenthal et al, 2013)

Statistics about bullying of students who identify or are perceived as LGBTQ

  • 81.9% of students who identify as LGBTQ were bullied in the last year based on their sexual orientation (National School Climate Survey, 2011).
  • Peer victimization of all youth was less likely to occur in schools with bullying policies that are inclusive of LGBTQ students (Hatzenbuehler and Keyes, 2012).
  • 63.5% of students feel unsafe because of their sexual orientation, and 43.9% because of their gender expression (National School Climate Survey, 2011).
  • 31.8% of LGBTQ students missed at least one entire day of school in the past month because they felt unsafe or uncomfortable (National School Climate Survey, 2011).

Weight-Based Bullying

  • 64% of students enrolled in weight-loss programs reported experiencing weight-based victimization (Puhl, Peterson, and Luedicke, 2012).
  • One third of girls and one fourth of boys report weight-based teasing from peers, but prevalence rates increase to approximately 60% among the heaviest students (Puhl, Luedicke, and Heuer, 2011).
  • 84% of students observed students perceived as overweight being called names or getting teased during physical activities (Puhl, Luedicke, and Heuer, 2011).

Bullying and Suicide

  • There is a strong association between bullying and suicide-related behaviors, but this relationships is often mediated by other factors, including depression and delinquency (Hertz, Donato, and Wright, 2013).
  • Youth victimized by their peers were 2.4 times more likely to report suicidal ideation and 3.3 times more likely to report a suicide attempt than youth who reported not being bullied (Espelage and Holt, 2013).
  • Students who are both bullied and engage in bullying behavior are the highest risk group for adverse outcomes (Espelage and Holt, 2013).

Interventions

  • Bullied youth were most likely to report that actions that accessed support from others made a positive difference (Davis and Nixon, 2010).
  • Actions aimed at changing the behavior of the bullying youth (fighting, getting back at them, telling them to stop, etc.) were rated as more likely to make things worse (Davis and Nixon, 2010).
  • Students reported that the most helpful things teachers can do are: listen to the student, check in with them afterwards to see if the bullying stopped, and give the student advice (Davis and Nixon, 2010). 
  • Students reported that the most harmful things teachers can do are: tell the student to solve the problem themselves, tell the student that the bullying wouldn’t happen if they acted differently, ignored what was going on, or tell the student to stop tattling (Davis and Nixon, 2010).
  • As reported by students who have been bullied, the self-actions that had some of the most negative impacts (telling the person to stop/how I feel, walking away, pretending it doesn’t bother me) are often used by youth and often recommended to youth (Davis and Nixon, 2010).

Bystanders

  • Bystanders’ beliefs in their social self-efficacy were positively associated with defending behavior and negatively associated with passive behavior from bystanders – i.e. if students believe they can make a difference, they’re more likely to act (Thornberg et al, 2012)
  • Students who experience bullying report that allying and supportive actions from their peers (such as spending time with the student, talking to him/her, helping him/her get away, or giving advice) were the most helpful actions from bystanders (Davis and Nixon, 2010).
  • Students who experience bullying are more likely to find peer actions helpful than educator or self-actions (Davis and Nixon, 2010).

References:

Bullying: A guide for parents. (National Autistic Society). Retrieved from http://www.autism.org.uk/Living-with-autism/Education-and-transition/Primary-and-secondary-school/Your-child-at-school/Bullying-a-guide-for-parents.aspx

Center for Disease Control, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (2012). Understanding bullying.

Davis, S., & Nixon, C. (2010). The youth voice research project: Victimization and strategies.

Espelage, D. L., & Holt, M. K. (2013). Suicidal ideation and school bullying experiences after controlling for depression and delinquency. Journal of Adolescent Health53.

Gini, G., & Pozzoli, T. (2013). Bullied children and psychosomatic problems: A meta-analysis. Pediatrics.

Hatzenbuehler, M. L., & Keyes, K. M. (2012). Inclusive anti-bullying policies and reduced risk of suicide attempts in lesbian and gay youth. Journal of Adolescent Health53, 21-26.

Hawkins, D. L., Pepler, D. J., & Craig, W. M. (2001). Naturalistic observations of peer interventions in bullying. Social Development10(4), 512-527.

Hertz, M. F., Donato, I., & Wright, J. (2013). Bullying and suicide: A public health approach. Journal of Adolescent Health53.

Kosciw, J. G., Greytak, E. A., Bartkiewicz, M. J., Boesen, M. J., & Palmer, N. A. GLSEN, (2011). The 2011 national school climate survey. Retrieved from website: http://glsen.org/sites/default/files/2011 National School Climate Survey Full Report.pdf.

(2009). C. Marshall, E. Kendall, M. Banks & R. Gover (Eds.), Disabilities: Insights from across fields and around the world (Vol. 1-3). Westport, CT: Praeger Perspectives.

McCallion, G., & Feder, J. (2013). Student bullying: Overview of research, federal initiatives, and legal issues. Congressional Research Service.

Petrosino, A., Guckenburg, S., DeVoe, J., & Hanson, T. Institute of Education Sciences, (2010). What characteristics of bullying, bullying victims, and schools are associated with increased reporting of bullying to school officials?  Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance.

Puhl, R. M., Luedicke, J., & Heuer, C. (2011). Weight-based victimization toward overweight adolescents: Observations and reactions of peers. Journal of School Health81(11), 696-703.

Puhl, R. M., Peterson, J. L., & Luedicke, J. (2012). Strategies to address weight-based victimization: Youths' preferred support interventions from classmates, teachers, and parents. Journal of Youth and Adolescence42(3), 315-327.

Rosenthal, L., Earnshaw, V. A., Carroll-Scott, A., Henderson, K. E., Peters, S. M., McCaslin, C., & Ickovics, J. R. (2013). Weight- and race-based bulling: Health associations among urban adolescents. Journal of Health Psychology.

Russell, S. T., Sinclair, K., Poteat, P., & Koenig, B. (2012). Adolescent health and harassment based on discriminatory bias. American Journal of Public Health102(3), 493-495.

Saylor, C.F. & Leach, J.B. (2009) Perceived bullying and social support students accessing special inclusion programming. Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities. 21, 69-80.

Thornberg, T., Tenenbaum, L., Varjas, K., Meyers, J., Jungert, T., & Vanegas, G. (2012). Bystander motivation in bullying incidents: To intervene or not to intervene? Western Journal of Emergency Medicine 8(3), 247-252.

U.S. Department of Education , National Center for Educational Statistics (2013). Student reports of bullying and cyber-bullying: Results from the 2011 school crime supplement to the national crime victimization survey.

Wright, T., & Smith, N. (2013). Bullying of LGBT youth and school climate for LGBT educators. GEMS (Gender, Education, Music, & Society6(1).
Show These Statistics to Your Superintendent.802-362-5448 -- Info@StandUpToBullying.net
Our evidence-based programs dramatically improve the culture of your school.

802-362-5448
  **District Tour Specials**
Competitive Rates are available when multiple schools in your area schedule together for our District Packages
 
Shipping and handling is included on all orders.
Fax purchase orders to: 802-549-5024

   
DVD Books Poster
Providing dynamic and practical anti-bullying workshops to students, staff and parents, Mike Dreiblatt teaches realistic bullying prevention strategies and best practices that can be used immediately to STOP bullying.
Bullying Prevention PSAs!!!
802-362-5448 -- 136 Clover Lane Manchester Center Vermont 05255