(This article is based on an interview with Dr. Rona Novick for Operation Survival’s Prevention 101 series.)
To detect bullying in the classroom, teachers must be keen observers of their students’ interactions. They must pay attention to the social climate and social fabric. This means noticing who works with whom and who never has a partner.
It means looking for those subtle signs of eye rolling every time somebody answers a question. Teachers must look at who brought invitations to school and who did they give them to. They need to notice who plays with whom during recess.
(This article is based on an interview with Dr. Rona Novick for Operation Survival’s Prevention 101 series.)
Experts do not exactly understand why some students are targeted as victims and others are not. When we look at research, physical characteristics are not clear indicators. Unusually tall or short children, children with braces or glasses, and children with freckles or weight problems are often teased, but this does not mean they will become a serious and persistent victim of bullying. However, studies show that the best indicator for whether or not a child will be targeted is usually how they react to teasing.
Bullying is about power. If a bully teases a child because he or she is much shorter than the other children, but that child shrugs it off and doesn’t seem bothered, then that child is not a likely victim. A child who is teased and runs out of the room crying has shown the bully that he or she has power over the child.
Adults blessed with children who are very sensitive, kind hearted souls know it is virtually impossible to tell such a child, “Don’t react, don’t cry, don’t be upset.” This is at odds with the child’s biological reality. Shy and anxious children are shy and anxious. They can eventually outgrow it and get past it, but it is in their genes. Not reacting is very difficult for them.
Additionally, it is sometimes easier for children and even adults to tolerate girls being reactive rather than boys. A girl being sensitive and a crier is more accepted while a boy who is sensitive and cries easily does not go over well with his peers. What can we do to help our children and our students who are victims?
First and foremost, we must validate them. They need to hear us say that whatever is being done to them it is not justified, and they need to believe us when we say this. They need to know we believe no one has the right to make other people feel devalued or unimportant. Whatever has happened, whether it was their snack that was stolen yet again or something they did and people made fun of them, nothing justifies the bullying behavior. Most importantly, they need to know it isn’t their fault.
After validation, we now have to say to the victim, “How do we help situations like this in the future?” Sometimes, the best option is careful planning. We can encourage them not take out their really yummy snack and have everybody bother them about sharing it. We can show them how to keep their homework in a place where someone cannot grab it. It is important that the children understand these safeguards are not because it’s their fault that the bullies act as they do, but because the only thing a person can change is what he or she does. We must teach our children that they can only control their actions and are not responsible for the actions of others.
Related to reactions, sometimes, we have to teach our children to be really good actors and actresses. We have to help them understand that, like actors, how we feel on the inside doesn’t always match what we show on the outside. If a child is Abe Lincoln in the President’s Day play, he or she has to stand tall, stiff, and straight with the stovepipe hat on, even though inside he or she might be shaking and nervous. This is the same thing we have to teach our victim children to do when they get tormented and feel as though they are going to react. Children need to know it is okay to have those feelings inside, but they should try to think about their favorite superhero or movie character so they can act stronger or braver than they feel just for a minute until they can get themselves to a safe place.
Some victims benefit from attending social skills groups and learning social skills such as how to have conversations, how to break into a conversation, how to go beyond some of their reactivity and shyness, and how to deal with conflict in social situations. All of that can help.
While there are many strategies we can teach our children who are being bullied, we should never do any of that without first validating that we understand how painful this is for victims and emphasizing that it’s not their fault. Bullies make victims feel insignificant and make them believe something is wrong with them. The best defense is to help these children believe in themselves and see that the fault lies with the bully and not them.
Dr. Rona Novick, PhD is the Dean of the Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration at Yeshiva University and holds the Raine and Stanley Silverstein Chair in Professional Ethics and Values.
When discussing bullying it is important to raise the issue of bystanders. Bystanders are present in at least eighty percent of bullying episodes. This percentage increases when we consider that people take pictures and record incidents on their phones and then share them through text messages and social media. Thus about ninety-nine percent of all bullying happens with an audience, typically an audience of peers.
(This article is based on an interview with Dr. Rona Novick for Operation Survival’s Prevention 101 series.)
Cyberbullying is one of the most dangerous forms of bullying for the simple reason that online we are given the luxury of anonymity and we are often our worst selves when we are anonymous. We are angrier and meaner, and we do and say things we would never do or say in person. It’s easy to make cruel remarks to others when you don’t have to do it to their faces.
For better or worse, anything published online is public and permanent. These are two important ‘p’ words that today’s generation does not understand. They will say “I deleted it”, but it doesn’t matter if we deleted something from our devices. Once it is out there in the cyber world, it exists forever in the public domain.
(This article is based on an interview with Dr. Rona Novick for Operation Survival’s Prevention 101 series.)
Bullying is devastating for those who experience it, and it is extremely unpleasant for those who witness it as well. Bullying doesn’t just impact the lives of victims and the bullies themselves, but it also affects those who see it happen in the school or the community.
Imagine if every day when you went to work there was a strong possibility that one of your colleagues was going to be brutally teased, socially excluded, or embarrassed. It wouldn’t be an easy place to function. How can we expect children to learn if our school environments are rife with the feeling that at any moment somebody could be a victim in a similar situation?
(This article is based on an interview with Dr. Rona Novick for Operation Survival’s Prevention 101 series.)
It is difficult to determine what causes bullying but there are usually specific indicators which we can learn to recognize. In order to do so, we must first understand the temperament of children and how they develop. All children have inborn, pre-wired temperaments which are evident from infancy. Some babies are more assertive about letting others know what they need, while other babies are more passive and will wait until someone takes care of them. Children who are aggressive and like to be in charge are at risk for becoming bullies while shy and passive children are much less likely to become a bully.
A lot of bullying, especially among girls, has to do with language. A child who has very strong language skills knows how to use a turn of phrase to make people laugh or to make people cry. These children are at greater risk of being bullies than a child who struggles with language.
(This article is based on an interview with Dr. Rona Novick for Operation Survival’s Prevention 101 series.)
Parents and schools share a common purpose — they want to educate the children in their care and ensure they grow to be healthy adults. However, there is one place where parents and schools diverge in their goals. The parents are, rightfully, always looking to protect the interests of their own child. The school though, must protect the interests of all the children. Most of the time these two things go together, but sometimes, especially in bullying situations, they may diverge.
Teachers and administrators are often confronted by hurting parents whose child is being bullied and they feel the school is not doing enough to stop it. There are several difficult truths that must be confronted in this situation. The first is that the very best bullying prevention programs being rolled out in schools are accomplishing somewhere between a thirty to forty percent reduction in bullying, in spite of all their resources. Basically this means that even if your school is doing everything they should be doing, the international standard suggests there will still be quite a lot of bullying that parents and children will have to deal with.
(This article is based on an interview with Dr. Rona Novick for Operation Survival’s Prevention 101 series.)
The term bullying is used frequently, and while there certainly is a great deal of bullying happening, it is important to know that bullying is a very specific type of aggressive behavior. Very often children fight over things. Two children want the same ball on the playground, or two children want to be first down the slide. This is fighting between two peers of equal power. It is not bullying. It may be behavior that we want to work on, but it isn’t bullying.
Bullying is the deliberate abuse of power to harm another person. There are three critical components in that definition, so let’s consider each of them:
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