BULLYING | VIPMK

What is Bullying?

Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behaviours amongst school aged children and young adults that involves a real or perceived imbalance of power.

What do we mean when we say an imbalance of power? This is where one young person uses their physical strength, access to information, or popularity to control or harm another young person.

Bullying does not always take place on the school play ground, it can happen to anyone, including adults at work.

Bullying includes actions and behaviours such as making threats, spreading rumours, attacking someone physically or verbally and excluding somoene from a group on purpose.

Bullying is not restricted to one age group. Bullying can happen to anyone, at any age.

There are types of bullying, not every bully will act or behave the same way as the next bully, some bullies will use their words to hurt others while other bullies may use their fists while some bullies will use social media and the internet to hurt others.

Types of Bullying...

Verbal Bullying - This is when the bully is saying or writing things about their victim. Verbal bullying includes:

Teasing
Name calling
Inappropriate sexual comments
Taunting
Threatening to cause harm

Social Bullying - This is when a bully hurts someone's relationship with another person, or their reputation, social bullying includes:

Leaving someone out of an activity on purpose without a reasonable explanation
telling other people not to talk to you, sit with you, be friends with you
Talking about others in a negative way and spreading rumours about a person
Intentionally embarrassing someone in a public palce or infront of a crowd, this is something that friends will do to each other as a joke but it can be hurtful and upsetting and some people can take this too far and do it too frequently. Not everyone realises the hurt this can cause, especially if the person doing it thinks they are just haivng a 'laugh'

Physical Bullying - This is when a bully will physically hurt their victim and includes:

Hitting, kicking and pinching
Spitting at someone else
Tripping and pushing someone over
Taking or breaking the items and property of someone else
Making rude or inappropriate gestures and hand signs/symbols

Signs of Bullying

There is no single indicator that will tell you someone is being bullied, but there are signs that you can look out for, these include:

Belongings going missing or getting 'lost'
Coming home with physical injuries such as grazes and bruising
Torn clothing
Being afraid to go to the place where suspected bullying is taken place (school, college, university, work)
Using excuses such as 'sick' and 'ill' to get out from going to school, college, university, work
Skipping school, college, university, work
Doing less well at school, college, university, work
Being nervous and less confident. A drop in self esteem, worth and value
Becomng quiet and withdrawn
Stealing money or items to give to someone else
Probles with eating and sleeping, skipping meals, negatively commenting about their own weight and image
Bullying others