Bullying Solution Lies With Communities

13 Mar 06

The death of 12 year-old Alex Teka must be taken as a sign of the seriousness of bullying and social relationship issues for New Zealand children. What’s Up, a national helpline that answers 500 calls a day from children and young people all over New Zealand, has received calls from children as young as seven years expressing the wish to die because of the bullying they are suffering.

It is perhaps easy for adults to see bullying as a relatively trivial thing that all kids have to go through as a normal part of growing up – not good, but nothing too much to worry about. Alex is a reminder that such complacency is ill-considered. While a large proportion of children experience bullying and some particularly resilient children seem not to be very bothered by it, our impression at What’s Up is that most are significantly troubled and some feel overwhelmed.

What’s Up statistics suggest that most bullying occurs in late primary school or intermediate school. This has major implications for parents and educators of children aged between 9 and 13 years. Bullying affects both girls and boys but makes up a significantly larger proportion of the calls made by males than those made by females.

The children that call What’s Up regarding bullying identify a variety of reasons for their mistreatment. These reasons include ethnicity, resistance to pressure to behave in a certain way, physical differences, high achievement, being new, sexual orientation, socio-economic background, and religious beliefs. Individuals who have low self-esteem or personal power can also be targeted.

The nature and extent of bullying can vary from direct to indirect harassment, from minor irritants to assaults, and include illegal acts (sexual harassment, racial abuse, deprivation of human rights). It can include physical, verbal, written (text messages, emails, hand-written notes) and gesture bullying, extortion and exclusion. The most common form of bullying is verbal harassment.

Research on programmes to reduce bullying in schools shows that the consistency and commitment of the school staff to reducing bullying is one of the most important factors
influencing success. Any suggestion implicit in the behaviour of the adults that bullying is tolerable seems to undermine the effectiveness of anti-bullying initiatives. Perhaps it can be inferred from this that the attitudes of adults outside of the school also have an influence. If children observe bullying among the adults in their lives, are taught that intimidation of others is the path to success, or get the message that feeling hurt by bullies is a sign of personal weakness, a school’s efforts to eliminate bullying are going to face a struggle.

While bullying is the second most common issue at What’s Up, Peer Relationships – making, keeping and negotiating problems with friends – is the first. Although parents and family are crucial influences in children’s lives, children live in a social environment that extends well beyond the home. Other children can have as big an influence on children as the family does and are the most common source of concern for children, as judged from the calls to What’s Up.

A child’s skills for dealing with other children – ‘social skills’ – are an important part of a child’s resilience to bullying and are an important predictor of how well a child will be doing later in life.

Our experience at What’s Up suggests that to prevent repetitions of the devastating experiences of Alex, her friends and family we need to address the attitudes towards general violence and aggression in New Zealand communities and take steps to build the social skills of our young children, not just their academic and sporting skills. Children (and their caregivers) must never be allowed to feel alone, inadequate or unsupported in the face of bullying and all adults in a position to prevent bullying must work consistently towards this end. Bullying is not just a ‘kid’s problem’, a ‘school problem’ or a ‘family problem’ but a shameful reflection on our communities’ abilities to create safe and healthy environments for us all.