Two sources to prevent bullying

When I was thinking about the topic I was going to choose to write about I thought about the recent suicide that a young middle school girl had committed to herself because she was being bullied at school by a few girls. This brought up the memory I have when my own daughter was being bullied in school by a little girl in the second grade. I can now see that this is a huge problem in this day in age and very common all over the world. We as the adults need to find a way to prevent this from happening to our children or anyone at that but how?

The first source that I found that I feel will help me with my research on helping to prevent or possibly stop bullying is a book I found from Google Scholar called Bullying at school: What we know and what we can do. By Dan Olweus. In this article Dan speaks about statistics of weather this problem happens more in urban or rural areas, smaller or larger schools, between boys or girls more, weather victims or aggressors can be identified, and most of all weather we can or cannot do anything about it. He tells about how to recognize patterns and behaviors or other characteristics to determine who is a victim of bullying and who is being the bully. Dan promotes an anti-bullying campaign that is looked at from different levels such as the school level, class level, individual level bully and victim, and at the parent level.

The second source I found was an article also found through Google Scholar called Understanding and Preventing Bullying By David P. Farrington. In this article David starts off with a bold description of what bullying is. He states “Bullying is a repeated oppression, psychological or physical of a less powerful person by a more powerful one”. I felt this was a very powerful statement and gives you a quick visual of how bullying works. Most bullies are aggressive, tough, strong and impulsive. Most victims are unpopular, lonely, rejected, anxious, unwilling to retaliate, depressed and have low self-esteem, making them an easy target for someone to bully them. This can lead to someone wanting to commit suicide since they were previously already emotionally distressed and adding the problem of the bully making it worse for the victim is how bullying can lead to suicide of the victim.

The solution that I found between both book and article is that we need to first identify the problem and understand it before we can try to fix it. Then decide where to start to help this situation get better.

 

  

 

 

 

References:

Olweus, Dan. Bullying at school: What we know and what we can do. Wiley-Blackwell, 1993.

Farrington, David P. "Understanding and preventing bullying." Crime and justice (1993): 381-458.

Image Analysis

This image was received from the website called Education News. This image is a young adult girl crying and depressed looking. Behind her is a group of girls that look like they are talking about her and somewhat look like they dislike the girl that is crying. One of the girls on the far right of the image is pointing at the sad girl and most likely talking bad about her. This image is disturbing because young kids and young adults in these days in age are very hateful and mean. They feel they have the control to accept or not accept whoever they want and if they do not accept someone for whatever reason then they control the others around them so that they do not accept that person either. This creates a group of bullies instead of one person. I seem to see that girls for whatever reasons are the ones that do most of the bulling. Girls are constantly in competition with one another and a lot of the time it has to do with boys that they are dating that another girl may have been dating before her causing these girls to not like the new girlfriend. These kids these days need to learn to focus on what is really important at this age and that's their education. Not their popularity or opposite sex attractions. In the news lately we recently learned about a young 12 year old girl who committed suicide because she was being bullied so bad. No one seemed to understand how bad this situation was until she took her life. Not even the boyfriend who was the reason why she was being bullied. This is becoming a true issue within our children’s lives and something needs to be done about it.

Cited Work:

Muhammad Nadeem “As Schools Focus on Bullying, Clarity Remains Elusive” http://www.educationnews.org/k-12-schools/schools-focus-on-bullying-clarity-remains-elusive/#sthash.JCdl0Gk6.dpuf  Web. 10 Oct 2013

Research Question

What can we do to help prevent or stop bullying?

Bullying is becoming more and more of a problem these days and we are starting to hear about it more in the news and from our own children. Kids are being bullied to the point they are now taking their own lives. This is a problem they have to face day after day and no one is helping them figure out how to deal with it. My own daughter was a victim of bullying recently in the 2^nd grade, “The 2^nd grade”!!! She started off telling me this little girl was teasing her and calling her names and I would talk to my daughter and tell her “she is just jealous of you my love don’t worry about her, go tell the teacher if she does it again. Or tell that little girl that if she continues to tease you I will tell the principal to call her mom”. I did not take it as serious as I wish I would have because she was only in the 2^nd grade so I thought they were just being kids and some kids were just rude like that but I was wrong. My daughter was getting scared to go to school and when I asked my older daughter about this little girl she also told me how mean she really was. It turns out this little girl was so bad that she was expelled from the 3^rd grade and had to move schools for this one specific reason. This should not be an issue that our children should have to be experiencing at all, especially at such a young age.

I think if we start to education kids at an early age about why it is not right for anyone to bully someone else or how to handle a bully if they are the victim of getting bullied, then we can help prevent this situation from happening. Some people may think this is just kids being kids and they are just teasing each other. Or they may not care because they think they are just kids. Well this is a serious problem now and someone needs to take the steps to help our kids understand the seriousness of this problem and how to help their friends or themselves if they find themselves in this situation.

I want to find out if there is already something being done about bullying and how to prevent this from happening to anyone, not just our children. Are there counselors out there that can talk to people who already have become victims of bullying? I plan to come up with options for these victims to help them realize there is nothing wrong with them, they need to love themselves for who they are and realize they are a true gift of life.

Intro

Hi my name is Priscella and I am a single mother of four beautiful young children three girls and one little boy who are truly my life. My oldest daughter is 13 years old and is in the 8th grade. My second daugther is 9 years old and in the 4th grade. My youngest daughter is 8 and is in the 3rd grade and then my one and only little boy is 7 years old and in the 2nd grade. It is hard being a single mother but I work really hard to support my kids in whatever they need. I keep them active in sports year round to make sure they stay disciplined and out of trouble. Even if it takes up all of my extra time so be it, as long as my children are happy then I am happy. This will bring me to the reason why I would like to talk about children being bullied in school or in general.