rsonal items from another person.
Verbal bullying, too, is fairly self-explanatory. Taunting, name-calling, threatening, and just generally using words to make someone else feel bad are all ways that someone can be verbally abused. Racial slurs and homophobic remarks are also included under this type of bullying.
Covert or social bullying. This kind of bullying occurs when a group of people work together to make someone feel like an outsider. They might be made the butt of unflattering rumors, feel like everyone is deliberately ignoring them, laughing at them, or making rude or menacing gestures, or find themselves excluded from games and other important events. Bullying such as this is sometimes called covert because the person or people instigating the behavior won’t necessarily harass their victim directly, but instead encourage others to engage in ostracizing behavior.
Cyber bullying has already largely been defined above, and depends more on the medium than the specific kinds of actions taken against a victim. It involves any kind of harassment or bullying that takes place using digital technologies such as mobile phones or the internet, and can be overt, covert, social, verbal, written, and more. Probably the worst thing about cyber bullying is that it can feel like there is nowhere to go to escape it, and if someone posts something embarrassing about you to the world, there’s little you can do to get rid of it.
Read more about how educators can handle cyberbullying in this article.
How to Handle Being Bullied
The National Education Association’s website has a number of horrifying statistics about bullying in America, including the fact that 79 percent of boys and 83 percent of girls say that they’ve had to deal with harassment in school, and 60 percent of teens report that they see some kind of bullying going on at least once a day.
Bullied kids say that they’re afraid of riding the bus, going to the bathroom, and even going to school at all. In fact, the National PTA website says that every day 160,000 children are so afraid of going to school that they stay home. It’s the kind of fear that causes physical distress and hampers kids’ ability to learn in class. On the one hand, it’s terrible that so many kids out there are suffering. But if you’re the victim of bullying yourself, all of this information should means two important things: bullying is a serious problem that needs to be dealt with and you are not alone.
So, how do you deal with being bullied? You may not feel like it but you have a number of options available to you depending on the nature of the bullying and your own personality.
Avoid them. This isn’t a suggestion to skip class or stay home from school entirely but if you know your bully takes a specific route or eating in a certain place, do what you can to keep from running into them.
Stand up for yourself. A bully’s power is in making you feel small and bad about yourself, but many times they don’t know how to react when their victims actually stand their ground and refuse to be cowed. Be careful before taking this action, though, because it can cause some bullies to redouble their efforts to “break you” if you embarrass them by not backing down.
Ignore them. In the same way that bullies can be surprised when you stand up for yourself, many are just as confused when you don’t give them the reaction they want. Pretending that their actions have no effect on you whatsoever—that they don’t matter—is a great way to stop teasing in its tracks.
Use the buddy system. Bullies are far less likely to harass people travelling in groups, so try to come up with a schedule to make sure that you’re always around a few friends.
Talk to someone. Most kids don’t want to tell adults when they are being bullied but this is a mistake. In fact, bullies count on victims not telling adults as part of their strategy. As long as no one with more power than them is involved, they can keep doing what they’re doing. Don’t feel bad for the bully. What they are doing is serious and wrong, and getting an adult to stop their beh