Bullying refers to a person who purposely abuse their hold of power in a relationship through verbal, physical, and or social means in order to cause harm to someone else.
Bullies do not refer to only just one person doing the bullying, it can be done as a group to cause more harm to the person.
How does bullying occur?
Bullying can be done through traditional methods, such as verbal, relational or physical means.
However, it can be done through online methods.
52% of the children (as young as 18 months old) are found to be exposed to electronics and digital devices in Singapore.
Once the child is aware and capable, they will be able to use digital platforms, devices, or to share of digital records with others. Which may result in the rise of cyberbullying.
What are the types of bullying?
Bullying can occur in various forms to the victims.
Verbal bullying is one of the common form of bullying, where the victim is harassed by the bully through words. Such examples are insults, malicious teasing, intimidation, threats, or ridicules.
Relational bullying refer to the bully spreading false information about the victim to others. For example, the bully may spread gossips and rumours to harm the victim’s image, using their friendship to threaten the victim or exclude the victim from group activities.
Physical form of bullying is where the bully use physical means against the victim or to their possessions. This includes the bully hitting, punching, pulling the hair, kicking the victim and removing, or demolishing their possessions.
Cyberbullying refers to bullies using online platforms to bully the victims. The bullies may send messages and emails that are malicious, spreading rumours and gossips, or posting images and videos that embarrass the victims.
Even if the victim is unable to differentiate the actions as normal or bullying, as long as the examples of bullying occurs, it is still considered as bullying-related experience.
What is the data of bullying cases in Singapore?
1 in 5 children in Singapore are found to be bullied by others.
Males are typically the bully and the victim of bullying.
Cases of bullying occurring from various ethnicity in Singapore are found to be equal.
The use of vulgarities and name-calling are the most frequent form of bullying. Name-calling is typically disregarded by adults, as it does not cause physical damage.
However, less than half of the victim suffer from physical means of bullying. Cyberbullying is observed to occur the least.
What are the risk factors of the victims?
Children who are bullied tend to be different from their friends.
The child can be annoying or like to demand for attention. They may look “tiny” or are considered as weak by others.
Victims tend to be sad, anxious, or have low self-confidence. Might not be well-known by others and have a couple of friends.
What are the signs to identify the victim?
To understand bullying, the child must learn that the actions taken by a bully are often repeated frequently. The actions must be done on purpose, to cause the child to feel hurt, isolated and depressed.
When the child is being bullied, they tend to have injuries and bruises that are unexplained. Their eating habits may change and experience stomach aches or headaches frequently. Their possessions might be missing or demolished, along with loss of friendships.
They may face difficulties in sleeping, easily sick or can be faking illnesses. Their grades are observed to be getting terrible, and they refuse to attend school.
One of the major sign is when the child is self-harming, talks about suicide and become isolated.
This does not include incidents that occur once, or having conflicts and fights with someone who has the same status, physically or non-physically. For example,
Social rejection and dislike occurring once.
Acting horribly or spitefully once.
Act of aggression or intimidation that occur randomly.
Fights, conflict of interest and arguments that are mutual.
How can a child manage with the bullying?
To deal with bullies, the child may tell them that they dislike the way they are treated and ask the bullies to stop.
The child can walk away from the situation to ask an adult for help. They may even consider making friends with others and maintain good relationship with them.
How can the parents and the caretakers help the victim?
As bullying can be hard to expect and may occur any time, parents ought to remain calm, teach their child how to deal with the bullies and act accordingly.
The parents should only step in once the problem spiral out of control.
What are the potential adverse effects to the victim?
Bullying may cause immediate, medium and long term negative effects to children that are involved in the situation.
Refuse to attend school.
Poor grades in subjects.
Feeling lonely easily.
Develop poor social relationships with others.
Poor self-esteem.
Easily depressed.
Suicidal, or known as bullycide.
Self-harm.
Enacting revenge frequently towards the bullies.
Easily sick and not feeling well.
What if your child is the aggressor?
Being the aggressor leads to poor behaviour and actions in the child’s life later, they are prone to abuse substances, fighting, vandalizing, have criminal records, being abusive to others and dropping out of school.
What are the risk factors for the child who is the aggressor?
Children being a bully may be a result of a few issues they face in their life.
The aggressor does not have much parental involvement in their life.
The aggressor have difficulties voicing out their emotions, easily angered and be aggressive towards others.
As they are hardly supervised by their parents for the actions they do, they will have difficulties following the rules.
This leads to them learning to be violent and making friends who bully people.
It is noted that the aggressors are not physically bigger or stronger than the victims, it can be due to them being more popular, having more strength and having better cognitive abilities.
How to help your child to stop bullying others?
To stop your child from bullying others, it is important to know the signs.
The aggressor tend to be competitive and aggressive towards others, typically involved in verbal or physical fights. They are concerned about how well-known they are and their reputation.
They may own new possessions or money that are unexplained, unable to be responsible for their actions and facing various severe disciplinary actions.
The parents should be responsible for their child’s action – teach their child about bullying, making them understand how bullying feels, stop them from bullying others and change their behaviours.
There should be consequences for bullying others, making them responsible and teach them how to apologize. They should prevent their child from interacting with people who bully others, helping their child to find new friends.
What about the bystanders who witness the bullying?
For those who witness the bullying and did not offer help, tend to be affected psychologically.
They are likely to be fearful and guilty when they see the person who was bullied, accept bullying as a normal occurrence, or they may refuse to go to school.
How to teach your child to stop the aggressor from bullying the victim?
The child should be taught to stand up against the bullies by asking them to stop. They should inform the adults about what was seen and heard, instead of joining in or watching.
The child may offer to be friends with the victims, which can prevent future occurrences of bullying.
Tips for parents to prevent bullying from occurring
Parents should have parental control over their child’s digital devices and electronics.
As the privacy of the child should be respected, it should be relinquished when the parents are concerned and suspicious.
Parents should talk to their child regularly about their activities in online platform or offline. They should monitor their device usage, teach their child not to harass or make malicious jokes to others online.
As parents are seen as a role models by their child, they should avoid doing things that encourage bullying.
I hope the information available helps you to understand more about bullies and the victims who are bullied.
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