As I started research for this series of articles, I was struck by many things, the first being the stereotype most people assign to the victims of bullying in general. The typical assumption is that these children must be weaklings and loners with some identifiable flaw whether it be physical, intellectual or social. It is easy to assume that it is the fat kid that gets picked on and, therefore overlook the possibility that it might be happening to your child. Research supports that the victims of the most intense and lengthy periods of bullying are often what adults perceive to be children that have everything going for them. Children targeted for the worst forms of bullying tend to be sensitive, respectful, honest, creative, have high emotional intelligence, a strong sense of fair play and high integrity with a low propensity for violence. They are often physically attractive and excel in many activities, both inside and out of school.
When I brought my 6th grade daughter Kaitlyn to Forney from Mesquite in 1999, she was a beautiful, confident, popular and happy child. She struggled at the mercy of a group of girls that made it their life mission to keep her down and out. Each year, as she cried and begged us to move her back, we assured her things would get better. After all, she was beautiful, smart, sweet and funny - she was even an 8th grade cheerleader. How bad could it really be? I would only find out years later that, had we not given in and let her go back to high school in Mesquite, she is certain she would have taken her own life. She tells me now that it was a constant consideration for her back then. As I share the story below, I can only say "There, but by the grace of God, go I."
Kristina Calco was born the same year as my daughter and, although their stories are eerily similar, they have drastically different endings. After years of enduring the same torment as my Kaitlyn, Kristina, a student in Portage, Michigan, ended her life in 2005 at the age of 15. For reasons they may never know, Kristina never told her parents what was happening to her at school. It was only revealed to them in suicide notes and conversations with her friends after her death. Like Kaitlyn, Kristina seemed to be a model teenager. She was an honor student, worked on the yearbook staff, was a junior varsity cheerleader and played volleyball, ran track and swam on the swim team. I tell these stories to raise the question: Do you think you know what the victim of bullying looks like? Do either of these girls look like the victims of bullies to you?
A Victim of Bullycide at 15 Still Here By the Grace of God
The purpose of this article is not to minimize the suffering of children who are victimized by this behavior because they are overweight, have a learning disability or fit into any of the stereotypes we assign to the targets of bullies. Their pain is just as real as that of those depicted in the stories above. The point I hope to make is that the scope of the problem is much larger than many of us might think. I would also like to raise awareness among parents that believe their children are immune to this victimization. It could be that, like Kristina's parents, they are dealing with things that you are unaware of. Here are some things to look out for:
- Increased passivity or withdrawal
- Frequent crying
- Recurrent complaints of physical symptoms such as stomach- or headaches with no apparent cause
- Unexplained bruises
- Sudden drop in grades, or other learning problems
- Not wanting to go to school
- Significant changes in social life — suddenly no one is calling or extending invitations
- Sudden change in the way your child talks — calling herself a loser, or a former friend a jerk
As important as identifying the victims of these social acts of terrorism is to raise awareness of the short and long term effects of bullying on it's victims. The old saying, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never harm me" is more or less exactly backwards. For the most part, physical damage sustained in a fist fight heals readily, especially damage that is sustained during the resilient childhood years. What is far more difficult to mend is the primary wound that bullying victims suffer which is damage to their self-concepts; to their identities. Bullying is an attempt to instill fear and self-loathing. Being the repetitive target of bullying damages your ability to view yourself as a desirable, capable and effective individual.
There are two ugly outcomes that stem from learning to view yourself as a less than desirable, incapable individual. The first ugly outcome is that it becomes more likely that you will become increasingly susceptible to becoming depressed and/or angry and/or bitter. Being bullied teaches you that you are undesirable, that you are not safe in the world, and (when it is dished out by forces that are physically superior to yourself) that you are relatively powerless to defend yourself. When you are forced, again and again, to contemplate your relative lack of control over the bullying process, you are being set up for Learned Helplessness (e.g., where you come to believe that you can't do anything to change your ugly situation even if that isn't true), which in turn sets you up for hopelessness and depression.
At the same time, you may be learning that you are helpless and hopeless, you are also learning how you are seen by bullies, which is to say, you are learning that you are seen by others as weak, pathetic, and a loser. And, by virtue of the way that identity tends to work, you are being set up to believe that these things the bullies are saying about you are true.
It would be great if the average person was possessed of unshakable self-confidence, but this just isn't how identity works. Identity is a social process. Other people contribute to it. Particularly when people are young and have not yet survived a few of life's trials, it is difficult for people to know who they are and what they are made of. Much of what passes for identity in the young (and in the older too) is actually a kind of other-confidence, which is to say that many people's self-confidence is continually shored up by those around them telling them in both overt and subtle ways that they are good, worthy people. This is one of the reasons people like to belong to groups – it helps them to feel good about themselves. Bullying teaches people that they are explicitly not part of groups; that they are outcasts and outsiders. It is hard to doubt the reality of being an outcast and an outsider when you have been beaten or otherwise publicly humiliated. It takes an exceptionally confident (or otherwise well-supported) person to not internalize bullies' negative messages and begin bullying yourself by holding yourself to the same standards that bullies are applying to you and finding yourself a failure. In other words, it is rather easy for bullying victims to note that they have been beaten up and then to start thinking of themselves as weak, no-good, worthless, pathetic, and incompetent. These are the sorts of thoughts that lead to depression, or, if they are combined with revenge fantasies, to anger and rage feelings.
Where the first ugly outcome of bullying unfolds rather immediately in the form of a wounded self-concept, the second ugly outcome unfolds more slowly over time. Having a wounded self-concept makes it harder for you to believe in yourself, and when you have difficulty believing in yourself, you will tend to have a harder time persevering through difficult situations and challenging circumstances. Deficits in academic performance can easily occur when bullying victims succumb to depression or otherwise become demoralized. They certainly also occur when victims ditch school to avoid bullies. The deficits themselves are not the real issue. The real issue is that if deficits occur for too long or become too pronounced, the affected children can lose out on opportunities for advancement and further study, and ultimately, employment.Inevitably, it is the sensitive kids who get singled out for teasing; the kids who cry easily; the easy targets. Targeted as they are, many sensitive kids learn to think of their sensitivity as a bad thing and to avoid it, and/or channel it into revenge fantasy and anger. This doesn't much work when you are a kid (it is difficult to reinvent yourself without actually moving to a new place), and it can have negative consequences in adulthood when the same children, now emotionally avoidant or angry or cynical adults, find themselves having difficulty entering into or maintaining loving and warm intimate relationships.The following list summarizes some of the effects bullying victims may experience:
In the short term:
- Anger
- Depression
- Anxious avoidance of settings in which bullying may occur.
- Greater incidence of illness
- Lower grades than non-bullied peers
- Suicidal thoughts and feelings
In the long term:
- Reduced occupational opportunities
- Lingering feelings of anger and bitterness, desire for revenge.
- Difficulty trusting people
- Interpersonal difficulties, including fear and avoidance of new social situations
- Increased tendency to be a loner
- Perception of self as easy to victimize, overly sensitive, and thin-skinned
- Self-esteem problems (don't think well of self)
- Increased incidence of continued bullying and victimization
Next, we will take a look at the different forms of bullying including physical intimidation, relational aggression and cyber-bullying. For now, I would like to leave you with an excerpt from Kristina Calco's 7th grade journal:
“The only reason I even bother to tell my sad sob story is that someday the public might know what a teenage girl goes through. So as you know nice guys finish last... well it might as well be nice girls finish last, too”. -Kristina Calco
Editor's Note: This is the second in a series Diana is writing on bullying in schools and the growing problem with bullies in Forney schools. If you haven't seen it yet, make sure to check out the first article, Bullying in FISD - The Problem, as well as the discussion that has resulted in the corresponding thread in the discussion forum. Stay tuned for more articles on this issue that impacts many more children throughout Forney than most people realize. In the meantime, below are a few books on the issue that you might find interesting. -Josh Author: Diana Patton
Originally Posted to the Blog At: 2008-09-29 23:29:00
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