Practical advice

Newshost:
Jessica Peacock, England: Right now I am being bullied and you and Kidscape have given me a great help. Could please share the advice you give children if they're being bullied?

Howard Martin:
The first thing that we say to children who are being bullied is to get firmly into their minds that it is not their fault that they are being bullied. Many children blame themselves because very often they have been told by the bullies that they are useless, rotten, worthless etc. and they start to believe it and particularly if they have nobody to talk about it, it starts to strongly affect their self-esteem. We also tell the children to tell somebody - if they don't listen then tell somebody else and keep telling somebody until somebody actually takes action to help you.

Return to the top of the page

Newshost:
Donna, England: I was bullied at secondary school. My family knew about it and saw how it changed my behaviour. They wrote letters to the headmaster and teachers but they tried to put the blame on me. My family even went to the school but the school was no help. Why is it so hard to get help if you are being bullied?

Howard Martin:
I hear so many calls on our Helpline at Kidscape from parents who say that their children have been blamed for the bulling, which is extraordinary.

Newshost:
Why is it that children are being blamed because quite clearly it's wrong to blame a child who is being bullied? But there must be some justification amongst teachers that they believe that somehow a victim has invited the bullying on themselves.

Howard Martin:
Sometimes we see schools which have something which is called a no blame policy and those policies can work between children who have been friends and have fallen out - it's a mediation process. But if these children are ones who have not known each other before, where there is a deliberate intent to hurt which has been going on over a long time, then the no blame policy doesn't work. Very often this is because the mediation process is between a child who doesn't want to be in the mediation process because they're absolutely terrified and a bully who is perhaps very dishonest maybe and is not actually wanting to make friends and will put on a nice act in front of the teachers but as soon as the teachers have gone then on the bullying goes. We often hear that teachers are attributing equal blame in a situation where one person is very definitely accountable for victimising somebody else and the other person doesn't hold any responsibility at all.

Newshost:
But the intention is to mediate but that mediation process seems not to work in some cases.

Howard Martin:
It seems to break down very often or it is misapplied or applied when it is really too late and the situation has gone way past the stage of mediation.

Return to the top of the page

Newshost:
Yassin Dickie, Scotland: I agree that pupils who bring deadly weapons to school or who bully others should simply be expelled permanently. But don't you think we should also bring back corporal punishment in schools? Hasn't getting rid of it in the first place led to the present poor discipline in schools.

A further e-mail from Byron, London: Did have the cane or the birch stop bullying?

Howard Martin:
We don't have any research going back to the 1950s, 60s, 70s, when corporal punishment was very, very heavily used - or more heavily used than now - we don't have corporal punishment in this country now in schools as it is now illegal. But what seems to work with children is carrots rather than sticks - always. Certainly if bullying was going on maybe 30 - 40 years ago, it was treated a lot more as something that was just part of growing up - it still is sometimes - and therefore, children were not encouraged to speak about it. We hear a lot more about bullying now partly because it is out in the open. So I think there is sometimes an idea that bullying has just got much, much worse and certainly there is some truth in that. But I don't think that it has got worse because corporal punishment has been abolished.

Newshost:
So why has it got worse - simply because we're talking about, we are open about it and so we know more about it?

Howard Martin:
I think there is a general growth in violence in society - it seems to be more acceptable than it used to be. Kidscape did some research into the long-term effects of bullying and we discovered that girls who had been bullied 15 - 20 years ago experienced what we might call "mild" bullying, such as hair-pulling or shoving. Now we hear a lot more about broken bones, weapons being used - much more severe bullying.

Return to the top of the page

Newshost:
Sue, Zambia: My son has been bullied and harassed for some time. The effect it has on his self-worth, academic performance and general well-being is painful to witness. Do you think that expulsion is an option that should be open to schools for any behaviour that disrupts the academic and emotional well-being of other students?

Expelling children for allegations of bullying is a very difficult thing to do isn't it because presumably the bullies themselves need help as well?
Howard Martin:
The bullies need help certainly. Much of the bullying that goes on is covert so often there are no witnesses to the bullying that is going on. But sometimes you'll find schools ignoring what has gone on and not taking steps. I think the reason why exclusion is now being talked about as being a more effective action to use is that in the last two or three years, there are many, many children who are absolutely running riot in a class, perhaps causing misery for 30 or 40 children. There's been no mechanism to separate them off to protect the others because head teachers have been discouraged from exclusion.

So it is welcome and Kidscape welcomes this new announcement that exclusion will be used more widely. But the bullies do need help as well and there definitely needs to be an expansion of the pupil referral units and they are made useful for those children.

Return to the top of the page

Newshost:
Anon, Poland: I was a bully in the late eighties. At first it was reasonably harmless, but as the gang got bigger we started pushing people around. It has to be said there was some sick cowardly gratification in making some kid crawl, squirm or beg. I recently talked with someone from my year and they still have fresh emotional scars because of me. I'm not looking for a drop of sympathy, but I have also been scarred by the experience.

What do you have in terms of advice for bullies who also feel affected? I suppose also there are a number of children who get whipped up by leaders of gangs and wouldn't necessarily become bullies except for being in that environment. So what advice does Kidscape give to children who are vulnerable to becoming bullies?

Howard Martin:
We can talk about an active bully and a passive bully - somebody who is a bystander. An active bully really needs help to look at why they're doing it. Very often on the helpline we hear parents saying that the bullies, who are bullying their children, have problems in their own lives and so those problems need to be addressed. Bullies need to ask themselves why are they doing it and to get help - there are all sorts of youth counselling organisations available.

With the passive bullies, that can be addressed very, very strongly by having a whole school anti-bullying policy which everybody has been involved in - the teachers, the pupils, the parents - and everybody has been involved in putting that together. So that everybody knows what the anti-bullying policy is. They know what bullying is, they know what the consequences will be if they bully and that the school should be encouraged to be a telling school. So it's ok to tell - it's not just grassing or splitting on somebody - it actually becomes socially acceptable to tell and it becomes socially unacceptable to bully or to witness it. If you witness it, that it becomes as much of a crime, if you like, as bullying itself.

Return to the top of the page

Newshost:
Brian, England: Do you think parents of bullies should be required to attend "parenting classes?"

Howard Martin:
It is quite a difficult question. I think many parents don't know that their children are bullying and many parents would be very, very disturbed if they found out that they were bullying. Although I said earlier that many of the children who bully do have problems at home, they are not necessarily stemming from home. They could be being bullied themselves which is where the problem could stem from.

Newshost:
That must be a problem for teachers, if they approach parents who turn out to be bullying their own children and therefore those children are just replicating that behaviour. What would be an ideal set up in a school? Are there many schools that can show that they've eliminated bullying?

Howard Martin:
Yes, we have many examples. Kidscape have trained in lots of different schools and the prime thing that research has shown is that there's a whole school policy drawn up in the beginning. The students, the children, are given respect and their opinions are taken into account in putting together the bullying policy. Also the policy needs to be reviewed fairly frequently because there's quite a turnover in school children - four or five years later they have a completely different group - and they may want to amend the bullying policy.

Newshost:
So it would be involving the children.

Howard Martin:
Very much so and also making the consequences clear for what happens if they do bully.

Return to the top of the page

Newshost:
DPK, Canada: Children today are constantly being exposed to acts of violence through the Internet, video games and other media. As such, they become a product of their environment. While I fully support the expulsion of bullies, isn't it really just a band-aid solution?

As you mentioned earlier, violence is on the increase and violence around children seems to be on the increase in the various different media that they're exposed to.

Howard Martin:
We have to look at it in the context of society. But we have to start somewhere and the school is the point of action - it is the point of power for teachers and governors and also other students to actually do something. I think a really strong message needs to go out to the people who are doing the bullying that this is unacceptable and that if it carries on then they are going to be excluded from school and put into a different unit where they're going to get help but the people who have been their victims are going to be protected.

Return to the top of the page

Newshost:
Haji Iftikhar Ahmad, UK: Recent newspaper reports clearly indicate that Black as well as Asian pupils are victims of discrimination and bullying in state schools. Minority children, especially the Muslims are exposed to the pressure of racism and bullying. What can be done to stop it?

There may be children in areas where the population is slightly different to that where white children who are in the minority may find themselves at risk of bullying as well. How you found this to be the case?

Howard Martin:
We've found that the common denominator in a bullying situation is that there is a bully present. So it can be any excuse - it can be somebody is too posh, too clever, too black, too white, too stupid etc - any kind of excuse can be used. It is the presence of the bully that makes a bullying situation. We have children into Kidscape for what's called ZAP - which is an assertiveness training session that we do - and we get a whole cross-section of children there. You look at a particular child and you might think, well I can't see why they were being bullied if you were thinking in a stereotypical fashion.

We hear of much racist bullying as well - sadly and again I think that is a reflection of racism in society. A good equal opportunities policy in school along with the anti-bullying policy, goes a good way to combating that.

Return to the top of the page

Newshost:
Martin Adams, UK: Should there be a legal definition of "assault" for children? What level of violence and intimidation is acceptable - one punch, a push? Do victims of bullying get any redress under the law?

Howard Martin:
There have been very, very few cases of bullying going to court. We're hoping that they will be some more test cases going through - particularly of the harassment laws which came into force two or three years ago. But yes, assault, grievous bodily harm, actually bodily harm - they're all charges which can be brought against children. Very often what lets down the process if somebody does want to press charges, is the fact that children are often seen as "unreliable witnesses" - which is quite insulting to children in some ways. So many children's stories have gone underground. There should be a legal redress, but often the police don't press it, parents think that they can't press it so they don't. But there are mechanisms within the law and we hope they will be brought more into force.

Newshost:
But at the moment exclusion looks like the way forward rather than the law.

Howard Martin:
Yes. Obviously we don't want to get children criminal records so exclusion is the move before that.

Return to the top of the page