By Peter Gay
In the past year, violence in schools has continued to capture the attention of the public.
From the recent shootings in high schools in California and Colorado to the case of the Cornwall-area youth who was charged with threatening his schoolmates, school violence is never far away from the public consciousness.
One of the common threads in the news coverage of these incidents has been the issue of bullying in schools. Bullying remains the principle explanation for what appears to be increased violence.
Dr. David Palframan, a child psychiatrist at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, explains how bullying can painfully affect children and actually deter them from wanting to attend school.
He also explains that parents need to listen to their children more. Kids will often tell people if they are being bullied at school.
Palframan outlines the importance of kids being social and having friends, and how children’s emotions should be taken very seriously.
Question: We’ve heard a great deal about bullying in the news lately. Does bullying, in fact, have an impact on a child?
Answer: It can be one of the most painful aspects of growing up. It helps determine a social pecking order, where the kids being bullied feel like they have a pretty low social value. It makes them feel inferior.
Q. How do kids react to being bullied? Do some kids react differently?
A. One common reaction for a child who is being bullied is the development of a strong anxiety to going to school.
Faking sickness is the most obvious avoidance tactic.
Some kids have such a strong apprehension about going to school and the fear of what might happen to them that they might actually cause a physical reaction like a headache or stomach ache.
Q. Is bullying a natural part of growing up?
A. It is natural for kids to decide who is popular and who is not.
What’s not natural is the bullying to reach high intensity, which usually indicates a lack of adult supervision.
Q. What do you mean by high intensity?
A. Bullying can go through different stages. At a psychological level, kids can be called names, insulted, excluded from groups and fall victim to an array of verbal violence.
This can lead to more intense teasing and pranks, such as stealing a kid’s hat and filling it with snow or tripping in the halls.
Finally. bullying can reach stages of actual physical violence.
Being teased by one person you can deal with. But if that person is backed by a group then it becomes almost impossible for someone to handle – then it is bullying in the true sense of the word.
Q. What are some warning signs that parents or teachers can look out for with someone who is being bullied?
A. The biggest one is a child saying they are being bullied. Often kids will tell someone if they are being bothered at school. The problem is getting a parent to listen and understand. It is important for parents to discuss these issues with kids.
Parents should also be very aware if their child doesn’t want to go to school, and should ask if there is anything wrong going on at school.
The best protection that parents can give their kids is to encourage them to be social, to make friends.
It is very important for a child to have a group of friends because bullying happens when a child is separated from the herds.
Q. Why do some kids bully others?
A. It happens because it is a rush to have power and social status. The profile of someone who bullies is a child with some insecurities who has chosen a path of bullying to achieve some social status.
They like to have people follow their every move. It gives them a sense of power.
The real problem is when bullying becomes socialized, which means bullies team up with each other and then you have gang issues.
Q. Do you feel that programs that go into schools like the Canadian Mental Health Association’s “Words Hurt” program have an impact?
A. Any program that talks openly about bullying is going to help. But for the most part, bullying goes on amongst children in secret.
Often, the adult world is unaware of it happening. Bullies don’t want to be caught. Kids who are being bullied should have the opportunity to sit down with their parents to discuss social status issues, and see if there are reasons why other children are picking on them.
Appeals to be nice don’t work because it all boils down to social status.
Q. Is this a problem we as a society should be pursuing more aggressively?
A. We can never try too hard to help make our kids’ lives safe. But we need to be careful what we show to our children as examples, including any sort of culture that glorifies violence to gain social status.
Every parent sends their children off to school with some anxiety. We try to prepare them by making sure they are people who will make friends and choose co-operative ways to solve problems.
I’m a grandfather now, and my grandchildren look so little going off to school, but it is important for people to realize that emotions are just as strong in a 7-year-old’s life – but they have fewer constraints.
They encounter more violence in their lives, such as schoolyard fights, than we do. We as adults often forget that.