Research Essay: An Introduction To Cyber Bullying

What is bullying? Bullying is behavior that is hurtful, whether physically or mentally and is ongoing. I know that cyber bullying is huge right now, but what about good old fashioned bullying? The kind where someone is mean to another, whether at school, on the playground, or work. I am specifically going to talk about kids in school being bullied and ways of coping. Kids are smart and sneaky. In my experience with my daughter, her bully doesn’t communicate on the web. She does it in front of friends or in the lunch line. Bullies are really careful about being nice in front of the teacher. Kids from elementary school on through high school and even college are developing socially as well as physically. They are trying to be accepted. The influence of aging children/teens is in the hands of friends, media, and technology. Parents have less of an influence as a child ages. Media is a huge influence. The messages they are sending to girls are that they should be skinny, have money, dress well, and be athletic. All this criteria sets up kids to be competitive with each other.

In this paper, I will discuss two different magazine articles on how to deal with bullies and two scholarly research articles. One of the research articles discusses mental health and suicide issues that may be caused from being bullied. The other article discusses how schools use different strategies that can be effective or not effective in stopping bullying.

The first article I read was titled “Passive Aggressive Diaries: 7 Skills for Teaching Your Child to Stand-Up to Bullies” from Psychology Today. This article discusses seven different skills to help your child deal with their bully. The seven steps are: stay connected, create a...

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...y child.

As a parent, it is most important to listen to your child. You need to be compassionate to what they are going through and not to dismiss their feelings. You could say things like how does that make you feel? You can’t change what other’s do, so it is important to focus on strategic ways of coping skills. Find out what strategies they have tried thus far and see if something is working, or doing more harm than good. It is important to practice or role play the different techniques. You can give your child ideas until you are blue in the face, but unless you practice with them, they won’t be able to stand up to their bully. They need to practice to build up the confidence and know what exactly to say, as to not feed into their own emotions. It is so important for schools and parents to continue to find solutions for resolving and preventing bullying.