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What are the signs that my child is being bullied?

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Announcer: Why does someone become a bully?

Ted Feinberg: There are variety of reasons some of which I have mentioned in terms of atmosphere in the home, what they see on television, what they experience living in the community, if there is a violence scene in the home or the community, the child may get a sense of what is socially appropriate.

In other cases, its an attempt on the part of the bully to dominate and control and intimidate another individual and there is some perverse pleasure that they get by doing that. In some cases, they think that by doing this they will goner peer approval and recognition as being a kind of macho. But in any case of bullying behavior the child needs to learn or turn other ways of dealing with their feelings and emotions and turn other ways in understanding that the victim is a human being and not deserving of this type of torment and torture, because as I said earlier, in some cases when bullying goes on, undiagnosed for extended periods of time, what results is one of two terrible outcomes.

A child is so much in pain as a result of this behavior that they see no way out and they commit suicide or consider committing suicide as a way of getting this monkey off their back. In the other cases, the situation becomes much more externally violent and what we have seen over the years is that many of the youngsters who have engaged in school shooting behavior were in fact bullied individuals and they saw no way of remedying the problem short of bringing a weapon to school to settle the score. And so, in either situation the outcome is tragic and its important to note that individuals who engage in bullying behavior, who go unchecked have a much, much higher incidence of being involved in the criminal justice system by the time in there mid 20s then kids who do not bully.

So, to the benefit of the bully, if we can fined ways to give them to alter their behaviors and it reduces the potential that, that individual will be in jail for these types of behaviors because if they continue that type of bullying behavior into adulthood then it becomes an issue for law enforcement and for our criminal justice system.

Expert: Ted Feinberg

National Association of School Psychologists

www.nasponline.org

Email: tfeinberg@naspweb.org

Dr. Feinberg has over 30 years of broad-based human services experience in the mental health field. He has extensive background in consultation and counseling with children, adolescents, adults and families. He has worked in both the public and private sectors. In August 2000, Dr. Feinberg assumed his current position as Assistant Executive Director for Professional Development for the National Association of More »