What is bullying?
Bullying is aggressive behaviour that is intentional, repeated over time, and involves an imbalance of power or strength. A child who is being bullied has a hard time defending him or herself.

Bullying is when someone keeps doing or saying things to have power over another person. Some of the ways a bully bullies other people are by: calling them names, saying or writing nasty things about them, leaving them out of activities, not talking to them, threatening them, making them feel uncomfortable or scared, taking or damaging their things, hitting or kicking them, or making them do things they don't want to do.

How does it occur?
Situations of bullying between children and adolescents may occur in very diverse forms. They are not only manifested through fights and aggressions, but can be different types of intimidation that leave the victim exposed.

Those might be:

Verbal intimidations (insults, name-calling, spreading rumours...)

Psychological intimidations (threats to cause the victim fear or to obtain something, like money, or simply to force the victim to do things that he/she does not want to)

Physical aggressions (fights and beatings), destruction of personal materials, and small thefts.

Happy Slapping (when a stranger is slapped whilst being filmed – the footage then being shared online)

Social isolation, either preventing the person to participate in certain activities, or ignoring his/her presence.

Is bullying part of growing up?
Some people think bullying is just part of growing up and a way for young people to learn to stick up for themselves. But bullying can make young people feel lonely, unhappy and frightened. It makes them feel unsafe and think there must be something wrong with them. They lose confidence in themselves and may not want to go to school any more. This might lead to academic failure amongst other problems. In addition, continuous, constant and severe bullying has led to terrible consequences such as the suicide of children in some European countries.

What is racist bullying?
These situations occur when people are picked on and harassed because of their race, culture or religious faith. The objectives of this type of harassment are usually people of cultural, racial or religious minorities. In these cases, racist name-calling and the use of stereotyped phrases are very common.

What is cyber bullying?
Cyber and mobile phone bullying is a growing high tech trend with children and adolescents nowadays. Cyber bullying occurs when children or teens bully each other using the internet, mobile phones or other cyber technology.

The behaviours involved can include:

• Sending mean text, e-mail, or instant messages;
• Posting nasty pictures or messages about others in blogs or on Web sites;
• Using someone else's user name to spread rumours or lies about someone (stolen identity).
• Silent calls
• Abusive verbal messages

Sometimes abusive mobile phone text messages are sent through websites using the names and phone numbers of people who have nothing to do with the message but who are blamed for it. Another technique used by cyber bullies includes setting up websites to target certain people by inviting others to post hate messages. This is becoming much more common with the increasing use of social networking sites. Many schools are starting to take action in order to prevent their staff from suffering this type of abuse. See the following link for an example of this.

Where can parents and children go for help?
There are several initiatives in European countries and abroad to provide the victims of bullying and their families with different types of support and assistance.

In Spain, PROTEGELES, a child welfare NGO has launched a helpline where victims and their families are individually supported by professionals and are given directions on how to proceed with a particular situation. PROTEGELES also serves as a moderator between the family and the schools and advises families on when it is necessary to take their action further (reporting to the Police or to the Child Ombudsman). For more information visit the website www.acosoescolar.info

In the UK, the registered charity Bullying Online offers help and advice to victims of bullying, their parents and school.

In Scotland, the Anti-Bullying Network  was established by the Scottish Executive in 1999 so that teachers, parents and young people could share ideas about how bullying should be tackled. Their website is very helpful, but the Network only deals with bullying related to school communities and its consequences – and priority is given to requests for information that come from within Scotland.

In the USA the Department of Health and Human Services has a very helpful website  with practical information for parents, students and teachers on bullying and its consequences both for the victims and the perpetrators.

Now go to your national node’s website to find useful links and further information.