Social behavior and peer relationships of victims and bully-victims

"However, the results suggest that the problem might be prevented, at least in part, by teaching your child to be involved, cooperative, sociable, and friendly to other children. It wouldn't hurt if you taught your youngster to also be appropriate assertive in relationships with other kids at school. That might also prevent bullying. What do you think?"

Definitely - but there is no definitive exact way to teach those things, and no matter how good a parent is some children are always going to be shy (ie not sociable, maybe even seen as "unco-operative"). That is just in some folks nature.

I think parents should definitely do their best to equip their kids though.

Nothing in this study sounds that groundbreaking to me, but I guess it is always good to hear about these things again.

Here in the UK bullying seems endemic in the schools, and almost seems institutionalised from a past time and social order. It scares me for my kids when they are older to be honest. But I can already tell my older son is very friendly and outgoing, as well as a kind soul so I hope he will be ok. (At 11 months it is hard to tell this about the younger baby!)

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"However, the results suggest that the problem might be prevented, at least in part, by teaching your child to be involved, cooperative, sociable, and friendly to other children"

I think that this statement blames the vicitms, and by extention their parents for the bullying. It makes it the victim's fault, and removes responsibility from the bully. It also doesn't seem to take into account factors such as the effects of bullying on personality--of course victims would have less friends; girl bullies do not *allow* their victims to have friends. And if you're subjected to frequent emotional torture, of course you are going to be more withdrawn than your non-bullied peers.

Instead of focussing on how not to raise victims, how about we focus on how not to raise *bullies*? If we do that, the victims will be a non-issue.

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Kimberly, I was thinking that too, but did not articulate that very well in my post above. I almost posted "and even if you manage to raise a child who is unlikely to be bullied, what about those other kids who are being raised in such a way that makes them LIKELY TO BE BULLIES? Shouldn't we be focusing on stopping that from happening?"

But as usual it is all so complicated - I think kids who are most likely to bully problably have problems at home anyway (and likely don't get much of the right kind of the attention in the first place) so in reality theirs is maybe the harder situation to change. Let's be honest - perhaps their parents are less likely to care as much about it. Not saying in every case, but I would hazard a guess that a lot of school bullies probably aren't treated that well by their own parents. Not saying it shouldn't be focused on andworked on though - just saying as with anything it is not simple or easy.

In an ideal world all kids (and all people!)would be treated with love and respect - but we live in a far from ideal world, and the sad fact is that all kids are not. If anyone has a (realistic) way we could actually change that I'd love to hear it.

Anyway, I read what Heather was saying as a caring parent trying to think how she could prevent her own kids from being bullied. I could be wrong, but I did not think she was necessarily blaming the victims. My main problem with the above quote was that I felt way too oversimplified - like "to stop wars we should make all the world love each other" or "Why don't the two sides in Northern Ireland just both stop all the arguing and just be friends?" It seems like the obvious answer, but it ignores all the complications and details of the actual situation.

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Oh, I didn't have a problem with Heather, Wallaby, more like the researchers.

This issue is a little close to my heart because my daughter is the vicitm of the bully. And I really don't think it's a case of me being unwilling to see my daughter's flaws. In fact, I think I've been guilty of that dirty little secret--blaming the victim when she's come to me with her tales of woe. You know, assuming she's too sensitive. Or wondering why she bothers to take this girl seriously. Or why can't she just fix it herself and be normal and have friends. It took me some hard soul searching and a painful look back at my own childhood to realize that while she is too sensitive, she takes it seriously because it IS serious, and she can't have friends because the bully *won't let her.*

I may not be parent of the year, but I *did* teach my daughter to be involved, cooperative, sociable, and friendly to other children. Plus, it's in Sabrina's nature to be so. So, if I've done everything right on my end, and given my daughter all the tools possible to be socially successful, and she's *still* the prime victim, what next?

And while I don't live in The Heather's house and so can't say with 100% accuracy, from what I do know of her family life she's a loved little girl who recieves a wealth of parental attention and support. She just also really gets off on the power games girls play, and in the Third Grade, has become somewhat of a prodigy at it. A fact made easier in that her parents suffer from "Not my angel" syndrome, and Heather could teach Eddie Haskell lessons in smarm. So, aside from advising my daughter to resort to terrorism, how not to endure this child for the next ten years?

That's what I'd like the researchers to focus on.

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