Member Advice on Bullying > Reviews (111)

So, you’ve been bullied, or are being bullied. Get over it, it’s happened to all of us.

No, I don’t subscribe to this opinion, for those of you getting angry about my attitude. In fact, I feel the opposite, well more or less anyway. Bullying can never be taken lightly, it hurts.

So how do you define bullying? Everyone knows that bullying can come in many different forms. My own personal opinion is that bullying is unfair treatment of a person by another person or persons. However, I believe that sometimes it is possible to bully people without even realising it. For example, over-teasing. Being constantly teased can become very hurtful, as I know from my own experience, however, people may think that the person being teased doesn’t mind and until something is said, then nothing will be done about it. I used to catch the bus home with a group of girls from my school, and my best friend who went to a different school. I don’t know if the school had anything to do with it, but we used to tease my best friend, and we never thought she minded. I was also often teased, and I it didn’t really bother me, so I always asumed that Kayleigh (my best mate) felt the same. However, at a sleepover I found out this wasn’t so, and that the teasing hurt Kayleigh, and from her point of view could therefore be called bullying. Talking helped. The girls in question, except one, toned down the teasing, although the one girl only laughed. In cases such as these, you must be ready to except that the person in question doesn’t know their hurting you in any way. Talking to them can be the answer, a very simple but effective way of dealing with the problem.

So have you ever bullied someone? Well, most of us are kind people and would like to say that we haven’t, and until recently I would have said that too. Recently though, I became part of a joke that hurt someone, though I never intended to hurt them in any way at all.

I say recently, though it was over six months ago now, but I still feel immense guilt about what I did. What did I do? I helped spread a rumour, which to me was just a joke, but in turned out that that rumour was hurting a friend. Now, I didn’t start the rumour, and I most certainly didn’t believe it, and I think this has something to do with why I spread it. By spread I mean I told a group of friends, one group but I realise now that it was unnecessary to tell them, and although they probably would have heard it, they shouldn’t have heard it from me.

The girl the rumour was about wasn’t a great friend of mine, and so I didn’t realise what she was going through at first. I never thought anyone would believe it, as it was so stupid, but apparently people did. The second I realised the girl was hurt, I stopped talking about the rumour altogether, except to admonish it. However the damage was done, and now I think about it, I have done similar things in the past that might have hurt people. Thankfully, when the teachers were informed of this incident, I was kept out of it as I had only told a couple of people anyway.

You may now be thinking of me as mean and heartless, but I’m sure no one is completely innocent of treating a person offhand in a way that may have caused them pain. Ignoring a person irritating you is a classic example of this; being given the cold shoulder is one of the most common cases of bullying.

So advice if this should ever happen to you. Tell someone. This has been said over and over, but in many cases this is the best way of dealing with it. Sometimes, though this is hard and/or doesn’t work.

First case scenario (hehehe.) You are being intimidated by someone twice your size who keeps stealing your dinner money, and tearing up your homework as well as calling you names, teasing you etc, then it can be very scary to tell someone for fear of what they might to do you. The first thing to do in this situation is tell a trusty friend (it is likely that you have a close friend that already knows about the situation) then together decide what to do next. I feel that the best thing to do is to tell a teacher, but chose the teacher you tell carefully. A dappy teacher can easily make the situation worse, but a strict teacher (often an important teacher) will normally sort the situation out. Your friend comes in handy here, because it can often be scary visiting these teachers on your own.

The other problem, my second case scenario, is when you have told a teacher and the situation is no better/ worse. This can often happen because the teacher has not dealt with the situation well enough. Giving someone a warning, and telling them who dobbed them in doesn’t help. In fact, it simply leads to more resentment from the bullies. The next person to tell is your parents. Perhaps you have already told them, but somehow I doubt it. However, them getting on to the school about it will solve the situation, and if it doesn’t then it must be pretty bad bullying, and may need the police.

So my main advice, probably the same as most other peoples is TALK, TALK, and TALK, it really does help.

A couple of last things. I mentioned earlier that it is simple to be a bully without knowing it, and gave you my example. I would like to add a tiny bit about avoiding that. First, think carefully before you go on about something that is quite clearly annoying them, and secondly, be ready to apologise if you have upset them in any way, there is no point in losing a friend.

I also mentioned ignoring people. This is the easiest form of bullying to get caught up in, someone that is irritating you needs to be ignored for a while, but when everyone starts ignoring them it becomes very hard for them. Perhaps you should try talking to them, ask them to back off slightly, but not drop contact with them altogether. Remember, bullying can have disastrous consequences.

However, you can solely blame the bully in these situations, it sometimes pays to think about how clingy you are, and if someone being cool towards you, give them space, it’ll probably blow over if you don’t push it. Also, think about what it is you’ve done to annoy them, if you don’t know, then ask when things have settled down.

I am the first to admit that I can talk far too much about my family, and carry on some jokes too long. No one is perfect, but some people are more tactful than others (though I don’t think I can call myself tactful. I always stick my foot in it. Some people are good at it, my mum for example.)

I’ll finish there, and I hope that this has helped someone somewhere, and that perhaps, next time you teases your mate you’ll think about it first (but don’t become to uptight, I did that for I while and I became known as boring. There is a balance somewhere I think, no one can be expected to perfect it, but I believe I have improved!) Thanx for reading my op. Jayne.

PS, sorry about the title, I'm not good at coming up with something new and imagitive.