All about bullying

What is bullying?

Bullying is when someone or several people, do nasty or unpleasant things to you or keep on teasing you in a way that you don’t like. There are lots of ways in which you can be bullied. These can include nasty teasing, being forced to have sex when you don’t want to, some forms of nasty text messaging, as well as physically being bullied.

How common is it?

About half of all boys and girls are bullied at school sometime during their school life.

Some facts about bullying:

• The rather crazy thing is that people who have been bullied themselves are then more likely to go on to bullying other people though they don’t like to admit it.
• Bullies tend not to like school, so maybe they feel generally fed up with life and want to take it out on other people
• Doesn’t seem to matter what colour, culture or race you come from, the rate of bullying is roughly the same
• Not surprisingly being bullied at school can make you not want to go to school so it one of the reasons for boys and girls truanting
• Bullies at school are four times more likely to become criminals than non bullies

  What you can do about it:

• Tell someone about it – mum, dad, friend, teacher, anyone/everyone that you trust
• If you possibly can try not to give in to threats - in most cases bullies will not carry out their threats, but when they know that you will give in to their threats they will keep on bullying
• Try not to show that the bullies that they are getting to you because that is how they get their pleasure from bullying you
• Try to stay out of the bullies way, and try not to show that you are afraid (it makes the bullies feel good)
• Stick with your friends as bullies only like to bully people are isolated
• Write down somewhere the date and times when you are bullied and what happened and show it to someone that you trust – a record of what has been happening is very powerful in making people believe you
• Work with your mum or dad, or your friends – ways of dealing with the problem
• Be careful not to take your feelings of being bullied out, by bullying other people who are worse off than you
• Try ringing Childline on 0800 1111 or check the ‘Pupiline’ website on www.pupilline.com

  If you have been bullied tell us about it here, and tell us about how you managed to cope with it…………please

  Name:
  Message: