October is Bullying Prevention Month. October was first declared as National Bullying Prevention Month in 2006. Since then, October has been a time to acknowledge that bullying has devastating effects on children and families, such as school avoidance, loss of self-esteem, increased anxiety, and depression. Bullying can occur in multiple ways. It can be verbal, physical, through social exclusion, or via digital sources like email, texts, or social media. Being bullied can severely affect the person’s self-image, social interactions, and school performance and can lead to mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and substance use, and even suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Stop Bullying has many resources for parents and children, including short videos on bullying for K – 5 students. You can find them here: Stop Bullying : Kids Videos.

Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school-aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. 

In order to be considered bullying, the behavior must be aggressive and include:

• An Imbalance of Power: Kids who bully use their power—such as physical strength, access to embarrassing information, or popularity—to control or harm others. Power imbalances can change over time and in different situations, even if they involve the same people.
• Repetition: Bullying behaviors happen more than once over a period of time.

Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.

Students can be bullied in different ways: 

• Physical bullying is being pushed, shoved, punched, tripped, spit on, or being made to do things they do not want to do.
• Verbal bullying is being the subject of rumors, taunting; being called names; being threatened; and receiving offensive notes or gestures.
• Relational bullying is being excluded from activities on purpose; isolating someone from their peers; purposely ignoring someone; intentionally harming someone’s reputation; and posting derogatory comments or embarrassing images in a public space or online.
• Damaging property on purpose, like clothing, books, electronics, and jewelry.
• Cyberbullying is bullying that takes place on digital devices like cell phones, computers, and tablets. It can occur through sms, text, and apps, or online on social media, forums, or gaming, where people can view, participate in, or share content. Cyberbullying includes sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, false, or mean content about someone else.