Study Suggests Almost All Youngsters Are Bullied
Elementary school may be tougher than you think. According to a study published in the April issue of the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, almost 90 percent of third, fourth, fifth and sixth graders report that they've been bullied in the past year, and nearly 60 percent say they've bullied others.
By surveying 270 third- through sixth-grade students in California and Arizona elementary schools, child psychiatrist and lead author Thomas Tarshis determined a "bully score" and a "victim score" for each child. Students rated statements like "Other students ignore me on purpose" and "I tell other students I will hit or hurt them" either "a lot," "sometimes," or "never." Tarshis developed the 22-question survey, written at a third-grade reading level, while a fellow at Stanford University's Lucile Packard Children's Hospital; he now directs the Bay Area Children's Association in Cupertino, Calif. The hope, he says, is to use such a measure to gauge kids' behavior, create interventions to prevent or decrease bullying, then resurvey kids to test the success of the intervention.
"It's finally being recognized that [these behaviors] are not a normal part of child development," Tarshis says. He notes that previous research has shown that young victims and bullies both may have higher rates of depression; later in life, victims may continue to feel anxiety or low self-esteem, while bullies can show greater levels of antisocial behavior, aggression, or involvement in crime and drug abuse.
Rachel Vreeman, a pediatrician at Indiana University School of Medicine and a researcher on bullying, says though other, more complex measurement surveys exist, Tarshis's questionnaire could be a very simple tool for tracking changes in behavior over time. "It's clear there are no quick solutions to bullying," she says, since the behavior is a "systemic problem" when tolerated by teachers, parents, and school administrators. She says the high percentages of bullying and victimization that Tarshis's group found don't surprise her, since the elementary school age studied is especially prone to the behavior and the sample size was relatively small.
Tarshis says parents who learn that their young children are either bullying or being bullied need to get involved. He has seen good progress, for example, when parents of a bully and a victim get the kids together to play outside of school. At the very least, Tarshis advises parents of either a bully or a victim: "Don't take the historical attitude, 'Oh, you'll be all right.' "
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