 Victims Are Made – One Bully At A Time
At 16, Betty is considerably overweight, and wears glasses. Her family is not as wealthy as those of many of her classmates. She regularly gets excellent test scores, and is considered top of her class by most teachers. By all measures of ‘who is bullied’, Betty is a prime target for bullies – but she’s not bullied. In fact, Betty is one of the more popular students in her class. She is well-liked by both teachers and students, is regularly elected to class offices and plays on two of the three sports teams open to girls. She is active on the school newspaper, and is the member of the class that most other students say they would approach with a problem.
Dani is also 16. Like Betty, she is overweight and wears glasses. She comes from a similar family and social background. While her schoolwork isn’t at the same level as Betty’s, she makes good grades. There the similarity ends. Dani has no friends, and often spends lunch and free time in a solitary corner. She is often teased, and has been the victim of more than one nasty joke. Once, one of the boys asked her out on a date, then laughed at her when she accepted. While the bullying is low-key, Dani is the one likely to be laughed at during gym, tripped when she’s walking down the hall and talked about at the lunch table. Despite the similarities between the two girls, Dani is a victim and Betty is not. What makes the difference?
Bullying Victims – What They Have In Common
Dan Olweus identified three different broad subgroups of bullying victims – the passive victim, the provocative victim and the bully-victim. Other researchers have further divided those into sub-categories. Bear in mind that while research into bullying has revealed characteristics of children who are frequent targets of bullies, ANY child can be targeted by bullies for any reason. Do not assume that just because a child doesn’t fit the victim profile they can’t be victims of bullying.
The Passive Victim According to what researchers have found, the passive victim is the most common type of bullying victim. They do nothing to attract a bully’s attention, other than be themselves. While children will often claim that kids who are physically or socially different are picked on, that isn’t completely borne out by the research. According to a survey of school psychologists, the typical victims of intense, severe bullying:
…are generally more passive and sensitive than most children. It’s not that their feelings are more easily hurt – it’s that they show it more readily. …are children of overprotective parents, or they may be protected by school personnel. …may have poor coping skills, particularly in confrontational situations. …have trouble being assertive. …blame themselves for being bullied. …are isolated socially. …are physically younger, weaker and smaller than their peers. - …feel little control over their environment.
One has to wonder, though, how many of those characteristics are the cause of bullying – and how many are the result. Most researchers suspect that there is a cycle or spiral effect in action. This also seems to be borne out by research, which shows that far more children report being victims of bullies in the preschool through third grade age group than in middle school years, despite the fact that the number of bullies remains fairly constant. There are a number of reasons suggested for this change, including the changing perceptions of children about what actually constitutes bullying. One of the most likely, though, is that in the earlier school years, bullies target everyone and gradually refine their list of targets to those who give them the reactions that they’re seeking. One group of researchers concluded that “The victims' behaviors and emotional states may make them vulnerable to bullying. The bullying behavior towards them may perpetuate their issues with low-self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and loneliness, which may make them increasingly vulnerable to bullying."
In other words, bullies may choose children who are anxious, frightened or have poor coping skills, but their repeated abuse emphasizes those characteristics, making them even more likely to be chosen by a bully as a target.
Researchers have further subdivided the group of passive victims according to specific traits. Vicarious victims are not directly targeted by bullies. Instead, the bullying incidents that they hear about or witness erodes their own sense of safety – and with it their self esteem. Because they fear being targeted if they step in, vicarious victims choose not to interfere or even report bullying incidents, even if they sympathize with the victims. Their failure to act often leaves them feeling guilty and believing that they are wimps and cowards, further eroding their self esteem and belief in themselves.
A very small group of self-reported bullying victims may be false victims who complain about being bullied to teachers in a bid for attention. The unfortunate result of this may be that teachers don’t respond to real bullying when it’s brought to their attention, citing false victims as their reason.
The final category into which some psychologists divide passive victims is that of the perpetual victim. Years of being the target of bullies may leave some children with a continuing victim mentality. They expect to be bullied, taunted and teased – and they see it even where it doesn’t exist. Their very passivity and anxiety can make them targets of more sophisticated bullies well into their adult years.
The Provocative Victim Provocative victims are a small subgroup of those children who are frequently bullied. They often engage in behaviors that make them unpopular with most other children. Provocative victims are those children who are often seen as ‘deserving’ their treatment by other children. They may make unflattering comments about others in the class, or irritate them by intruding on personal space or refusing to take no for an answer. When other students object to the behavior, the provocative victim may become confrontational and egg them on into becoming aggressive.
Provocative victims may be among the most difficult to help. Often, the child who provokes others to bully him has learning or emotional disabilities that make it difficult for him to see the effects of his own actions. It may be helpful, in dealing with a provocative bully, to assess him for problems like attention deficit disorder or a learning disability which may be at the root of the behaviors that draw bullying from others. Helping Bullying Victims
In this age of self-help, it’s not unusual to hear the sentiment that the victims of bullies need to stand up for themselves. While this is true in many ways, it is also important to remember that the victims of bullies are victims precisely because they cannot or don’t know how to stand up for themselves. There is far more to rescuing a victim than simply telling him to stand up to the bully. If he were able to do that, he wouldn’t be a victim, it’s as simple as that.
Those who claim that victims just need to stop being victims also do not understand the complex social and emotional issues that accompany being bullied, particularly when the bullying pervades school, home and outside activities. Even those children who started out with fairly healthy self esteem end up feeling socially isolated and completely alone by the time a bully has finished with them.
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Bully Solutions
