The Complete Guide to Understanding, Controlling, and Stopping Bullies & Bullying

Children, like adults, do what works for them, and what they see working for their parents.

Randel throws down the gauntlet to the bully’s parents by asking them to examine and acknowledge what is happening in their own home by answering the following questions.
• Are you a bully at home?
• Do you frequently criticize your child?

Mobbing,” i.e., several bullies act in concert to harm another person
• Completely and pointedly annoying another person
• Frightening another person through physical or emotional intimidation
• Forcing another person to do something he or she does not want to do
• Stalking the victim, instilling fear, rage, and helplessness into the victim’s everyday life

the long list of bullying behaviors includes:
• Verbal abuse and harassment
• Deliberately excluding others from a peer group
• Spreading false rumors about others
• Sending another person mean or threatening notes
• Making harassing, threatening phone calls
• Sending mean or threatening e-mails
• Actively encouraging a peer group to dislike and isolate another person
• Physical abuse
• Making continual threats to harm another person and/or the person’s family
• Stealing or destroying another person’s property
• Playing “pranks” on another person in front of his or her peer group
• “Visual” abuse, e.g., making obscene gestures to another person
• Drawing obscene or humiliating graffiti about another person
• Continually using humiliating racial slurs towards another person
• Touching another person and/or making sexual comments

Norwegian researcher Dr. Dan Olweus and colleagues have conducted concise and comprehensive studies of bullying behavior since the early 1970s, and his is the most commonly quoted definition:
“A person is being bullied when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other persons. Negative action is when a person intentionally inflicts injury or discomfort upon another person, through physical contact, through words, or in other ways. Note that bullying is both overt and covert” (Olweus, 1991).