Violence among children: what should we know about that

Metodi Koralov, school psychologist and doctor of psychological sciences

Under project “Prevention of school violence”, implemented by the State Agency for Child Protection with the financial support of UNICEF. Developed with material provided by the office of UNICEF in Croatia.

Bulgarian

English

Parents, helpers, bullying, by-standers, children

brochure for parents

Parents.

21 - 100 pages

The reviewed publication has been published with the financial support by UNICEF Bulgaria. Its contents include the following main sections:
1. What is aggressive behavior?
The authors point out that a certain behavior becomes a problematic aggressive one when its results lead to suffering for others, to pain and anguish, to breaking precious items.
Aggressive behavior often is not due to a personal choice. It could originate from a number of different reasons:
- Biological reasons. It is accepted that with some people it is genetically inherent to be more aggressive than others. The well known difference between men and women, which is due to the higher testosterone levels with men.
- Inability to curb one’s own aggressive impulses.
- Reaction to negative or traumatic events in life.
- Inability to deal with the requirements of the others.
- A learnt model of behavior. Children constantly learn from their environment – the grown ups, cinema, pop-folk, show and even political stars, their peers, games, stories being told, movies, magazines, books, television, Internet and so on.
2. What is harassment?
Here the authors have briefly presented the different kinds of harassment between children, namely physical, verbal and indirect.
Harassment behavior is a behavior which is vicious. Harassment is never accidental. The one who is harassing aims purposefully to hurt the victim, to disgrace him/her, to make it suffer physically or mentally. Besides, harassment always takes place from the side of the force and takes place perpetually. The isolated aggressive act is not harassment. But when the aggression is repeated on one and the same person or persons then it turns into harassment.
3. Tendencies and differences between boys and girls, age differences, group and individual harassment, statistics.
4. What are the consequences of harassment and why it should be the subject of specialized work?

The author of this publication steps further away from the traditional connecting of aggressive behavior with physical collision (beating, hitting, pinching, hair pulling, etc.) between two person or breaking items, as well as from the definition that the aggressive behavior is a personal choice of the aggressor and that he/she could behave differently, but purposefully decides to be bad. According to the author both of the above concepts are incomplete and limited, especially when we speak about children.
A very interesting point in this material is the pointing out of the indirect kind of harassment, the existence of which many people are even unaware of, while it is as hurtful as all other kinds and includes turning people around on someone, speaking behind someone’s back, spreading rumors, spoiling relations with close friends, putting someone in social isolation (he or she is not invited to play with other, to go to parties and fun gatherings, to the movies, for walsk, whatever).
One of the important conclusions of this publication is that all – victims, harassers/bullies, helpers, by-standers – suffer from a harassment or bullying situation.
A very useful material for parents who are really interested in their children and would like to help them, regardless of the situation they are in – one of a bullies child, one of a bully, a by-stander or helper.

http://www.unicef.bg/public/files/press/13.pdf

38_nasilie mejdu deca_kakvo triabva da znaem.pdf

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