I don’t like jumping on bandwagons but as I have been bombarded with news reports, commentary and statistics on bullying, I feel compelled to jump in here. Especially since Strycker’s Bay provides after school programming for more than 200 children each school day.
First of all I must offer full disclosure here. I was bullied in elementary school from the time I was in third grade until I graduated the sixth grade. I attended PS 75 on West 96th Street and West End Avenue from 1967 to 1972. The last three years of school where torture. I never wanted to go to school and spent a good part of my day dodging those who thought it was necessary to pick on me unprovoked. What I want to point out here is that victims of bullying are not only physically and verbally abused, they are abused emotionally because they are targeted for no apparent reason. I think this is what makes bullying so harmful and makes children feel helpless. They can not make sense of their perpetrators actions. They can’t understand what it is they have done to make someone obsessively target them for harm. Getting into an argument or disagreement on the playground that results in a physical fight or exchange of verbal insults can be made sense of, and shouldn’t be confused with bullying. Those situations can be mediated and diffused.
