Essay --

HN 377: Studies in Child & Adolescent Development Unit 6 Assignment- Bullying Among Children and Adolescents Caren Nicole Glover 12/15/2013 Studies in Child & Adolescent Development: Bullying The article, â€Å"Bullies and Their Victims†, by Berk (2010) gives an analysis of how bullies and their victims develop, what makes them persistent and how they and their victims can be assisted. Bullying is an activity that thrives mostly in a school setting because of peers and the various cultures and diversities among them. Interactions are inevitable among children, but bullying is destructive because it aims at peer victimisation. Both boys and girls have the ability to become bullies but the majority of them are boys who use physical and verbal attacks on their victims. In the more recent generations, the means of bullying is amplified in the adolescent stage by using electronic means like cyber bullying. Students will rarely like bullies but if they do, it is because of their leadership abilities or influential personalities. Their peers may join or stand by to watch as the victims are bullied. Victims of bullying will eventually show the effects of bullying by being passive or secluding themselves from other individuals. The background or culture of a victim will most likely determine how they progress or react in a bullying experience. A victim may retaliate to the bully's attacks depending on the level of aggressiveness used. Parenting affects the decisions made by both victims and bullies in the peer interactions. Intervention approaches to this social vice will include changing the victims’ opinions about themselves through encouragement and teaching them how to effectively respond to attackers... ... the bullying activities (Farmer et al, 2011). The majority of these strategies should not affect a limited school budget, as many schools are not able to provide certain services due to budget cuts or limitations. These strategies are possible because they mainly require community involvement, awareness and communication. Bullying is a worldwide problem and it requires immediate attention because it psychologically affects both the victims and the bullies. Victims may ultimately have suicidal thoughts and bullies will have uncontrolled behaviors that carry on through school and after school, but they can be helped. Although cyber bullying is a big obstacle due to the large-scale usage of internet and the ability to conceal identities, technological advancements and child supervision help to single out these individuals to reduce the amount of bullying that occurs.