Children Development And Causes Of Bullying

Children Development and Bullying Shunshun Lyu LAI 205 Amy Mace 2018/5/16 Children Development and Bullying Introduction Bullying can be explained using its three pertinent elements: an aggressive act intended to cause harm; the acts are repeated again and again, and they take place within the power imbalance context. Power imbalance can arise from differences in physical strength, access to crucial information, and popularity of an individual or a group (Aydin et al., 2018). This means that bullying is a series of acts committed by a child to achieve or affirm greater power over a different child who is hurt in the process. By defining bullying, we gain the ability to differentiate rough and tumble play and other elements of developing social skills of young children and an act of bullying. Research studies show that 20.4% of 2-5 years-old children suffered from physical bullying and 14.6% were verbally bullied in their lifetime (Snow, 2014). Additionally, a study on 4-year-olds shows that 25% of them are bullies, 22% are victims, and 2% are victim/bully (Snow, 2014). Bullying has harmful affects the mental and physical well-being of the bully, the victim, the bully-victim, and the witnesses (Rivers & Duncan, 2013). The research question is: How does bullying affect the early development of the child bully, victim, and witness? The research is based on bullying amongst school children. Causes of Bullying Family changes Divorce is the primary cause of family changes (Al-Raqqad et al., 2017). After a divorce, life changes for everyone, including children. Children especially, at a young age are affected more by divorce. After divorce, children experience many drastic changes in life which can disorient them. Divorce leads to low self-esteem among children. To rejuvenate their self-esteem, children can resort to excessive aggressiveness and violence (Yegelski, 2018). The violence and unwanted aggressiveness can cause a child to bully the weaker children. Changes on Views of Discipline Different parents have varying views about discipline. Some parents may have been raised by parents in a strict way. The parents who come from the overly strict households may also try to use the same approaches for their own children (Al-Raqqad et al., 2017). In attempts to be tolerant, the parents may end up being lenient with any form of behavior in their children. The leniency with children’s behavior can lead to aggressive behavior in children. Effects of Bullying Effects on the Victim With early childhood bullying, the biological development of children is incomplete. The children also do not have a proper understanding of themselves. Any form of distress can lead to alteration of the children’s development. Bullying is a form of distress that can be traumatizing to the victims (Heath et al., 2013). Trauma from bullying affects development and children’s understanding of their environment. Bullying may cause psychiatric disorder among children victims. Bullying can lead to children’s depression, antisocial personality disorder, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and substance use disorders. Copeland and his colleagues found that victims of bullying are significantly more likely to have recurrent thoughts of committing suicide and to...