I came across an article in the newspaper about a parents child is taking another parents child to court to gain a restraining order against the bully.
This action is not supported by the education department in queensland who contends such things should not happen since the teachers take care of it. (yeah sure)
A psychologist has weighed into it to say bullying should be made a criminal offence due to the lifelong effect on a child.
Currently there is no law that prevents bulling in the schools in Queensland.
My opinion is there should be strict antibullying laws with consequences for the parents if not a once off and corrected. Apparently the child doing the bullying has been suspended numerous times but is still there.
Agreed, physical bullying eg. bashing and mental harassment should be made a criminal offence and the police called in.
Is it me or does it seem like bullying in other countires such as America and Australia is taken more seriously. In England many people think that bullying should be an experience for children to toughen up. However, thats probably the reason why schools in England doesn't take bullying that seriously.
It's only gonna be a juvenile offense, anyway. Not like it ruins a person's life if he reforms afterward.
The one thing I'd be worried about is that a lot of bullies are abused by their parents and would get hurt themselves for getting in trouble, but if they are going to bully others chances are they'll be in trouble for other things as well...
eh, I live in America and had terrible experiences with the school not acting about my bullying, which included physical violence as well as verbal harassment and stealing and sexual assault, but I had long been used to bullying, and the counselor talked me out of speaking out, threatening institutions on me, and I started to blame myself, as she justified the bullying because I am weird, don't dress like popular kids, and should "expect" to be made fun of for having bizarre seizures.
So while I can only speak of a particular counselor in a particular school in California, this sort of stuff goes on all the time, in most places, to varying degrees. I was even prevented from filing an incident report, while one day that I was confined to her office during lunch, a police officer came to school grounds to bust some girls who were doing pot. What kind of crazy justice is that?
Is it me or does it seem like bullying in other countires such as America and Australia is taken more seriously. In England many people think that bullying should be an experience for children to toughen up. However, thats probably the reason why schools in England doesn't take bullying that seriously.
In Australia, bullying is not taken seriously and gives the impression it is needed to toughen up the child. With no laws against there is little that can be done and most public school teachers appear not to care less from my brief stint as a pre-service teacher.
This applies to bullying in the workplace as well. But at least one can have access to assault laws or antistalking if physical. But I'm of the opinion most workplaces are the natural habitat of psychopaths.
Yeah, in fact when I was at the start of eighth grade the essay topic was about how seriously to take bullying, with one side saying "it toughens them up" and the other side saying "that's BS". Guess which topic I chose. 
Also, the idea of "toughening up" kids by making them face bullying seems pretty prevalent, at least where I live - and despite official policies, these get routinely ignored, mainly because most students don't know their legal options, particularly if they've been bullied all their life almost. Even when you know it's legally wrong (as in my case), there may be many other factors that prevent you from getting proper action taken. There should be booklets for children and teenagers, about how to get something done.
Oh yeah, I ditched class all the time when the bullying got really bad. It's amazing how you can circle through hallways for two hours in a junior high school building without any of the administrators walking past you noticing, if you simply look like you are going somewhere specific, and that you're allowed to be there.
Other days I would go to the guidance office to try to report these things, and end up being stuck there for whole school days, or being kept in the room where they made me go to group therapy, except the girls were mostly not very nice, and had very different issues from me, and one such session turned into them telling me why I was in the wrong with the bullying, since I was so weird.
The psychologist wrote a name and number for a family therapist on a yellow sticky note for me to take home, something never followed up on. Why should my family go into expensive therapy we can't afford, when it was the school staff who needed it? Also being told by the school psychologist that I was depressed because I was angry at myself (anger turned inwards), despite that all that I talked about being angry about was how kids at the school would abuse me and nobody took it anymore serious than simple teasing, and demanded justice.
Bullying should be an offence...and not just for kids who do it, either. School officials who abuse their power should also get penalized. I got a lot of both of those types when I was in grade school.
I tell ya, I was bullied at school and it didn't do me any harm at all.. ;]
Crush the weak...Starve the poor!!!!
A kid my son was saying X was a bully towards others...
Eventually X was "rough-housing" in the hallways with a "friend" and crashed another kid "by mistake" into a a locker - in front of my son. Well the kid left on a stretcher and took an ambulance ride to get stitches in his head. My aspie son knows the "rules" are no rough housing. He took note that X was in school the next day, so said my son. I called the principal, and the principal told me the kid would be suspended (he hadn't done it yet). The kid never was. I Inquired as did other parents, all items in quotes are responses of the administration, "X's parents felt that accidents happen and his permanent record should not be affected" also, "X felt really bad" "he was crying the next day in my office" (said the principal to me when I followed up).
AND he was made the Student of the month, that month. ("he needed a confidence booster from all the fuss")
My (aspie) son balks at going into a school run by that mentality. They think that makes him "paranoid". I think that makes him smart.
Yeah, I've seen that kind of mentality before. I got beaten up on my school bus once, in middle school, after being verbally harassed repeatedly, and frequently. Bent my glasses up enough that I had to pay for new ones. The kid who did it got taken off the bus the next afternoon, was, strangely enough, made student of the month, and continued to threaten me. Nothing physical, besides tripping and throwing paper/aluminum foil balls at me ever happened again from her though.
I tell ya, it makes me wonder what goes through the minds of these principals...
Sorry to double post. I can't quite find an edit button on my posts. If there is one, please someone point it out to me.
normal members don't have one; Activists do but only in one section.
if you want a post edited, then just PM a mod or Admin; or, better yet, report your own post, and in the little form, put your addendum.
saves on Drama, you see 
I don't agree that nonviolent bullying is less damaging, long term, than actual violence. As a female, my schoolmates specialised in ostracism rather than the physical clobbering I would probably have copped as a boy. It's much harder to deal with, too - an effective school discipline program should be able to stop anything violent, but you can't force one kid to play nicely with another.
I read a great article on "mean girls" where a group of girls were explaining all the elaborate ways in which they inflicted social and psychological torture on other girls. I was really stunned by some of the sophisticated methods of inflicting cruelty on each other they discussed.
I was most amused when the writer asked, "Do you think boys also do this sort of thing to each other?" One of the girls immediately answered, "Oh, no. Never. They're too stupid."
It sgtrikes me that AS kids would be particularly vulnerable to the "mean girls" methods of bullying because it is all based around social tactics that would be very difficult for AS girls to combat.
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Bullies, victims more likely to consider suicide
Fri Jul 25, 2008 12:50am IST
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Victims of bullying -- and the bullies themselves - are at increased risk of suicidal thinking and are also more likely to attempt suicide than their peers who aren't involved in bullying, according to a systematic review of 37 studies conducted in 16 different countries.
And those who were both bullies and victims were at greatest risk, Dr. Young Shin Kim of Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, and Dr. Bennett Leventhal of the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago found.
"It is imperative that there now be a common goal to intervene actively to reduce bullying in all communities and to seek out both victims and perpetrators to protect them from suicidality and other potential lethal adverse consequences of this serious public health problem," the researchers conclude in the International Journal of Adolescent Mental Health.
Kim and Bennett reviewed the quality of existing research examining the relationship between suicide and bullying. About three quarters of the studies included youth in the general population, while the rest looked at special populations such as homosexual or bisexual young people, people with developmental disorders, and young people with legal problems.
Most studies of bully victims found increased risk of suicidal behavior, with victims being up to 5.6 times more likely to have suicidal thoughts and up to 5.4 times more likely to have made suicide attempts. But bullies themselves were up to 9 times more likely than their peers in the general population to have considered suicide, while they were up to 9.9 times more likely to try suicide. Those who were both victims and perpetrators were up to 10-fold more likely to have suicidal thoughts. Some, but not all, of the studies found an increased risk for females.
Bullying also increased the likelihood of suicidal thoughts and attempts among people with learning disabilities, drug abuse, delinquent behavior, or who were homosexual or bisexual.
"Although many adolescents may experience bullying, either as participants or observers, the observation that it is common does not imply that it is 'normal' and, hence, an acceptable part of 'normal development,'" the researchers write. "Indeed, the evidence from this review suggests that exposure to bullying, especially for participants, is harmful."
SOURCE: International Journal of Adolescent Mental Health, July 2008
Exactly. Common doesn't mean benign. After all, one in three women will suffer sexual abuse (by one statistic I heard... who knows, may be more), and I defy anyone to say that doesn't hurt anyone.
I presume the definition of sexual abuse includes having lewd comments made at you.