Bullying: Is It the Victim’s Fault?

Sometimes we will notice that a particular child (or adult for that matter) is bullied in various environments during many parts of their life. Doesn’t this mean that this child is doing something to provoke the bullying?


Scientists, parents, and the rest of us often notice commonalities among children who are bullied. This is understandable when the motivation is to try to teach children how to be less vulnerable to bullying, how to stand up for themselves when bullied, and how to send a socially acceptable signals to others. Researchers have even discovered that certain behaviors in children are often met with bullying and harassment from others.


From this kind of information, we will ultimately glean ways that victims can empower themselves. This is good. But we’re forgetting someone here.


If we forget the child who bullies, we risk not solving the problem. First of all, the child who bullies needs help. Second, the child who bullies is misbehaving. Third, the misbehavior is often group sanctioned.


On the first point, empowering victims while punishing bullies is still a somewhat popular way to intervene in schools. While some children who bully enjoy hurting others, many are children who have been hurt themselves, and their bullying is a sign that they need care. They need behavioral change and emotional nurturing. Training the victim to be less victimizable does nothing to satisfy the deeper needs of the "bully."  Even if one victim no longer succumbs, the bullying child will just find another.


In addition, when one child bullies another, blaming the victim—even partially—represents a loss of contact with reality. Don’t get me wrong, people can be provocative. Some children’s behavior makes it easy for others to respond in unhealthy, aggressive ways. But the child who is bullied has absolutely no control over the actions of the child who does the bullying. The perpetrator is absolutely the only person in a position to choose not to perpetrate. Suggesting responsibility in the victim for the aggressor's actions disempowers the aggressor to make change and constitutes an additional assault on the victim.


Finally, bullying is a group process. There is much evidence to suggest that bullying is a socially condoned activity. Peers are present in a vast majority of bullying situations. They often fail to intervene and quite often encourage the bullying. Teachers around the nation admit, when asked anonymously, to bullying certain children in their classes. Many children grow up in homes filled with tension and violence. Considering these influences, the absence and not the presence of bullying in schools would be surprising.


In order to create safety in schools, we will have to make it the business of schools to teach positive social behaviors as an academic subject. These citizenry skills need to have equal place in the curriculum with the traditional paper-and-pencil subjects we teach our kids. Furthermore, we must recognize that families, teachers, and administrators need a lot more support than they receive from the broader society just to make it through the week, let alone to rear healthy children.


Blaming the victim, even the bully, has not really made a difference. Taking ownership of the problem as a nation will.