Bully for all classes

ANALYSIS:Some 40 per cent of Irish nine year olds have been bullied over the past year, according to the Growing up in Irelandreport. Eithne Donnellan, Health Correspondent, reports

ALL CHILDREN are potentially vulnerable to the effects of bullying, regardless of sociodemographic factors. That’s one of the conclusions of a major new report on the lives of Irish children, which found some 40 per cent of nine year olds reported being bullied over the past year.

The finding will be worrying for parents as the effects of bullying on children can be very serious. It can lead to them being afraid to go to school, it can affect their concentration in class, their self-esteem and, in rare cases, can lead to suicidal behaviour. But what’s likely to be even more worrying for parents is the fact that many of them are unaware their children are being bullied.

The research from the ESRI and Trinity College Dublin (TCD) for the first national longitudinal study of children growing up in Ireland found just 24 per cent of parents were aware their children were being bullied.

The report says it’s not yet known whether the discrepancy in the figures between the percentages of children reporting bullying and the percentage of their mothers reporting they are aware of it is related to family structure or to differences between child and parent in the definition and understanding of what constitutes bullying.

But Prof James Williams, research professor at the ESRI and principal investigator and co-director of the study, says it appears “parents only know the half of it, so to speak”.

Prof Sheila Greene, director of the Children’s Research Centre at TCD and also co-director of the study, says the likelihood is that what children are reporting is more accurate than what parents are saying because a lot of bullying can be hidden from parents or teachers.

Children may conceal the bullying, she says, because the consequences of reporting it may be that they will suffer more bullying, or they may not want to see their parents getting upset, or they may find it embarrassing if their parents, when told, react by marching up to the school to sort the matter out.

When mothers were asked in the research to reflect upon the reason that their child had been bullied, some 31 per cent said it was because of their physical appearance, while 12 per cent identified class performance.

Other reasons mentioned included physical/learning disability (7 per cent), family background (7 per cent), ethnicity (6 per cent), being a teacher’s pet (5 per cent), inappropriate gender role (4 per cent) and religion (1 per cent).

Children were not asked to indicate the reasons why they believed they had been bullied.

Yesterday’s report says “one interesting finding to emerge is that there were few clear distinctions in prevalence of perpetration or victimisation in terms of the child’s sex, maternal education, income levels and social class. This suggests that all children are potentially vulnerable to the effects of bullying, regardless of sociodemographic factors.

“One notable exception is the reports of higher levels of victimisation among children from smaller single-parent families [with one or two children] when compared with families headed by a couple. The factors underpinning this association clearly deserve further consideration.”

The levels of bullying reported in this research are higher than in some but not all previous studies. Yesterday’s publication states previous research in 1997 reported that 31 per cent of primary school children had been the victim of bullying.

But Prof Mona O’Moore, co-ordinator of the anti-bullying research and resource centre at TCD who led that 1997 study, says that when that study looked at nine year olds, the level of bullying reported back then was, at 40 per cent, identical to that reported in this latest study.

Is that surprising given the advent of cyberbullying on social networking sites on the internet and the advent of mobile phones and text messaging?

O'Moore says what may be shifting is the nature of bullying rather than the reality or extent of it. Some 14 per cent of children reported being bullied via written messages and 5 per cent reported being bullied by electronic means in this Growing up in Irelandstudy.

But the findings from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children(HBSC) report published in June 2008 found the percentages of children being bullied, albeit in a different age group, to be significantly lower.

It noted the percentage of 11 year olds who reported being bullied at school at least twice in the past two months rose from 4 per cent in 2002 to almost 10 per cent in 2006, while the percentage of 13 year olds being bullied rose from 5 per cent to 8.5 per cent over the same period.

The latest data from Growing up in Ireland, however, didn't only ask about bullying in school. It asked about bullying at any time in any place over the past year, so this, as well as the longer time frame during which the bullying may have occurred, might go some way to explain the differences in the findings.

O’Moore says what is critical is how the children perceived the bullying. Almost 90 per cent of children in the latest study reported they felt upset as a result of it. “If they can’t engage as a result, it will take away from optimal learning,” she says.

She says a national whole school approach to bullying should be put in place to minimise the problem.

This approach, which involves parents, teachers and children being made aware of the problem and of what to do about it, has reduced bullying levels considerably in Scandinavia, she points out.

“We have wonderful schools in Ireland, but there are schools that are running away from it and they don’t want to know,” she adds.