As mentioned in the article, Links Between Social Information Processing in Middle Childhood and Involvement in Bullying, bullying is a negative, intentional behavior (physical, verbal or psychological harassment) displayed by children towards their peers. It is repeated over time and implies an imbalance of power (Camodeca et al., 2003, p.6). Intimidation tends to involve three different groups of students: bullies, victims, and bystanders. Also, there exist several types of bullies, the most common is the aggressive bully, then the passive bully, and finally the bully-victim. These types of bullies differ from each other due to their unique characteristics. For example, the aggressive bully is always seen in typical situations, they tend to be physically strong, fearless, and confident. Unlike the aggressive bully, the passive bully often is seen as a more insecure individual, they have low self-esteem and live an unhappy life at home. The last type of bully, the bully-victim, is often rarely seen in a typical bullying situation. This type of bully is most likely to witness intimidation themselves and do this out of anger and revenge. Furthermore, some of the consequences of being bullied by another peer often lead to poor academic performance, depression, anxiety, and suicide. The book Life-Span Development by John W. Santrock states that bullied children reported
more loneliness and difficulty in making friends, while those who did the bullying were more likely to have low grades and to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol (p.322). Overall, bullying can be present in a physical situation, socially, verbally, and/or through cyberbullying. These four types of intimidations are the most commonly seen. Santrock also mentions that boys are more likely to be bullies than girls& (p.322). In a future bullying circumstance, we do not have to disregard who and how it will affect children in their middle and late childhood stage.
Nowadays bullying has been an immense problem around the world. It manifests the most in schools, where children have more interaction with other children. According to Dennis & Satcher (999), As universal experience, 5% to 20% of children will be victimized by bullies during their school years (pg.76). However, during the middle/late childhood stage where children are between six to 2 years of age, they have a high probability to experience bullying due to the cognitive and social development they are going through. According to Smith, Madsen & Moody (2006), younger children have not yet been socialized into understanding that you should not bully others (p.267). Children during middle and late childhood do not have the same understanding and have not yet developed the social skills to prevent and deal with it.