“Developmental Trajectories of Bullying and Associated Factors”
Students who bully their classmates also tend to have lots of conflicts with parents, friends, and others, says a study published in the March-April issue of the journal Child Development.
Researchers from York University in Toronto and Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, interviewed 871 Canadian children each year from ages 10 to 18. While most admitted to occasional bullying, nearly a tenth were chronic bullies. Another 13.4 percent said they regularly harassed their peers in elementary school, but stopped in high school.
Debra Pepler, a psychologist at York and a lead author of the study, said that instead of focusing on bullies’ problematic social skills, educators and counselors should broaden their efforts to address all the unhealthy relationships in the lives of young bullies.
