What are your thoughts on these research findings regarding bullying among school-aged adolescents (details inside)?

Why would anyone be surprised these findings? The motivation for calling people names is hatred and meanness. Any time anyone is a target of any sort of aggression or hatred it’s going to make them anxious and depressed, and they will not want to go to the environment where this type of targeting takes place.

Children don’t “just get over it” because they’re children. It’s internalized and will mar them for life.

I don’t think it is about homosexuality. I think it is about the connotations of the epithet.

All bullying is wrong and horrible. It is not handled at all well by our society.

It should be nipped in the bud early so it never even occurs in high school.

It doesn’t matter what type of bullying it is, it is not something to condone and nobody deserves it in their life in any form whatsoever. I am not surprised by these findings and I’m glad that efforts are being made to look into and stop this with this bully intervention program.

Bullying is just plain wrong no matter what kind it is.

People have always called names, both as kids and adults, to cause lasting damage. There is nothing whatsoever surprising about this.

I might have skimmed the article too fast, but do we know if the child in the examole is gay? I know he said back he isn’t. People on this Q might jump on me for this, but I think if the chikd himself is gay, or thinks he might the effects of this tease/bullying is much more damaging. Children do, unfortunately, still throw around the term gay to mean all sorts of things. From what I can tell, as a 43 old adult who knows many gay people, and many straight people, the gay people are the ones who have held onto this specific type of name calling in their psyche, they seem more permanently affected, less able in adulthood to put it in the past. I am not a psycologist, and this is not based on any study I have read, just my own deduction, which could be completely invalid. A family member of mine, when he came out in his late 30’s, his sister and mother felt horrible about all of times they had teased him when he was younger, that his shoes looked gay, or some other thing that he was doing. At the time they were totally clueless he might be gay, it was just a term they through around, teasing him, but for him, since he needed to hide is sexual preference, he was terrified all of the time that people could just tell. He worried about everything, how he talked, looked, everything about himself. During childhood and adolescence, of course it matters to most all children to feel accepted, not to feel like an outsider, and no one wants to feel lonely.

As people have said above, any type of behavior like this is bullying, wrong, and mean. Nothing about the behavior is positive, nothing.

I specifically remember being very young, maybe 7, and I was with some girls, and they started teasing and picking on Elizabeth. My mom saw what was going on, stopped everyone, and on the way home told me that it was not nice. I was just kind of following along with these other girls, I honestly don’t think I would ever come up with being mean to Elizabeth on my own, we used to play together, she was a little younger than me. But, on that day I learned to put myself into the other girls place, and that it was simply unnacceptable behavior.

I see this with other children. Children who I think would never bully, go along with friends to be popular, stuff like that. I think having the conversation at a very young age about bullying not being tolerated seems to be necessary. Even better coupled with helping others, and treating everyone as individuals and equal.

@klutzaroo, to a certain extent, kids have always been called names, but not to the level of maliciousness and meanness that it’s escalated to. And frankly, just because “kids have always been called names” does not make the the right thing to do, then or now. If thousands of people have been doing something injurous to another person, it doesn’t make it right just because it’s been going on for years, or that a lot of people do it.

It’s not right for kids—or anyone, but especially kids, because that’s where it’s entrenched as “okay”—to call another person, “gay”, “retard”, the N-word, “homo”, “lard ass”, “white trash”, or a whole litany of other labelling names that either erroneously label a person. Words are just words, but the venom behind them is not something to be encouraged.

You do not move society forward by looking backward to where it’s been, and trying to replicate it.

@BarnacleBill Did I say “kids have always been called names and that’s ok?” No, I did not. I said it wasn’t surprising that names have the power to cause damage, people have known that for as long as there was language to call names in. Please read my statement before commenting further and attempting to call me out on something I did not say.