Written By Cailtin – (Jamie’s Farm Youth Champion)
Lots of young people enjoy going to school, college or university, whether that’s to socialise with friends or to learn new skills, but 40% of young people experience bullying in some way, preventing them from having a good experience.
Anti-bullying Alliance Definition of Bullying
‘The repetitive, intentional hurting of one person or group by another person or group, where the relationship involves an imbalance of power. Bullying can be physical, verbal or psychological. It can happen face-to-face or online.’
There are lots of different types of bullying, but some of the main ones that young people experience are:
- Physical bullying
- Verbal bullying, including spreading gossip
- Cyberbullying, through social media or text messages
People have lots of different reasons for bullying, but it could be because they want to control others, improve their social status to make more friends or they could have low self-esteem and have not a lot of confidence in themselves.
When I was in school, I was bullied both in primary and secondary. A lot of the time it was because I was different to the other students. I wanted to learn and improve my grades so that’s what I focused on, the other students didn’t like this and called me the teacher’s pet. This made me feel upset and ashamed because I didn’t feel like I had done anything wrong to feel like this. My school helped as much as they could and would speak to the students. But I learnt to ignore it and not give the students the satisfaction, and eventually they got bored of calling me names.
When a young person experiences bullying, schools and colleges have an obligation to help and support the victims of bullying. These institutions should treat bullying as soon as these problems arise to prevent further issues, but sadly a lot of the time the bullying doesn’t stop there.
Schools and colleges should have support in place to help students, including having mentors and support staff designated to help with the emotional and physical stress that bullying has. They also should teach young people how to be kind and show empathy. These are usually taught in lessons such as PSHE and personal tutor (if you’re in secondary and in college). A lot of schools are now aware of bullying, this means when students and staff notice bullying, they can get the help sorted out quickly and they have the choice to stay anonymous if they want to. Schools often offer counselling to those where the bullying has affected them emotionally.
When young people visit Jamie’s Farm, they get to experience time away from school and college and time away from the bullying. At the farm, they do check-ins multiple times a day and individual activities. This allows the young person to talk to someone who isn’t part of the school or college network. The Jamies Farm staff can give the young people the coping skills to help them cope with any further bullying. Jamies Farm can also offer check-ins once the young people go back to school/ college if they feel they need it.
Once a young person returns to school/college things hopefully will be different and the bullying will stop but if they haven’t, these are my top tips to help cope with it:
- Tell a teacher or another member of staff as soon as possible
- Try and ignore it. This can be done in many ways such as on social media you can block the person or if it is in person you can walk away from the situation.
- If it’s your friendship group that’s bullying. You can try and find a new set of friends to hang out with.
- But also, if you see someone who is being bullied or looking sad, you can go up to them and see if they want to be part of your group
These tips worked well for me when I was being bullied in school.
If you feel like there’s no support around you, you can contact Childline.
This is a free support network that can help talk you through further tips to help with bullying or be the person you can talk to. You can contact them by using their website https://www.childline.org.uk
Or their phone number on 0800 1111
When using this site you stay anonymous and one body will know you are using it.
So please if you need help there are people around to help you.
