Bullying is definitely an epidemic in our nation that causes people to do horrible acts that either end their life or result in a major act of violence. Bullying is defined as “unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time." From my experience, bullying is a problematic issue in our country and needs to be addressed as a problem. A friend of mine has a younger sister who is in the eighth grade and is being bullied at her school just because she is a little more mature overall than your average eighth grader and gets to play varsity sports. This is causing her to get called very demeaning names and the bullies have even taken to social media to pick on her. She has to change schools for high school because the school is completely ignoring the situation and has done nothing to help my friend’s sister.

I also read an article the other day about a women who when she was in middle school had a rival female student. They danced together, competed for the best grades and played the same instruments. The women thought that would lead them to be best friends but instead the other girl got the whole grade to start ignoring this women and pretend like she wasn’t even there. Though at the end of the article the women said when she was in college she ran into the girl that bullied her and the girl apologized and said she did it because she was always jealous of this women. I also like to think that’s why those girls pick on my friend’s sister because they are jealous she gets to play varsity sports, which she is very good at, and she is more mature than them. Bullying though is just not because people are jealous of you and just wants to be mean, but bullies can come out of things that people are scared of or don’t understand, such as the article in the textbook on page 449. In that article, it goes on to list about five young men who took their lives because they were harassed for being gay. This happens because being homosexual is very different than most of us are brought up knowing about. Is it ok to make fun of people who are homosexual? Not at all. Probably one of the worst things you can do is to make fun of someone for their religion, sexuality, and race/ethnicity. Everyone is different and no one should be bullied for their differences.

There are many websites out there to help support those that are being bullied or have been bullied. Some interventions that I feel would be good to address and control the bullying behavior is by having family therapy. Many people who are bullies have issues with-in themselves or issues at home. Also, by having the family therapy the family can work on changing the behavior of the bully and come to a conclusion to why the child needs to pick on other students. The schools also need to be held accountable if they do not take control of the bullying issue. School officials and staff members should be made to go to workshops and meetings to learn about bullying and how to control it in the schools. Then schools should hold workshops for the students on how to accept everyone. The best thing to control bullying is to make sure people can be accepting of each other and to make sure students have good self-esteem. Bad self-esteem can lead students to feel jealous of another student and then that leads them to bully that student.