Not long ago, a team of researchers watched a 1-year-old boy take justice into his own hands. The boy had just seen a puppet show in which one puppet played with a ball while interacting with two other puppets. The center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the right, who would pass it back. And the center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the left . . . who would run away with it. Then the two puppets on the ends were brought down from the stage and set before the toddler. Each was placed next to a pile of treats. At this point, the toddler was asked to take a treat away from one puppet. Like most children in this situation, the boy took it from the pile of the “naughty” one. But this punishment wasn’t enough — he then leaned over and smacked the puppet in the head.

This is the beginning of a fascinating article from the NYT http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html

I have a bachelor’s degree in psych.  I’m fascinated by the whole nature/nurture debate in human behavior.  If the findings of these studies are correct, at what point and under what circumstances do people go from being cooperative and co-dependent beings?  What causes children to reject this and start to adopt bullying behaviors?

I’m sure most have heard about the 15 year old girl from South Hadley, Mass who committed suicide after enduring the bullying of a group of classmates for a prolonged time.  As Amy was a victim of bullying, I can only imagine the heartbreak of her family.  It is this parent’s worst nightmare.  We struggled so long to keep Amy going so she didn’t choose this option to end her torment.

Below is a link to an interesting article by Dr. Keith Ablow which sheds some light about how bullies choose their victims.  I found it very interesting and probably true in Amy’s case.  His theory is that they can somehow intuit sensitive kids who can be more vulnerable than others.  I know this is the case with Amy.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,590111,00.html

It’s funny, she has friends now who are trying to help her become stronger in sticking up for herself.  They’re trying to help her learn that she should confront those who disparage her at school.  One has even become her self-appointed body guard!

A Yale School of Medicine researcher is studying to see the causal effect of bullying and suicide attempts in children.  As this is what lead to Amy’s depression, I find this fascinating.

I’ve long suspected that this occurs more frequently than not.  The Columbine shooters singled out victims who were considered popular by high school standards.   Many other students who have carried out violent attacks also expressed similar feelings.

Here’s a link to the press release on the studies: http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=5913

A new study published  bythe Australian and New Zealand Journal  of Psychiatry has found a link between depression and being victimized by bullies.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35020704/ns/health-kids_and_parenting//

As a parent of a bullied victim and subsequent depressed teen, I am not surprised.  Amy’s problems began in 5th grade, when she was targeted by a group of boys and verbally degraded and harassed.  She spent the whole year putting up with it, never letting on at home, but it ate away at her.  She lost her self confidence and succumbed to their torments until she began to believe them.

We didn’t know about any of this.  Her withdrawal from family and social activities was put down to her approaching teen-hood.   We just figured that she was just being a usual teen and spending all of her time in her room.  It wasn’t until a few weeks before she was to start 6th grade that we started to suspect it was something else.  She would cry at the drop of the hat and moped around complaining that school was going to start.   A few weeks after the start of school, she made her suicide attempt.  We then found out about the bullying.

We did report it to the school.  The guidance counselor told us that this couldn’t be true, those were good Christian kids and they were part of his prayer group.  And no, it wasn’t a faith based school, it was a public school.  They were given a slap on the wrist.  We were left with a shattered child.

No, it’s not fair and schools need to keep up with new developments.  Her school guidance counselor was ill equipped for his job and probably shouldn’t be in his position. I didn’t have time to complain about his handling of the situation.  We were fighting for Amy’s life, literally, and we couldn’t fight two battles at once.