Troubled Teen Help Directory

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Learn about why fat camps don’t work and why the new healthy weight loss camps are so much more effective. more >>

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Featured Programs

Turn-About Ranch

Turn-About Ranch is a high-impact adolescent therapy program on a working horse and cow ranch that emphasizes family values and relationships. This residential treatment program, located Escalante, Utah, accepts boys and girls between the ages of 12 to 18. Turn-About Ranch offers academics and equine assisted therapy.

About Bullying

Social scientists learned about bullying as they researched school shootings. Students who went on shooting sprees were often victims of bullying whose feelings of rage, helplessness and fear built up over a long period and exploded in a massacre.

Research also proves that bullying is much more common than adults believe. One study by the National Education Association indicates that every seven minutes of every school day a student is a victim of bullying.

Most bullying occurs "under the radar" with victims suffering in silence and making concessions to their tormentors. Nevertheless, most teachers think they are on top of the situation. Bullying often occurs off-campus or in unstructured settings such as recess, cafeterias, corridors, and locker rooms. It peaks in middle school.

Race, religion, income level, and parents' divorce status are not risk factors for bullying; having attention deficit disorder or an aggressive personality is. Girls bully as often as boys do, but boys are three times more likely to attack their victims physically. Female bullying usually takes the form of social exclusion, gossip, and verbal abuse. Cyberbullying is about abusive text messages or nasty posting on Internet social networks like MySpace.

All bullies lack empathy and social skills, crave attention, and do not accept responsibility for their behaviors. About 40% of bullies are victims themselves of bullying at home or school. The theory is that when such a child sees a peer acting afraid and cowering, it reminds him of his own sense of helplessness and triggers a rage.

Bullies invariably look for victims who are easy prey -- "loners" or children in special education classes.

If your child is a victim of bullying, work through school authorities and police and not the bully's parents, who may be unstable and violent themselves. Make your moves so as not to call attention to your child. Don't be surprised if authorities tell you something is wrong with your child even though bullying is never the victim's fault. You may to protect your child on the bus and playground until the bullying stops.

Many parents remove their child from school because the consequences of bullying are just too much of a risk to their child's safety.

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