Hellobee Boards

Being picked on and bullied is the same thing in my book. A bully goes out of their way to be mean to the same person or people.

Mean: your kid comes out to recess last and is told there are enough players in a game and he can't play. (It would have been nice if the kids made room for one more)

Bullied: Your kid is always picked last for team games, and the other kids consistently run away or exclude. It's evident to your kid that others do not like him and he's being treated differently.

I usually think of bullies as being very manipulative to have power or control over someone - like I'm going to beat you up if you don't give me your lunch, or hazing that uses strength in numbers to say you can't be part of the sports team unless you do this unlawful/humiliating thing, or using social status to start a smear campaign to socially isolate someone else.

More than just being mean - but forcing the person into bad situations that are relatively out of their control.

Meanness happens so early in kids and all kids probably experiment with being mean to others to some degree. I think it's important to help kids maintain a strong sense of self and be able to deal with meanness to an extent without feeling like a victim.

@mrbee: good point, never saw it that way.

I tend to think of bullying as intentional and directed at the same person over an extended period of time.

Not making room in your game for another kid = mean

Purposely excluding the same kd every day = bullying

I feel like bullying is the persistent mean behavior from one kid to another (or group of kids to another). Whereas just mean behavior is infrequent or not targeted towards a specific person.

I had people be mean to be growing up, but I never felt bullied.

There is actually a legal definition of bullying in schools:

Bullying is 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. Both kids who are bullied and who bully others may have serious, lasting problems.

I think being mean is being a bully.

@Anagram: agree with the persistence. Kids are mean, period. When it becomes persistent, then it's bullying. Someone doesn't have to keep targeting the same person to be a bully. But to be bullied it would be coming from the same person/group.

Ugh so sad that it starts so young. I still don't know what's worse from the parent standpoint. Being the parent of a bully or child being bullied.

Being mean happens once, maybe twice - either intentional or unintentional. But bullying is maliciously and constantly picking on a particular person.

All of the responses are really interesting, and I agree that bullying probably has more of a targeted aspect to it.

We had a situation at our daycare where my son was often in conflict with one particular boy, and only that boy (and none of the other boys were usually involved). From what the teachers said, my son was rarely the instigator. The mean kid/bully was younger and physically smaller than my son, but the teacher mentioned they often had power conflicts. I never got a lot of information from the teacher, which was very frustrating, but the boy changed schools at the start of the school year and I haven't had any reports about that kind of behavior since.