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Friday, March 9, 2001

"Most adults don't realize how damaging bullying and torment from peers can be for a teen-ager," Dr. Ken Condrell, a Buffalo, N.Y., child and family psychologist, told United Press International.

"Adults are not acknowledging how painful it is for a teen to be rejected and not valued by peers. It can be relentless cruelty."

In fact, many psychologists agree that well-adjusted adults could not take the day-to-day abuse that many children and teens receive. While adults can change jobs or move from neighborhoods, children are often stuck.

"Talking With Kids About Tough Issues," a survey released Thursday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Nickelodeon, asked 1,249 parents of children ages 8 to 15 and 823 children ages 8 to 15 about their problems and if they sort them out by talking to each other.

Seventy-four percent of 8- to 11-year-olds say teasing and bullying occur at their school, more than smoking or drinking or drugs or sex. As kids get older – 12- to 15-year-olds were a separate group in the survey – the number rises to 86 percent, still higher than substance abuse or sex. Both age groups called the teasing and bullying "big problems" that rank higher than racism, AIDS, the pressure to have sex or to try alcohol or drugs.

According to the Department of Education, bullying contributes to a climate of fear and intimidation in schools. Students ages 12 through 18 were asked if they had been bullied – picked on or made to do things they did not want to do – at school. In 1999, about 5 percent of students ages 12 through 18 reported that they had been bullied at school in the last six months.

In general, females were as likely as males to report being bullied. And there were few differences among racial/ethnic groups in the percentage of students who reported being bullied. But students in lower grades were more likely to be bullied than students in higher grades.

Condoned by Adults

Often bullying or teasing is done in the presence of an adult and the adult does nothing. While that has been going on for decades, according to Charles Ewing, author of "Kids Who Kill Kids" and a forensic psychologist and law professor, "adults should not tolerate teasing, mocking and hurtful behavior of children towards other children. They should intervene."

Wesley Mitchell, police chief of the Los Angeles Unified School System's police force, told UPI that it was critical to stop bullying, because "violence is a continuum, and we want to get ahead of the curve so that violence does not escalate."

"Bullying is a major issue for kids, and my officers will stop it when they see it and investigate it when it's reported to them," said Mitchell. "Students should not be subjected to a gauntlet of abuse when changing classes."

In 1998, students ages 12-18 were victims of more than 2.7 million total crimes at school, according to the Department of Education. The students were victims of about 253,000 serious violent crimes at school: rape, sexual assault, robbery and aggravated assault. There were also 60 violent deaths involving U.S. schools between July 1, 1997, and June 30, 1998, including 47 homicides.

The Los Angeles school system has had its own separate uniformed police force since 1948. Until the mid-1960s, retired or reserve officers patrolled the schools in the off-hours so that the school system could get a break on insurance rates.

In the mid-1960s, trained and uniformed officers were assigned to the school to combat civil unrest. It grew from there to combat gang violence and now is a 250-member uniformed and armed police force that can make arrests within the school, Mitchell said.

While many urban school districts have some type of police presence that provides some security and counseling, the Los Angeles police force system has evolved into something much more.

The officers in all the schools are involved with the students in class and in the hallways, talking with them and counseling them. They are often the only positive adult relationship a child has, said Mitchell. In many ways, Mitchell's police force acts as the community did 30 years ago: Adults are involved with children and look out for them.

"We think our job is to shepherd children from cradle to industry," Mitchell said. "We can't expect a student to sit through and focus on algebra when he or she is plotting how to get to the next class safely or how to get home without incident."

Los Angeles also has one of the more sophisticated systems to deal with potential school violence.

Its "threat management" program investigates every reported threat. For example, students are urged to tell teachers of any threats of violence. The teacher can then recommend that the student making the threat talk to a trained counselor to determine the reality of the threat and to counsel and work with the child.

Police officers can then be called in to determine if weapons are available in the home and to speak with the parents.

"The main reason this system works is because our kids know that when they report something, the adults involved won't overreact and that the child making the threat will not be punished or suspended from school but will be helped," Mitchell said.

Contributing to the Shootings

While there have always been violent teens, many experts point to four things that contribute to the mass shootings: easy access to guns, a culture of violence, increased mental health problems and the breakdown of the family and community.

The Secret Service, the federal agency responsible for protecting the president, did a study on all mass school shootings starting in 1997.

"One thing the Secret Service found was that every single one of the students that brought a weapon to school and used it had thought of the event in advance and had told someone else," Mitchell said.

"It's not rocket science to figure out who these unhappy kids are," Ewing agreed.

Dr. Condrell is working with the school systems in western New York to assist teachers, counselors and administrators in identifying troubled children before negative behaviors escalate, and will soon have an 80-question checklist of behaviors that teachers can use to help evaluate whether intervention is needed.

The California-based National Center for School Safety said that while metal detectors can keep weapons out of schools, they are not foolproof and are unpopular with schools, students and parents. There has to be a people-to-people approach in identifying and intervening with troubled teens, it says.

A Mental Illness Crisis Among the Young?

Many experts said that there was a national mental illness crisis in children and that there is an increasing incidence of severely depressed children, children with post-traumatic stress syndrome and even schizophrenia.

"Last week we could not find a bed anywhere for a student that needed to be evacuated for schizophrenia," Mitchell said.

Many children also have serious attachment problems and others are brain damaged from poor prenatal care, drug and alcohol abuse.

"Children need two parents who can nurture, provide and protect them and that takes maturity, and too many children have fathers who have abandoned them," said Condrell, the author of "Wimpy Parents: From Toddler to Teen – How Not to Raise a Brat."

"That rejection can cause a lifetime of hurt that never goes away."

In an effort to stem shooting rampages in schools, states are now requiring that schools create emergency plans for mass shootings or bombings.

New York passed a law last year requiring each school district to create an emergency plan for any extraordinary situation, including student violence. State officials told UPI that they hope that because the comprehensive plans require the participation of educators, parents, police and other members of the community, "at least they will begin a dialogue."

"The thing is, once you start dealing with the nitty-gritty of planning how to deal with a student bombing a school, the whole thing takes on a surreal quality," a state official said.

"It's like planning a home bomb shelter during the Cold War; you start thinking that you can't store enough water for nuclear holocaust so you better start dealing with problems because once a plan is put into action it's too late."

Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

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