Identification and Understanding of Bullying by Parents

Bullying has been widely researched as a serious issue among adolescents and the behavior seems to increase during middle school years (Cook, Williams, Guerra, Kim & Sadek, 2010). However, there is limited research on parents and how effectively they can identify and understand bullying, especially relational or indirect bullying that most often occurs among girls. Parents have been identified as one of the main resources available for deterring bullying behavior (Salmavalli, 2001). Parents' identification and understanding of bullying as a problem will be investigated using vignettes. The first vignette is an indirect bullying situation between girls according to the definition of bullying provided by Olweus (1993). The second vignette is an example of what may be considered "normal childhood teasing", however, it does not fall into the definition of bullying. Results showed that only 40.5% of parents identified the behaviors in vignette 1 as bullying. However, 93% correctly identified vignette 2 as nonbullying. The current study indicates that parents may lack clear understanding of how relational or indirect bullying among girls has a significant impact on their well-being.