Relational Aggression and Bullying

Ooh , those are things we should never , ever say when students are experiencing interpersonal conflicts , because the truth is that one out of every five students has reported being bullied , and 41% of those students who reported that they were being bullied indicated they thought the bullying would happen again . They thought the bullying would happen again and even worse .

When the US Department of Education conducted a national survey in 2022 , they found that 100% of students reported experiencing , witnessing or being aware of bullying during that single school year . And in all of this , only 44% of students reported notifying a trusted adult . Y'all , we have got some work to do in the world of relational aggression and bullying .

In the world of relational aggression and bullying and I will bet this time of year especially you are experiencing these very concerns on your campus . In today's educational world , relational aggression in schools is a huge concern and , unlike physical bullying ,

relational aggression is subtle . It has behaviors aimed at damaging a student's social relationships or their reputation , and when we add that to the rise of cyberbullying among students . We realize we have some very unique challenges in our work , because we have to address these behaviors while still supporting students' emotional well-being .

That's what we're talking about in this week's episode of the School for School Counselors podcast . Hey there , I'm Steph Johnson . I'm a full-time school counselor , just like you , on a mission to make school counseling more sustainable and more enjoyable .

I've been working in public school buildings for almost 30 years now and I can tell you there has not been one single year when I haven't heard about multiple instances of bullying .

It's been going on for a long time , but it feels like it is becoming more and more of an urgent concern with students' access to devices , not only the ones they're bringing from home , but the devices that schools are now providing for them . Relational aggression is tricky . When students try to harm one another's social standing or damage relationships .

It can be devastating . It might look like social exclusion , where an aggressor deliberately engineers a student out of group activities . It might look like spreading rumors to tarnish a student's reputation , and that's even more insidious , again with these devices that students now have access to .

It could even look like the silent treatment where one or more students ignores another to make them feel like they are completely on their own . This stuff can add up to some huge emotional distress and , if it's not caught and dealt with , can also impact a student's academic performance and their mental health right .

A student's academic performance and their mental health right , because who wants to go into a building where you feel like you're being made the enemy each and every day ? As I said , cyberbullying is rising . My goodness , I think if I had it my way , we would have a moratorium on these cell phones in the schools , but then again y'all .

I don't know about you , but a lot of the online cyberbullying situations that I'm seeing and hearing about are carryovers from things that are happening at home , out in the community , things that are not happening at school , but the fallout carries over into the school building and so we're trying to put out fires that we had nothing to do with in the first

place , and that is really frustrating . Typically in cyberbullying you're going to see things like harassing messages , right , threatening or mean text messages or emails or communication that's just ugly . Or emails or communication that's just ugly . Public shaming , where students post embarrassing content about somebody else online .

Sometimes they create fake profiles to post this information . It's so concerning , and because the internet provides anonymity , that just emboldens the bullies right

, they feel like they can get away with anything because they're never going to get caught and let's be real , often they're not . And even if they are , it takes quite a bit of work to dig down to where it's coming from when students experience relational aggression and cyberbullying . I mentioned emotional distress , right .

Feeling anxious about going to school , I certainly would Feeling some having feelings of depression or compromised self-esteem , academic decline , not only poor academic performance , but just decreased participation in anything . Who wants to raise their hand or put themselves out there when they know that the enemy is lurking just around the corner .

And that leads to social withdrawal , avoiding social interactions altogether , not participating in extracurricular activities , and so it is crucial that we are able to recognize these things so that we can appropriately intervene .

We can provide the bridge between the students and the staff and the families to make sure that our relational aggression interventions are strategic , that they're developmentally appropriate for students and that they're based on everyone's social emotional needs . One thing that we can do is help teach students about conflict resolution .

This could be small groups or it could be classroom lessons about recognizing manipulative behaviors . We can teach students the difference between setting boundaries and excluding someone . That's a big one . Or we can help students engage in role-playing exercises where they can practice communicating assertively and resolving conflicts effectively .

I love the book series Weird Tough Dare . I think it is a really cool glimpse into all of the different viewpoints of relational aggression , and I believe those books are still available on Amazon .

I find myself using those quite a bit , and that's saying something , because I don't do a lot of bibliotherapy , so you need to pick those up if you don't have them already . We can also provide a safe space for reporting these kinds of relational aggression space for reporting these kinds of relational aggression .

Lots of kids are afraid to report this stuff because they do not want to become the next target or they do not want to make their own situation worse . We can help by creating some confidential reporting systems . Maybe we have an anonymous form , maybe we have check-ins for students that we're worried about . Maybe we have a locked Dropbox somewhere on campus .

It doesn't matter what the system is , as long as it's confidential and it's easily accessible . Students don't have to go out of their way or be seen utilizing it .

I've tried these in my school counseling programs with great success , and the cool thing about them was they often alerted me to issues that were brewing before I could see them , and so it allowed us to get a jump on it before things got out of control .

Out of control , we can also provide some judgment-free spaces to let kids process these experiences , to help them in developing their own coping strategies so that they're able to handle things as we're working this situation out , and so these safe spaces that we are uniquely equipped to provide are going to be like gold .

We can also collaborate with teachers to see if we can identify some of these patterns . We are typically not with the students all day , we don't see all the things going on , but these teachers a lot of them are really good on picking up on some of these patterns . They can be subtle .

So we need to make sure that we train staff on the warning signs of relational aggression . If we see a student suddenly withdraw socially or their friend groups start changing erratically , that might be a warning sign . If teachers alert us , we can start tracking behaviors .

We can start establishing relationships so that we can identify when an intervention might need to be deployed before everything reaches a boiling point , deployed before everything reaches a boiling point and that proactive piece I think is so important in situations of relational aggression and then just supporting students who have been targeted .

We can help the victims rebuild their confidence , rebuild their social connections . Rebuild their confidence , rebuild their social connections . We might need to help them rediscover what makes them amazing Working on self-concept , what makes you you , what makes you awesome , and re-establishing some of the social connections they might have lost along the way .

Sponsored lunch opportunities , small counseling groups I use that term loosely where we're just coming together for camaraderie . Those approaches are really discounted by a lot of people on our campuses . That's where we get a lot of the comments like oh , you just play games with students in your office all day .

That's probably what it looks like to a lot of people . But we know the mechanisms of what we're doing , we know why we're choosing these things and so it's going to be okay . It made me laugh . The other day . I saw a post in a principal's Facebook group and one principal was acting like they had just discovered gold .

Facebook group and one principal was acting like they had just discovered gold . They said you know what I did ? I pulled one of my troublemakers into my office and I invited them to challenge me in a game of Uno and y'all . That was one of the best experiences . It allowed me to talk with this kid when they weren't in trouble .

It allowed me to establish a relationship with them . It was just the best thing ever . Everyone needs to invest $10 to put a deck of Uno cards in their principal's office and y'all . I laughed out loud and it took everything in me to not comment on that post and say please tell me , how do you see your school counselor on your campus ?

Would you give them a hard time if you saw them playing a game of Uno with students ? Because a lot of administrators don't understand what we're doing . Now it's up to us to educate them . We have to build the confidence and the clout on our campus to be able to have those conversations

. But it can be done . It just made me laugh . They just acted like they had discovered some sort of secret trick that no one knew about . We can also encourage students to join some structured activities , some extracurriculars , clubs or teams where they can find some newer and more supportive friendships .

And , of course , we can offer that one-on-one counseling right for students who are recovering from relational aggression . But I think it's important that we keep our eyes open . Eyes open when 16% of high school students report being bullied electronically in the past year , we know we have a problem .

Yet , on the bright side , school-based bullying prevention programs have been shown to decrease relational aggression by almost 25% . This is huge . This is where we need to be among all the many , many other places we need to be on our campus . We definitely need to have an eye toward relational aggression on our campuses .

We can't ignore it and pretend like it's not happening , because if we do that , it's going to explode right in front of our faces . We need to understand how relational aggression happens , both in person and online .

We need to understand the effects of that behavior and we need to know how we can help Through teaching , conflict resolution , creating safe reporting processes , collaborating with teachers and supporting students who have been targeted .

If we can deploy these multi-layered approaches , we are going to be able to change our school cultures , and that y'all is super exciting when you think about it . It just gets me jazzed to think about how we are positioned to make such a huge difference on our campus .

This is a short episode this week , but I just kind of wanted to get you thinking toward relational aggression and cyberbullying . I think so often it's just kind of dismissed by people on our campuses oh it's just kids being kids . Oh she's just a mean girl . Oh you just . You need to get over it . Go go play with someone else .

Those things don't work and we have to be ready to speak to that effect and to effectively advocate for our students . I mentioned last week I'm considering offering something called the Behavior Breakthrough Kit .

Let me tell you a little bit more about what I'm considering putting in this behavior breakthrough kit , because I want you to be prepared and to feel confident and competent with behavior intervention like relational aggression , cyber bullying in the moment , de-escalation , whatever your behavior situations may be .

Here's what I'm thinking of including in this behavior breakthrough kit . I would include my master class that I provided to my School for School Counselors , mastermind members , y'all . These master classes are deep dives . They're not your typical run-of-the-mill workshops where I just kind of show up and tell you things that you could have googled for yourself .

That's not how our master classes work . These are deep dive , perspective changing sessions that I guarantee are going to leave you looking at behavior intervention differently . So that's one . Secondly , I'm thinking about offering my behavior intervention playbook .

So this playbook is specially designed to eliminate the need for print and pray materials that might work but probably won't . Instead , I want to give you the evidence-based approaches that you need to be able to work through behavior concerns in real time .

You need to be able to work through behavior concerns in real time , and the cool thing about this is it can be repeated .

You don't need a resource every time something else pops up , and the more you work with it and practice with it , the more fluency you build , so that when your administrator says , hey , we have this issue with this kid , what do you think You're going to be able to pop off ideas at the drop of a hat , and that makes you look like a badass .

So we have the behavior masterclass , we have the behavior intervention playbook , and then I'm going to include a collection of my most popular behavior-oriented podcasts . But not only that .

Not only are you going to get to listen to those podcasts , you're going to get a written summary of each episode In case you don't have time to sit down and listen to them right away . You can read through the most

pertinent points quickly and easily . But you know what ? Let's not stop there , because I still think you need even more support , and sometimes sitting down and learning a bunch of stuff takes a back burner to the day-to-day , moment-to-moment activities that you're constantly engaged in . Right , our time is precious .

So what if I show you my brand new behavior intervention flow chart , so that , when you're presented with a concern , you don't have to guess what comes next . You can consult this flow chart and know exactly which direction to look in next ?

And then , to make it even better , what if I provided a decision-making tree for determining whether or not a student is truly a student that falls victim to dysregulation , or whether it's defiance ?

Now , be honest , you've probably had a couple of situations , if not more , where you wondered is this student truly dysregulated or are they playing me because they don't want to have to do what they're supposed to do ? I bet you've had some like that , and so have I , and so I developed a decision tree for determining what the best approach is going to be .

Y'all that is a lot of stuff , isn't it ? A masterclass , a step-by-step playbook , a podcast collection with summaries , a next steps flow chart and a decision-making tree , if you think this might be something that could help you in your work as a school counselor . I'm still feeling it out a little bit .

I want to make sure that this is something that school counselors can actually use . So if it sounds like something you need , I want you to join the waitlist .

You can either click on the link that I'm going to provide in the show notes of this episode , or you can go to our website , schoolforschoolcounselorscom , and if the waitlist is still up , it's going to be right at the top of the homepage .

Just click the link , enter your email and then you're going to be the first to know when this behavior breakthrough kit becomes available . I am all about you . I am all about your success .

I'm holding nothing back , because I truly believe that school counselors do some of the most important work on the planet , and I want you to feel like you have what you need . Beyond the silly printables , beyond the perfect world advice that everybody seems to be so ready to give you , I want to talk about what's really happening in the trenches .

So again , if you think this behavior breakthrough kit could be useful to you , head on over to schoolforschoolcounselorscom and hit the link at the top of the page . I love school counseling , but the one thing that I love more than that is supporting good school counselors , and I'm in your corner .

I'll be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast . In the meantime , my friend , I hope you have the best week . Take care .