Profiling children who may become bullies helps us put
strategies in place to prevent bullying, and to help them change
their behaviour for the future. It enables us to look beyond
punitive measures to positive behaviour support (skip to slide 4
in this presentation for comparison of the two approaches).
Children at risk of becoming bullies There seems to be much more
research focused on the victims of bullying, and strategies for
dealing with bullying – which I suppose is understandable.
However, the research that I have found about the
characteristics of bullies has pointed to factors such as family
environment, personality traits, behaviour patterns, social
status and victimisation as contributors to children becoming
bullies. Another interesting statistic reported by Wyld (2006)
is that children who bully when they are 14 are also likely to
still be engaging in that behaviour at age 18 and 32. So how can
we change this? Behaviour traits that increase the chances that
children will bully others Carter and