• Help the Victim!
    • Help the victim to develop positive connections with others. When choosing a victim, bullies typically target children who have few or no friends. If a childs has at lease one significant friend in school, he or she is less likely to be bullied - and is usually better able to cope with the effects fo bullyin when it occcurs. The teacher's goal, then, is to strengthen the social standing of the victim with classmates and other students and adults in the school. As people in the school community develop more positive connections with the victimized students, they may be willing to intervene to prevent the victim from being bullied.
    • Teach assertiveness skills.  After a victim has been repeatedly bullied, he or she may find it very difficult to 'stand up' to the bully. One explanations for the bully's power over the victim is that the bully has learned the victimized student's vulnerabilities. If the victim then starts to resist being bullied, the bully is emboldened to persistently attack the victim (e.g., through teasing, social ostracism, or physical harm) until the victim is again overwhelmed and defeted. At the point wher it has become chronic, bullying can be so ingrained that only decisive adult intervention can free the victim from this abusive relationship.