The Role of Emotional Regulation in Addressing Bullying and Victimization
This essay focuses specifically on the role that emotional regulation plays in managing maladaptive reactions by children towards their peers and others. In the ‘Anti-bullying Plan for Schools’, produced by the NSW Department of Education and Training (NSW DET, 2007), bullying is defined as, “intentional, repeated behaviour by an individual or group of individuals that causes distress, hurt or undue pressure” (p. 6). The victims of bullying are the recipients of this repeated behaviour. In a report on ‘Emotions in Social Information Processing and Their Relations with Reactive and Proactive Aggression in Referred Aggressive Boys’, Orobio de Castro, Merk, Koops, Veerman and Bosch (2005) define emotion regulation as, “…attempts to control, modify, and manage the experience and expression of emotions” (p. 106). This essay explores the role of emotional regulation in addressing bullying and victimisation, the need to resolve any external contributing factors to the development of maladaptive emotional regulation, the importance of educating both parents or caregivers and teachers to effectively support and teach adaptive, emotion regulation strategies to children, and the need for early, united intervention programs for children experiencing behavioural difficulties. This essay argues that breaking the cycle of bullying and victimisation requires a joint effort from parents or caregivers, teachers and children to support, teach and implement adaptive emotional regulation techniques. Bullying can be verbal, physical, social or psychological (NSW DET, 2007). Often bullies exhibit tendencies towards aggressive, domineering behaviour aimed at exerting power over others (Shields & Cicchetti, 2001). Orobio de Castro, et al. (2005) argue that in self-report questionnaires dealing with hypothetical situations, aggressive boys are more inclined than non-aggressive boys to attribute hostile intent to the actions of others. On the other hand, victims of bullies tend to