ABSTRACT

While some voices in recent years have spoken up to challenge the safety-first culture surrounding children today, drawing attention to the problem of raising a generation of cosseted, ‘cotton wool’ kids and arguing the need for children to be able to take more physical risks, one rarely hears any objection to the notion that children increasingly need to be protected from the ‘emotional risks’ posed to them by their peers in the form of bullying. In this respect the old adage ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones /

But words will never hurt me’ has been turned on its head. Some may concede that kids today could do with a few more broken bones, if this allows them the freedom to climb trees or play conkers; but the notion that children can be damaged for life as a result of insults hurled at them by their fellow pupils has become accepted as common

sense. Consequently, the raft of behavioural codes that now regulate playground behaviour, and the increasingly interventionist role of adults in children’s disputes, is seen as a necessary and humane development. But the anti-bullying crusade has its own problems. The most ser-

ious is that children’s relationships with other children are assumed to be damaging, and children are tacitly encouraged to look upon their peers with trepidation and suspicion. As more and more forms of behaviour are labelled as ‘bullying’ more and more children become labelled as ‘bullies’ or ‘victims’. Today children are pushed to look upon their everyday encounters

with their friends or enemies through the prism of potential violence and abuse, and encouraged to seek help from teachers or other adults. This leads to a situation where children can become unwilling to, and incapable of, resolving their own problems with their peers: a process that damages children’s development, and their relationships with each other, far more than the odd stone thrown or insult shouted.