Imagine! You are in a hospital bed. You open your eyes, you see scars, cuts, and stitches all over you. You wonder how it happened or who did it because you can’t remember too much at that moment. So, let's go back to what you do remember, you remember you were walking home from a difficult day of school. Next, you remember hearing loud running behind you. Could it be a stalker but not in this scenario. Could it be a police officer obviously not because you haven't committed a crime? Have you been bullied? But it's too late now so when you turn around your punched and severely injured. You are unable to move until someone calls an ambulance. My name is Vanessa and I will talk “How can you defend yourself when being bullied”. So, let's go back to when I said a bully, approached you. Let me define who a bully is, a bully is someone who is intentionally on a daily basis being mean or rude to you by 3 specific ways. First, cyber bullying; which is bullying online. Second, verbal bullying; bullying using words or threats to intentionally hurt someone’s feelings. Third, physical bullying; using physical actions to hurt someone. How can you defend yourself against bullying! Well, I have 4 options for that.
 

 First, be confident.  You do not want the bully to think you are a person with low self-esteem. Instead be brave, bold, and serious. To show you are the wrong person to mess around with. 

 Second, confront the bully. You do not want to encourage the bully to continue to do or say nasty things to you otherwise there is a 99% chance the bullying won't stop. So, say out loud in a bold voice, stop or leave me alone! If the bully can’t understand, tell an adult you trust and they(adult), will tell the bully to stop plus with a consequence of their actions.

Third, walk away. If you are getting stressed out and you feel that you can’t deal anymore with the bullies behavior. You don’t need to hear what the bully has to say about you, just walk away and depending on what they said the best is to tell.

 Fourth, this should be the first thing you do if you feel confident enough, report the bullies behavior to either your parents, police or an adult you trust. These people have all respect for your rights. You are the victim and they can’t hold a grudge against you. So, just tell them and they will do the rest for you and you can sleep in peace without waking up and knowing that the bully is waiting to bully you at school because it has been taken care of.

Have you wondered what is the logic behind bullying? Since there is no benefit from bullying. Then why do people do it? Normally the bully would want attention or they might have as well been a victim of bullying too.. But, instead of just standing there show the bully what’s right to do and they could lose their reputation of bullying.

 Do you think a small group of kids get bullied? Well, I have that proved wrong with these statistics. Every 7 minutes a child in Canada is physically or verbally bullied. 4% of parents and adults intervene. 11% are peers and friends that do something. Whereas 85% of Canada’s population do nothing at all. 19% of Middle and high school students are bullied on school property, 14.9% of students are cyber bullied, 15.1% of students are verbally bullied. 51% of students are physically bullied and 3.2 million kids are victims that commit suicide each year from bullying.