Hi, today I'm going to be talking about one of the problems in our society which is bullying. I'll be doing this by asking and answering questions, but before that, I’ll start off with a quote.

As Demi Lavato once said, “ People say sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you, but that’s not true. Words can hurt. They hurt me. Things were said to me that I still haven’t forgotten.” This quote represents how words can hurt humans. and as they grow older, those words will still stay in their heads. They will still remember those rude things they were called.

So, “ How does bullying impact a child’s brain and development?

Well to answer that, I'll start off with a fact. 

not all wounds are visible. This means that not only can humans have pain outside of their body, but they could also have it inside of them as well, but seeing pain inside a person is more difficult than seeing it outside.

 Bullying can impact a child's brain mentally. It can cause them to make poor choices due to stress like skipping school or taking drugs. Bullying can impact a child's development by giving them developing issues. For example, self-harming ( like suicide, ) lower self-esteem, trouble focusing on work, failing grades, and disorders like depression or anxiety.

Now to the main question, What is bullying? 

Here’s a fun fact, 160,000 students chose to skip school due to getting bullied

I’m pretty sure we all know what bullying is nowadays but if you had to explain it in words, would you be able to? Well, I'll explain what Bullying is with my own personal story of mine.

 This occurred when I was in the 2nd grade. I was in my classroom sitting at my desk while doing my work. And there was this boy at my table telling jokes and stuff. And because I actually liked his jokes and thought they were funny, I wasn’t really focusing on my work. I was just listening to the jokes and laughing with the rest of the people sitting at my table as well. But then the boy making the jokes looked at me with a confused face and asked me “ hey you, how come your skin is like that?” That's when everyone turned their eyes to me which made me uncomfortable. And I was just sitting there wondering how I was even supposed to answer a question like that. And then he starts criticizing all of my body parts like my legs, arms, face, hair, skin. Saying that my skin would look better if it were a little lighter and that I had such big lips and legs. And after he said all that he was the only one laughing and everyone was quiet, not saying a single word. I didn’t know what to do after hearing that, so I just ignored him and went back to doing my work while holding back tears. But after that period was over, I decided to tell my teacher all the things that boy said to me and the teacher got angry at him and sent him and me to the principal’s office. I had to call my parents and tell them about everything that happened.  Though I didn’t get in trouble, only the boy did. And after all that, when the boy sat at my table in class, he didn’t talk to me anymore.

Now on to the 2nd question, How does bullying look like today?

  Today,  bullying comes in many forms like physically, verbally, cyber, and relational. An example of physical bullying would be punching, kicking, spitting, or hitting someone. An example of verbal bullying would be someone using cruel words, name-calling, or scary threats to another person so that they will be scared and hurt. An example of Cyberbullying is scrolling through the comments of a Youtube video and stopping at one comment that seems to be making fun of the creator of that video. Another example would be posting