TORONTO, March 27 (UPI) -- Children who bully tend to be aggressive, lack a moral compass and experience a lot of conflict with their parents and friends, Canadian researchers said.
Lead author Debra Pepler of York University and Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto calls bullying "a relationship problem" and that children who bully have relationships marked by a lot of conflict.
The York University and Queens University researchers looked at 871 students -- 466 girls and 405 boys -- for seven years from ages 10 to 18 and each year asked them about their involvement in bullying or victimizing behavior, their relationships and other positive and negative behaviors.
The study, published in the journal Child Development, said almost one-tenth of the students said they engaged in consistently high levels of bullying from elementary school through high school. Some 13.4 percent said they bullied at relatively high levels in elementary school but dropped to almost no bullying by the end of high school. Some 35 percent said they bullied peers at moderate levels and 42 percent almost never reported engaged in bullying.
"Bullying is a relationship problem that requires relationship solutions by focusing on the bullying children's strained relationships with parents and risky relationships with peers," Pepler said in a statement.
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