FACT: Bullying isn’t about resolving conflict; bullying is about control. 

• In conflict, children self-monitor their behavior and generally stop when they realize they are hurting someone.
• When bullying, children continue their behavior when they realize it is hurting someone, and are satisfied by a feeling of power and control.
• Bullying does not occur between evenly matched opponents; the child bullying has more power in some way than the target (Salmivalli, 2010 ).
• Rigby (2008)identifies six of the most common power resources:
  1. Being able to physically hurt others, often due to being superior in size, strength, or physical capabilities.
  2. Being numerically superior, such as a group of three individuals ganging up on one individual.
  3. Being more confidentand assertive than others, which can propel someone to directly make fun of another individual without worrying how that will influence themselves or their reputations.
  4. Having superior social ormanipulation skills, which can provide the ability to turn people against someone or have them excluded.
  5. Having greater social status andthe ability to influence others, or access to embarrassing or private information.
  6. Being able to sophistically threatenor hurt others, such as making fun of someone in a subtle way that goes unnoticed by adults in schools, which allows the bullying to continue.

Information provided by www.pacer.org