A report from the 2023 global Survey on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES) by the OECD revealed that 28% of students across 16 participating sites were involved in some form of verbal bullying. These experiences don’t just sting in the moment. They leave lasting scars on self-concept, mental health, and academic performance.
At first, bullying may appear like a childhood phase or a developing personality. What it is, in reality, is a pattern of behavior that can shape how children see themselves and others for years to come.
Words spoken in hallways, online chats, or classrooms echo well into adulthood and can leave scars on confidence, relationships, and even career choices.
School is the most common setting for bullying. Recognizing the signs early on can address problematic behaviors early.
Other than verbal, there are other recognized types of bullying. They are:
This guide focuses in particular on verbal bullying and contains all the information you will need to confront verbal bullying and stop its long-term effects and harm on our kids.
We’ll look at:
Consider this your personal bullying knowledge box. Let’s open it and become a force for change.
Positive Action Bullying lessons are now accessible with a single Pasela K-5 license.
Verbal bullying involves mainly insults, taunts, name-calling, and other types of verbal abuse. Nowadays, it often occurs via social media as well.
Verbal bullying is not limited to children in the schoolyard, either. Adults are often some of the worst offenders for committing vicious verbal bullying.
Verbal bullying, regardless of the age of the bully and the bullied, can start harmlessly enough – as teasing or a slight insult. But this can quickly escalate into verbal violence that causes serious harm to its victim. It also often escalates to physical bullying.
Why is that important? Because bullies don’t often choose just one type of bullying behavior to target their victims.
Those sticks and stones can break your bones – and those words certainly can hurt you.
People who have been the victim of verbal bullying often find their self-image and self-esteem damaged more severely than any broken bone. Fractures do heal rather quickly, after all. Verbal bullying can affect a person’s life for years.
Verbal bullying in childhood, especially at the hands of a parent, other trusted adult, or friends, can have long-lasting effects, resulting in low self-esteem and a poor self-image. A child bullied verbally will often see themselves as the worthless, useless, stupid wretch their abuser tells them they are.
In a school-aged child, the effects often manifest through declining school performance and participation. An individual who used to excel may start to let grades slip. A child who once thrived in school activities now sits on the sidelines and watches their peers, as their mental health suffers.
Verbal bullying, with its insults and teasing, strips away a child’s sense of self-worth. They lose the feeling of power over their lives. They begin to believe the insults and see themselves as something less than who they truly are.
When the bullying comes from within the family or their circle of close friends, the child may feel as if there is no way to escape, no way out. Things become dark and the world a cold, unfriendly place filled with danger and unrelenting assaults.
Those feelings of inadequacy and pain often lead to depression, in both children and adults. If left unchecked, the emotional toll of verbal bullying has even led to suicide attempts, as the victim simply gives up and gives in.
While you can’t stop every incident of teasing or playground taunting, you must also recognize that you do have a responsibility to both the victim and the perpetrator of verbal bullying.
Verbal bullies may need just as much emotional support from kind, friendly grownups as their targets. Bullies are often bullied themselves.
By offering the required support system, Positive Action can help educators begin to understand and deal with bullies.
Having a bully in your classroom often makes the environment feel unsafe, even for the kids who aren’t bullied. You need to regain control and recreate the happy, peaceful place your classroom once was.
It has also been found that not only classroom programs work, but whole-school anti-bullying programs promote a positive school climate. This in turn works as an effective method of bullying prevention for the entire institution and wider community.
Begin by repeating the rules and expectations for classroom behavior. Always model respect and kindness when interacting with your students.
Never engage with a bully in public, in front of other people including their friends and fellow students. This often leads to more bullying. Instead, take them aside for a private chat. Address their behavior, emphasize how unacceptable it is, and try to speak with them instead of at them.
Let them tell their side of the story. Listen to what they have to say. Try to get them to empathize with their victim. And then find ways to reward or praise them for positive behaviors.
To nurture students’ empathy and social awareness, it helps to immerse them in resonating stories or situational examples. Story-based lessons encourage students to imagine scenarios, place themselves in the situation of others, and understand others’ perspectives.
Positive Action’s bullying lessons implement this methodology in the classroom. Rooted in the basic principle of “Treating others the way one wants to be treated,” the program effectively cultivates children’s empathy and promotes positive behaviors simultaneously.
The bullied child needs care, comfort, and support. It’s your job to offer as much of that as you can.
Begin by watching and observing. When you see a normally active, happy child begin to dull and distance themselves – it’s time to have another private conversation.
Again, begin by listening. If there is any hint of abuse in the home causing the issues, you will have to act accordingly and get the authorities involved.
If the issues stem from classroom bullying, your best action is to offer advice and help in every way you can. Encourage the child to ignore the bully. Help them regain their power over the bully by not resorting to rudeness or fear.
Let them know that trusted grownups are there to help them, but that the victim has to tell them about the bullying. Let others in your school know that this child is being verbally bullied and may come to them with complaints.
Lastly, help them understand that by focusing on the positive things in their life, they can defeat the bully by simply not letting him or her get under their skin.
Verbal bullying is uniquely insidious; it leaves no visible bruises, yet the damage it causes can outlast any physical wound. Addressing it requires more than telling students to use kind words. It requires rebuilding how they understand themselves, how they relate to others, and how they choose to communicate when emotions run high. Positive Action's Bullying Prevention curriculum is built to do exactly that.
Unlike one-time awareness assemblies or reactive conversations after an incident, Positive Action's Bullying Prevention curriculum is a structured, six-unit program that builds knowledge and skills progressively over time. The scaffolded design mirrors the framework of the core Positive Action program, ensuring that verbal bullying prevention is woven consistently into classroom learning and not treated as an afterthought.
Each unit advances students' understanding of how words function as tools of harm or healing. Through guided stories, class discussions, and reflective activities, students learn to recognize taunting, name-calling, and social cruelty for what they are — deliberate acts that cause real damage — and to understand the emotional processes that drive those behaviors.
One of the most practical strengths of Positive Action's Bullying Prevention curriculum is how effortlessly it integrates with the K–5 core curriculum. The lessons do not require a separate time slot or a new classroom routine. They are designed to complement and extend what students are already learning through the core program's focus on self-concept, emotional awareness, and healthy habits.
This alignment is especially powerful when it comes to verbal bullying, because so much of what drives it, such as low self-esteem, poor emotional regulation, and a need to gain status at others' expense, is addressed directly by the core curriculum's learning-readiness framework. When both curricula work together, students receive consistent messaging from every angle: in how they learn to manage their own emotions, how they engage with classroom content, and how they navigate conflict with peers.
Teachers find the integration straightforward. Lessons come with clear instructions, ready-to-use scripts, and digital resources through the Pasela, the program's implementation platform, making preparation quick and implementation consistent across grade levels.
At the heart of Positive Action is a simple but powerful idea: positive thoughts lead to positive actions and feelings, which lead to more positive thoughts. For students who have used verbal cruelty to cope with their own insecurities, this framework offers an alternative path grounded in self-worth, empathy, and genuine connection.
The curriculum specifically targets the development of compassion, empathy, and relationship-building skills that make verbal bullying feel not just wrong, but genuinely unappealing. Students engage in perspective-taking exercises that put them in the position of the child being called names or told they don't belong. They practice responding to social conflict with words that de-escalate rather than inflame.
Over time, these experiences shape new habits. Students who once reached for an insult in a moment of frustration learn to pause, reflect, and choose differently because they have internalized what it means to treat others the way they want to be treated. That shift, from reaction to reflection, is how verbal bullying loses its grip in a classroom and a school.
Preventing subtle forms of verbal bullying starts with creating a school climate where students feel safe reporting it and confident that adults will take it seriously. When educators consistently model respectful language, address unkind comments the moment they occur, and teach students to name the impact of their words on others, even low-level verbal aggression gets addressed before it escalates. Whole-school programs that build empathy and self-awareness across all grade levels are particularly effective because they change the culture, not just individual behavior.
Verbal bullying rarely stays confined to a single space. A comment made in the hallway can become a thread of insults in a group chat by that evening. Schools that address verbal bullying comprehensively by teaching students that the same standards of respect apply in person and online see stronger results. This means integrating lessons on digital communication into character education and ensuring that the skills students develop for in-person conflict translate to how they behave in digital spaces as well.
The effects of verbal bullying can persist well into adulthood. Children who are repeatedly subjected to name-calling, taunting, or social cruelty often internalize those messages, developing patterns of low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression that follow them through their formative years and beyond. Childhood verbal bullying is linked to long-term poor mental health outcomes, strained relationships, and diminished confidence in adulthood. Early, sustained intervention through programs that build self-concept and emotional resilience is essential for reversing these trajectories.
Many students who engage in verbal bullying are dealing with their own insecurities, past experiences of being bullied, or a need for social belonging. Positive Action addresses this directly through its behavior management approach built on the theory of learning readiness. Rather than simply punishing the behavior, the curriculum helps students understand the connection between their thoughts, actions, and feelings, and guides them toward healthier ways of building confidence and connection.
Positive Action's Bullying Prevention curriculum addresses all recognized forms of bullying: physical, verbal, social, and cyber within its six-unit scaffolded structure. Every lesson teaches that words and actions carry weight, how name-calling and taunting affect a child's sense of self, and how students can use communication as a tool for connection rather than cruelty.
Positive Action's Prevention Program offers a targeted curriculum that tackles the broader challenges students face every day, giving them the skills to make safe, responsible decisions both in and out of school.
Substance Use Prevention
Help students understand the real risks of substance use before experimentation begins. These lessons build critical thinking and resistance skills, giving students the confidence to make healthy, informed choices.
Fentanyl Misuse Prevention
With the fentanyl crisis affecting communities across the country, early education is more important than ever. This curriculum gives students the facts about fentanyl's dangers and empowers them to recognize and avoid life-threatening situations.
Gambling Prevention
As gambling becomes increasingly accessible to young people, especially online, students need tools to recognize addictive behaviors early. These lessons nurture awareness of the risks of gambling and promote responsible decision-making.
Behavior Management
Teachers shouldn't have to choose between managing a classroom and actually teaching. Positive Action's Behavior Management replaces the burden of juggling multiple disconnected initiatives with one cohesive program, so educators can spend less time triaging and more time teaching. Built on the Learning Readiness approach, it stabilizes the classroom environment while addressing a full spectrum of outcomes, including academic achievement, behavior, life skills, school climate, family engagement, and prevention and safety.
Positive Action is a multiple-outcome, health and wellness education program that addresses various student needs by building positive habits and promoting responsible behaviors.
With our program, educators can enhance students’ understanding of the negative effects of bullying on themselves and others. More importantly, the program instills essential life skills that empower them to recognize, reject, and replace bullying behaviors.
You can see for yourself. Sign in to Pasela, Positive Action’s digital platform, for a FREE trial and explore tools and lessons that can build your students’ character and health.
Ready to reach out? Contact us to learn more about how Positive Action can help you prevent verbal bullying in your school! For a more guided discussion, schedule a quick 30-minute webinar with our team to explore the full curriculum.
