School is hard enough, but what if you’re being bullied? Jamie Mosser, assistant state’s attorney, and Batavia detective Chris Pothoff, a student services officer at Batavia High School, hope the parent-centered bullying and cyber-bullying presentation they gave at the high school Thursday morning (which Mosser also offers elsewhere throughout the county) will help parents to make a difference.

Mosser defined bullying as unwanted, aggressive and repeated verbal, physical or social behavior toward another person. It might come as a shock to some adolescents – and adults – but this includes humiliating them or hurting another’s reputation via gossiping. 

I wonder how many of our kids have considered this? We typically think of bullying as that physical intimidation stuff that’s perpetrated only by big, brutish kids on playgrounds or in lunchrooms, but with the advent of the digital age, “They don’t get a break from [bullying],” said Mosser.