At our school, we have been taking different opportunities to talk to the kids about the differences between when someone is mean, rude or is bullying. 

We thought that it would be helpful to communicate a definition that we use as a basis of discussion with the kids. You will see with the definition that there is a clear difference between the three. What we don't want is that everything is labeled as bullying because this is not always an accurate description of what happened. This is why we all need to understand the difference between the three. Although we want to assure you that we treat bullying incidents seriously and proactively.

The definitions are:

When someone says or does something unintentionally hurtful and they do it once, that's Rude.

When someone says or does something intentionally hurtful and they do it once, that's Mean.

When someone says or does something intentionally hurtful and they keep doing it - even when you tell them to stop or show them that you're upset, that's Bullying.

We hope that these definitions help clarify the differences between them for you.