How to Help Your Child with Bullying

With a new school year beginning, many students are dreading a return to the lockered halls of youth.  For them, school is a place full of torment where they will be locked in with bullies for hours a day, desperately searching for an escape.

Often times, children don’t tell anyone they are being bullied.  They want to protect their parents from knowing something is going on, that they are unhappy.  They also don’t want their parents involved; fearing involvement from adults could only make things worse.  But what they don’t realize is adults can help in more ways than taking over the fight and complaining to the bully’s parents or teachers.

Find new activities.  One of the ways a bully will select a target is to look for someone without many friends and low confidence.  By enrolling in new activities, especially ones with kids your child wouldn’t be in school with, children have the opportunity to make new friends free of the history carried from years of school.  It’s a fresh start.  The new friends will give your child a support system and the confidence to go to school without the isolation that comes from being bullied.  Having friends outside of school shows them there is a world beyond those walls, decreasing loneliness, and the built up self-esteem makes them less likely a target.

Make sure they know it’s not their fault.  Many people, including kids, feel that bullying is caused because someone is different.  The difference is just the excuse selected by the bully to show their power to other students.  Bullies are looking to show their place in the school hierarchy.  That’s why they find targets that have only a few friends and not likely to fight back.  It’s not about the victim, but showing where they stand.  Recent studies have shown 80% of people have been a victim of bullying and 70% of people have bullied.  It’s all about showing where they fit in that ladder of who bullies who and who gets bullied by who.

Brainstorm solutions with your child.  Telling your child “all you have to do is…” will only make them feel worse if that’s something they’ve already tried.  Instead of telling them what they have to do, have a discussion with them to think of things they could do.  It allows them to stop trying strategies that didn’t work without feeling like they failed and it leads to better solutions than their initial reaction.

Stop the bullying from happening again.  Okay, this is the time where it’s okay to seem like the “nosy parent.”  Talk to teachers, coaches, staff, whoever is in charge where the bullying is taking place.  Let them know what’s happening so they can intervene.  I sometimes hear “I have 20 kids to look after.  I can’t focus on just one.”  True, there may be plenty of kids, but there is probably only a handful that they really need to keep an eye on while the others are well behaved.  If the ones they always have to monitor are the ones who are the bullies, it should be even easier to keep tabs on things.  If you can’t change the environment though, you can always remove them from the environment.  You either get the bully away from your child or you get your child away from the bully.

These are only some of the tactics to help someone who is being bullied and unfortunately there is no single tactic.  Don’t be afraid to try new strategies, no matter how simple they may seem.  The important thing to remember is bullying isn’t about who the victim is, but the bully wanting to show power and control.  Your child shouldn’t change who they are because of that.