Sadly, at some point in our lives, most of us have been a victim of bullying. There are no instructions on how to deal with it. When you are being bullied yourself, no one knows exactly how you feel. It is different for everyone, depending on how sensitive you are, who the bully is and what they are doing that makes you feel like a victim.
School bullies
For me, being bullied in school more than twenty years ago was hard. All that most children want is to be is popular, both with peers and teachers. Your confidence and self-belief takes a knock when someone (or in some instances more than one person) takes it upon themselves to pick on you for any number of reasons, or no reason at all. Name calling is the most obvious one, along with the being left out, and mental and physical abuse.
Back when I was at school, once you finished for the day you were free of the bullies until the next morning. Unfortunately, now when children are being bullied they can never get away from it. As well as at school, bullying now happens virtually on social media or via a messaging service. Teachers struggle to deal with it because it goes beyond school. Kids are getting clever at hiding stuff on their phones, so incidents that are actually important for parents and teachers to see are getting missed.
Then you get bullied at work
You leave school and hope the days of being bullied are behind you. Unfortunately, that is sometimes not the case because bullying can also happen at work. Happily, nowadays there are procedures in place to help employees deal with being bullied in the workplace and complaints are largely taken seriously by HR.
Why do bullies pick on people?
No one prepares you for having bullies in your life. It is one of those things that no parent wants to deal with.
Unfortunately, one of the main reasons that people bully is jealousy. They see something they want or someone doing well and, rather than try and get it for themselves, they take the option to bully. Knowing this helps us to understand how a bully works.
How to deal with bullying as a parent
There is no right or wrong way to deal with bullies. We all know that every child is different and every parent has different parenting styles. Some parents would contact the school, which can help most of the time depending on the school and the parent. It helps to speak with the child’s class teacher, they should support you and sometimes give guidance on how to deal with it at home.
As a parent you have to stay strong but with empathy, which is hard because all you want to do is wrap them in cotton wool and deal with everything for them.
Steps to take
Step 1: Keep a diary
Keeping a handwritten diary of events that take place along with dates and times because evidence is the best thing to have in any situation, especially one like this.
If you’re keeping a diary for your child, you will need to sit with them every day and go through what has happened. If they struggle with communicating, try and get them to act out the scenario, pretending you are them.
Step two: Know your rights
It the bullying is taking place in the workplace, you can find out what your rights are by looking at your company’s policy documentation. Every organisation should also have someone in place that can advise and guide you through the steps that can be taken to stop the bully and prevent it from happening again.
With children, you need to remember that The Schools Statutory Obligation is to protect your child. You can get advice on that from a number of websites including the National Bullying Helpline, Kids Health, and also the Department of Education.
Step three: Alternative action
Some people try to deal with bullies themselves, which means communicating directly with them. In the workplace, try asking for a ‘mediation’ meeting with the bully and another member of staff who will remain a neutral third party so you don’t have to talk to the bully alone. In some cases you may discover that the bully doesn’t realise how their behaviour is affecting you.
With children, you could speak to the parent(s) of the bully. Ask them to meet for a coffee and find out if they know what is happening. They may not even realise their children’s behaviour, and they may be able to help you deal with the situation.
Another idea is to invite the bully and their family over at to see if the children can get along. This may not work if the children are older or teenagers, so in this case you would need to assess the situation and think of some sort of mutual ground where you could meet rather than going to either of the family homes.
Unfortunately, cyber bullying can happen outside of school which can be out of the control of the parent making it harder to deal with. Again, all parents choose to solve this very differently. If you need to restrict or remove a child’s phone or online access, make sure they know it’s to protect them and that they’re not being punished.
Step four: Talk, talk and talk
The best thing to do is educate children to communicate regularly. Putting all phones away and sitting down to dinner or having daily regular conversations about our days can be helpful, encouraging complete honesty and a safe space to talk.
If children struggle to open up, try having a more casual conversation over a board game or when doing something arty or crafty. This can also help with everyone’s mental health, and it will help show that we – their parents – will support them no matter what.