Bullying is the act that involves an imbalance of strength or power as well as behavior that is intentional and aggressive. Children who are the victims of bullying often cannot defend themselves against their attacker. Bullying is usually not a one-time occurrence but something that happens repeatedly. Bullying can range from behaviors like teasing or name-calling, hitting or punching, intimidation using social exclusion or gestures and sending mean and hurtful messages via electronic devices like computers and cell phones. There are some steps you can take if your child is the victim of bullying.
Related: 7 Ways to Talk to Your Teen About Bullying
Stay Calm with a Positive Attitude
As a parent, your natural instinct is to be upset when you discover your child is being bullied. However, you need to remain clam, focused and positive so you can effectively help your child deal with this situation. Your goal, as a parent, is to be resilient, positive and confident.
Contact the School
Your child may not want you to report the bullying to their school but if you don’t, the bullying will not stop. You need to report the incidents to the school principal right away. Tell them facts about the bullying like the who, what, when, where and how. Let the principal know that you have every intention on working with school staff to resolve this issue. You don’t want to contact the parents of the instigator but instead leave this task for school staff to handle.
Related: Teen Tips: Preventing Online Bullying
Help Your Child Become Bully Resistant
There are some things you can do to ensure your child is not the victim of bullying any longer. You want to ensure your child is confident among others at school and one way to achieve this is to suggest they enroll in some sort of school activity that they may be interested in like art, music or sports. Talk to your child about how they can seek help from a trusted adult if they are the victim of bullying. And as with everything else, home is where it starts. Be sure your child is being raised in a home environment that is safe, secure and loving.
It’s so heartbreaking when children become bullying victims. My oldest is a bit of a “nerd” and I know she gets teased sometimes, but she has developed quite the ability to stand up for herself! Very proud of her for that.
Great tips. Bullying is becoming more and more each year. My oldest is in elementary and thankfully we haven’t seen much bullying though I know its there 🙁 Great tips. I think the hardest would be to remain calm!
This definitely concerns me. I hope that my kids are never involved in anything related to bullying.
Informative tips about dealing with Bullying . The school and Parents need to get involved and if we as parent continue to talk about it I think we will see a decrease in Bullying.( awareness)
Bullying kills. We’ve seen and heard about it a lot of times. Great tips you got here. Thanks for sharing.
So many kids are being bullied today that as a parent, we need to be prepared if our children experiences this. Great advice!
My son was bullied so bad last year that he said he wanted to die. He’s 10. It’s getting out of hand. The school wouldn’t help. This year, I am starting the year with a letter that states I will contact the police if my son is bullied again. No more dealing with them, just the police. It’s such a tragic epidemic in this country.
This is really helpful. I think staying calm while maintaining a positive attitude can help you make smart decisions in this situation.
This is a very helpful article. The school and the parents really need to get involve to stop bullying.
These are great ways to converse your way through the situation and help your kid understand how not to be bullied but also how to not be a bully.
These are great tips and I’m sure parents will benefit from this.
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