Parents: How To Help Your Child if They Are Being Bullied

McLean’s Jacqueline Sperling, PhD, talks about bullying and how it can impact the ongoing well-being of a child or adolescent. She also shares tips on how adults, especially parents, can support a young person who is encountering bullying.

Find resources and more about the expert below.

Recognizing a Bullied Child

Picture this: The door slams shut. Your child is home from school, but with their head hanging down and in disbelief.

When you ask how their day went, they bury their head in their hands and they cry and say that their best friend has been spreading rumors about them all over school and won’t let them sit with their friends at lunch.

You might start thinking about how school, particularly middle school, felt like a relationship battleground. You might even start noticing yourself feeling protective and having the urge to call that friend’s parents and give them a piece of your mind. But resist that urge if you can.

Validation

The best way to support your child is by being there for them, right in that moment. How do you do that? What do you say? Before you do anything, validate first.

Validation acknowledges how your child is feeling without agreeing or disagreeing with their emotions. It shows your child that you hear them. It helps them manage their own emotional experience, and it allows their ears to open up and hear what you have to say next because they feel heard.

In this example, you might say, “You must be feeling so betrayed.”

When you validate, it’s important to describe the emotion or lead with a tentative stance, such as, “You’re mad,” or “You seem worried.”

In society, we’re socialized to make people feel less alone, with our peers in particular, by saying, “I totally know how you feel,” or “I understand.”

The parent-child relationship is unique, though.

Teens go through a stage where they think no one knows how they’re feeling, plus they’re tasked with separating themselves from parents and establishing a unique identity. So, if you say, “I know how you feel,” or “I understand,” they may bristle, particularly during a situation that involves an emotion.

Encourage Sharing

After you validate, see if they’d like to share more. Also, praise them for sharing with you because it’s important for them to let adults know when something like this happens and when they’re feeling an emotion.

That gives the child the space to decide if and when they’re ready to hear what you have to say next.

When they are ready, say, “Although this doesn’t take away the sting of bullying, some people bully because they don’t feel very great about themselves and they try to make people feel smaller than they feel.”

What Is Active Ignoring?

When a child encounters a bully, they can use a tool called active ignoring.

To explain active ignoring, you can use an analogy such as a dog coming to the dinner table. Now, just to be clear, you are not comparing a child to an animal and you’re not calling the dog a bully. It’s just based on the principle of attention.

If a dog comes to the dinner table and you give it food, the dog’s going to learn that if it comes to the dinner table, it’s going to get food. However, if it doesn’t get food at the dinner table, dinner after dinner, eventually it’s going to realize, it’s not going to get food at the dinner table and it will spend your family dinners elsewhere.

Bullies want to see you get mad, sad, or worried. If they don’t ever get that kind of reaction, over time they’re going to realize you’re not going to give them what they want and, eventually, they’ll leave you alone.

How do you actively ignore? You don’t give eye contact, you don’t talk to them, you don’t make facial expressions, and you turn your focus elsewhere. It may feel like you’re not doing anything, but remember, you’re actively ignoring.

You may feel tempted to say, “You’re not bothering me,” or “You’re wasting your time.” But remember, even eye contact is like giving a dog food at the dinner table.

So, if a child is at the lunch table, for example, they can turn their attention to another peer and say, “Hey, how was your weekend?” This peer doesn’t have to be a potential new best friend. This peer just has to be an opportunity for them to shift their focus.

If the peer starts asking them questions about what that bully is saying, the child can just calmly say, “Oh, those rumors aren’t true.” And again, bring the focus back to the topic of, “So, hey, how was your weekend?”

An exception to active ignoring is if a bully is being physical with a child. If a bully is being physical with a child, the child should not actively ignore that. The child is to get away and to let an adult know so that an adult can help keep them safe.

Key Takeaways for Parents

Parents can contact the school to have school staff members monitor their child and the bully’s interactions, particularly if a bully is being physical.

At the same time, even if you contact the school, it is important to equip your children with tools so that they know how to navigate the process themselves.

It also may be helpful for a child to speak with a school mental health professional, if one is available, to have a space to process what’s been going on for them, particularly if bullying came from a friend, because that’s a relationship loss to grieve.

Bullying is hurtful, it’s unacceptable, and there are tools with which you can empower a child to help them manage the process.