How To Help Your Child Deal With Bullies At School

If your child complains about being teased, bullied, or called names at school, don't rush to dismiss it. It can be both harmless friendly teasing or bullying. What to do if your child is being bullied at school? How to teach him to respond correctly to such situations and what should parents do when their child is being bullied?

Some facts about bullying at schools

Bullying at schools is relevant throughout the world. International human rights and education organizations publish annual studies on the subject.

Bullying is measured in levels of intimidation ranging from 9% to 98%. The average is 35% for traditional impact forms and 15% for Internet impact forms. So online bullying has much less effect on a child than bullying in real life

The most frequent manifestations of bullying are ridicule and insults, spreading rumors, gossip, and physical abuse. Most children prefer to keep silent about being bullied.

The most common causes of bullying are: unusual appearance and behavior of a child, nationality or race, sexual orientation, religion, physical disabilities.

Signs when a child is being bullied

Teasing, mocking, pushing, kicking and other allegedly harmless teenage forms of communication are acceptable only when they do not threaten to humiliate or offend a person.

You can slap a classmate on the shoulder in a friendly way, or you can push painfully, leaving a bruise on his arm. You can сhuckle kindly on a clumsy classmate, or you can call her an offensive nickname and make her cry. There is a fine line between teasing and bullying. And even a victim may not realize that he or she is being bullied for a while, treating the behavior of classmates as a joke.. What are the signs when a child is being bullied?

Bullying can manifest itself in the following forms:

• Direct insults, offensive nicknames.

• Slander, gossip.

• Boycott, ignore, isolation from the team.

• Physical impact: pushes, pinches, blows.

• Humiliating comments about appearance, clothes, behavior.

• Sexualized comments.

• Stealing things, extorting money.

Faced with bullying at school, a child loses self-esteem, is depressed and stressed, he does not know how to cope with this situation, starts looking for reasons in himself. If you do not intervene in time, the consequences of bullying can be sad: psychological trauma, psychosomatic reactions (deteriorating health), personal disorders, depression, etc.

So parents should be aware of the depth of the consequences of bullying: this is a ticking time bomb without exaggeration.

How to explain the reasons why kids are getting bullied at school

There are obvious and non-obvious reasons for bullying. If a child has extra weight or has another distinctive appearance feature that classmates pay attention to, then, as a rule, he himself understands why he is being teased. But it happens that there is no apparent reason for bullying: in a teenage environment, one wrong word or act is enough for the environment to turn against yesterday's friend.

It is very important to understand why your child is bullied. This will help develop a behavior strategy to neutralize offenders and stop bullying in schools. But first, talk to your child about the reasons of bullying, explain that they can be found in any person:

• Anyone who is slightly different from the others can be teased. Any reason is enough for this, so no one is protected from bullying.

• The reason for bullying does not mean at all that this is a child’s shortcoming. For example, for being too thin and tall, a girl can be called names. But a girl can become a model only if she has such physical data. Any feature of appearance is not a defect, but a characteristic trait that forms an image of a person. And the fact that someone does not like it is not a reason to look for flaws in yourself.

• There is not a single person in the world who deserves such an attitude. And if someone is being bullied, then the fault lies solely on abusers. Do not dig into yourself and look for reasons for bullying.

It is extremely important to protect a child from "well-wishers" who may try to convince him that he is to blame for being bullied at school. For example, a child provoked the aggression of others by his words and actions. Such “well-wishers” can be both friends and classmates, as well as teachers, school administration and other adults involved in what is happening.

The danger of their influence lies in the fact that they have a certain authority in the eyes of a child, so it is important for parents to be present whenever possible at any discussion of a conflict situation.

How to help your child deal with bullies: 5 tips

Here are some tips on what to do and how to react when your child is teased and called names at school. How to help your kid deal with bullies?

1. Find out more information

Find out as much information as possible about the conflict: its duration, depth of impact and form of bullying, who is an instigator, who are participants, where bullying takes place and under which conditions, what are the causes of it, how teachers and other adults react. That helps your kid deal with bullies.

2. Talk to your child

Talk to your child about bullying, tell him everything that is written in the previous paragraph of our article (no one deserves bullying, anyone can be teased for any thing, etc.).

Tell your child that no one has the right to offend him – verbally or physically. Bullying at school has different forms of manifestation, so even if offenders do not say anything bad directly, but at the same time they hide personal items or spread gossip on the sly, this is a reason for a serious “debriefing”.

3. Teach to respond

Make it clear that they bully only those who give offenders the reaction they expect – gets scared, holds back, cries, etc. If you show that insults and ridicule do not have the expected impact, interest in bullying disappears. Teach your child concise and unambiguous phrases that will help neutralize verbal abuse.

4. Change environment

If a child does not have a relationship in the classroom, transfer him to a parallel class or to another school. Sometimes removing from a traumatic environment is the best way to protect a child from psychological trauma and destructive influence.

5. Support your child

Express your support and wish to help. Your child must understand where to go if bullied at school. Do not leave your child alone with his school problems. Even light bullying without adequate response can turn into severe harassment, which is dangerous for a child's psyche and even for his life.

What to do if your child is being bullied? Talk to a teacher, a school psychologist, school administration, parents of offenders. Talk peacefully and constructively. If you do not find understanding, complain about their inaction to law enforcement and education authorities. The attention of higher authorities will force participants to take active steps to protect the interests of a child who has suffered from bullying. You must know exactly where to complain if your child is being bullied at school.

The main task of parents of those children who face bullying at school is not to give in to difficulties, but to set an example of resolute response to aggressors. This will give a child confidence in his own rightness, give strength to independently defend interests in the future and form the correct model of behavior in such situations.