While parents often want to protect their children from suffering, it’s important to let kids handle their conflicts when it’s safe to do so.
If the child is not significantly harmed by the bullying, parents can provide counsel and keep a watch on the issue.
If the child is very young, however, it is up to the parents to resolve the situation.
In this blog post, I will share with you how to help a child who is being bullied.
Let’s go now!
1. Talking about bullying with your child
With the diversity of materials available about bullying today, parents can learn a lot about this stressful situation and talk to their children about it calmly.
Parents can talk to their kids about what bullying is, how it happens at school, and what to do if someone is mean or hurtful to them.
The child may feel comfortable sharing what he/she is going through when they understand that there is a solution to their problems.
Because many children and teenagers do not understand what bullying is, they accept taunting as a regular part of school life.
That’s why it’s important to talk about this subject with your children at some point during their school journey.
2. Ask if there is a problem
Sometimes, when you ask if something is bothering them, kids might not open up right away.
However, it’s good to keep asking until you get some clues or answers from them.
Don’t force your child to talk.
Treat the questioning like a conversation to make him or her feel comfortable.
Always try to maintain a dialogue with your child about their school life so that they feel comfortable talking about the subject, but do not disrespect their privacy.
3. Teach your child to defend themselves
Let your child learn how to get through tough situations, like bullying.
This way, they will learn to defend themself in other contexts.
So, how should you teach your child to react to bullying?
In simple terms, the child should let the person know that he or she doesn’t like their actions and set boundaries.
If that doesn’t stop it, the child should tell a teacher or an adult in charge.
You can also teach your child emotional control techniques, respecting their understanding of this subject due to their age.
For example, teach them not to care about certain comments, not to take them personally, and to replace negative feelings with positive ones when doing things they enjoy, among others.
Adults should step in only when necessary.
Despite the difficulties of bullying, it can serve as a learning opportunity that fosters children’s personal growth.
4. Strengthen your child’s self-esteem
All types of bullying leave emotional wounds.
Therefore, strengthening your child’s self-esteem is very important, especially because they don’t know how to do it efficiently.
Ways to work on your children’s self-esteem include:
• Highlight his or her qualities
• Teach your child how to deal with frustrations, stress, and other types of emotional difficulties
• Celebrate his or her achievements
• Teach them to have a positive internal dialogue, focusing on their skills, strengths, and great achievements
• Do what the child likes, such as creative activities or sports
• Teach your child that there are different opinions about individuals and events
• Talk positively about your child daily
• Teach your child to have the humility to know when they have made a mistake and change their behavior.
Find a balance between praising and teaching your child how to deal with stressful situations and disappointments.
This way, they will not grow up with excessive self-confidence, a trait that is detrimental to personal development.
5. Seek therapy for your child
Certain hurts go deep and are hard to heal, causing emotional scars that stick with young people as they grow up.
In these cases, parents can take their children to therapy.
In addition to dialogue with the child, children’s therapy includes games, board games, and various toys.
Children also draw and use modeling clay during the sessions.
This is because the psychologist can access the child’s inner world through games.
As they still cannot express themselves clearly, children express their feelings and reproduce everyday situations through games.
By playing with the child or observing their behavior while they are having fun, the psychologist can understand the origin of their frustrations and communicate it to the parents.
Therapy aimed at teenagers is more assertive, as they are now able to talk about their anxieties and fears.
Shame and fear of opening up to a professional can be obstacles when starting psychotherapeutic treatment.
More consultations may be necessary for the teenager to feel comfortable with the psychologist’s presence and to open up.
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What Are The Types of Bullying?
Bullying at school can happen in multiple ways.
The most common are physical and verbal bullying, but other types of bullying can turn school life into a nightmare, as seen below.
1. Physical bullying: This includes punching, slapping, pushing, and pulling hair.
2. Verbal bullying: Swearing, teasing and humiliation.
3. Psychological bullying: This includes things like scaring, treating someone unfairly, threatening, and spreading false rumors.
4. Social bullying: Purposefully isolating the victim, making them feel rejected and inferior.
5. Cyberbullying: Online stalking, swearing in photos and posts on social networks, defamation in chat groups, etc.
What Are The Signs of Bullying?
Children tend to react to bullying in the following ways:
• Lack of desire to play.
• Irritability.
• Fights at school, siblings, or neighborhood children.
• Social isolation.
• Crying when going to school.
• Anxiety about separation from parents.
• Procrastination, avoiding carrying out school activities.
• Worsening school performance.
• Fear of going to school or talking about the subject.
Teenagers, on the other hand, often have the following reactions to bullying at school:
• Excessive worry.
• Irritability.
• Social isolation.
• Excessive discouragement.
• Increased anxiety.
• Lack of desire to study.
• Procrastination.
• Drop in school performance.
• Lack of dialogue with parents.
• Fights between friends, classmates, and people close to you.
• Skipping class to escape the stressful environment.
• Insomnia.
• Laxity with room tidying and personal hygiene.
When you notice one or more of the signs mentioned above, avoid making hasty judgments.
Find out why your child is behaving that way.
Sometimes parents think that behavioral change is just a child or teenager’s phase, or bad behavior.
Thus, they draw the wrong conclusions. This stance can make the situation worse.
Read also: How To Know That Your Child Is Being Sexually Abused – My Personal Story
What Do Parents Need to Understand About Bullying at School?
It is not always simple to comprehend children’s reactions to bullying.
In addition to children and adolescents having different reactions due to their age, each individual reacts according to their personality.
As they do not know how to deal with their emotions well and have little life experience, children tend to isolate themselves, have tantrums or crying spells, not want to play, and become sullen.
They don’t always know how to explain the reason for their irritability and sadness, so parents may take a while to understand their strange behavior.
It is more common for teachers or parents of other students to tell what is happening than for the child to explain.
However, some children have different attitudes and may tell their parents about bullying on their own.
Teenagers, at this age, feel embarrassed when they’re bullied because they want to show they’re grown-up and not weak or boring.
So, they often keep it secret from their parents.
Teenagers also try to prove themselves by resolving their problematic issues on their own.
But they don’t always have the best attitude towards bullying.
So parents need to be aware that children may become uncomfortable when the subject of bullying is brought up and hide the truth for several reasons.
You need to be flexible to deal with this situation.
If you think your child is having problems at school, it’s important to see a psychologist.
They can help stop the bullying and prevent it from causing long-lasting issues or serious problems in the future.
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Conclusion
School bullying is a difficult condition for children and teenagers.
However, the wounds left by provocations, humiliation, or physical aggression can last for many years, resulting in emotional damage to the child’s life.
Parents, when observing their children’s suffering, become anxious and worried, but they do not always know how to deal with the situation.
It’s better to seek the help of a therapist.