Bullying at school – how do you protect your child without making things worse?

[clarkblarke]

Hello everyone,

I’d really appreciate some advice from parents who’ve been through bullying with their children. Bullying at school seems so hard to handle properly – whether it’s name-calling, exclusion, or ongoing behaviour that slowly affects a child’s confidence.

-How did you realise your child was being bullied?

-Did you speak to the teacher or school straight away, or wait?

-What response did you get from the school – was it helpful or disappointing?

-How did you support your child at home emotionally?

I sometimes worry about stepping in too quickly and making the situation worse for my child, but doing nothing also feels wrong. I’d love to hear what actually worked in real life, and what you’d do differently now.

Enlisted them in martial arts since the age of 5. Bullys go after the weak. Not going to stick with victims who are willing and capable of making them pay dearly for doing so

I was one of those un-sporty quiet academic kids. My friends and I were bullied at school by a gang of bigger older boys. We were 11 and they were 12. My father took me into the back yard each evening and taught me to box. He told me that I needed to stand up for myself. The advice was to wait until the lead boy first hit me and then go for his face. It would be self defence. I broke his nose! There was an enquiry and I told the treacher I just hit out wildly to save myself. Did not mention the boxing lessons. 8 other girls made statements as to how they had too been systematically bullied over a period. The boy was expelled and his two mates faded away. It made me quite a legend. No one ever bullied me again.

Can you tell us a bit more about what's going on for your daughter or son it will be easier to advise.

It happened with my daughter last year. She has a lot of friends and has a very strong personality. She is also a very good student and does not care what other people say about her. I never thought she could be bullied. But at the beginning of the year she mentioned that one boy in her class was calling her crybaby, but that she did not care.

By the end of the year the constant name calling from the boy wore her down. She would not bring a bottle if she thought the boy would think it was too “baby”, or not wear specific clothes (when it was own clothes day) if she thought the boy would call her names. I could see she was very anxious.

I went all guns blazing. Talked to head teacher and threatened to talk to the governors. I was even considering moving her school. It was a horrible month. She would cry every night. I kept sending emails. The school acted. They boy is still in her class but he is not allowed to talk to her ever.

What a ridiculous answer

Again, a ridiculous answer. Lucky for you the victim didn’t end up dead.

Bullies want to show off. They want to look hard. You need to deal out such a thorough and public pasting that they will not risk a rematch. Absolutely flatten them. If you physically can't, you get an older sibling/cousin/friend to do it.

The best advice I had was from my older cousin after he dealt with one of my bullies. He told me I had to be more willing to hurt them than they were to hurt me. He was right. They will back off if you fight back but only if you might win. Otherwise its just entertainment. You have to hurt them.

I agree that it's the incessant drip-drip name calling that wears children down.

Our bright daughter experienced bullying 3 years ago in year 9. She had a breakdown. The school turned round to us and said they thought she was coping with it - in other words they knew it was going on.

We moved her to another school, but she never really picked up again in her work.

I don't really have any answers, other than to maybe get professional support to help your daughter deal with things for herself.

Me personally I spoke to the school and said I know this kids parent drops them off. I would like to speak to said parent, so can they set up a meeting. I did tell them I was happy to approach parent myself, and I wouldn't go in rude. However I feel it would be best for them to speak to parent first so they do t feel ambushed.
Most parents I'm guessing would be horrified to hear that their child is making another child miserable (my kids know i would hit the roof if I ever get that phone call). So could you possibly do that approach?

At both of our sons schools these children are the bullies.

Just to add, that my DD is now completely happy again. That was last year, in Year 2.

Honestly, you have to act now, before it kills their confidence. Send an email to the headteacher and demand that they act, they have the obligation to do so. It is very important that something is done before it damages your child long term.

It’s not a ridiculous answer it’s a very practical answer especially for children an city schools where there is more violence

What an unhelpful answer!

I'm not at the point of worrying about a child being bullied at school yet. From experience, the victim is unlikely to tell you that they're being bullied... maybe because they're ashamed or embarrassed, or both. My mother spoke to the school regularly (when I did tell her what happened), and the school was inadequate. At one point, I had to point out the right person on a roll of school photos several times, and they wanted me to do a mediation session with him. I said no! A teacher who I got on with saw me years later and realised (in conversation) that I had hated school. She asked why, I said that I was bullied, and she had never realised at the time. (I was an academic and virtually mute child).

I wish I'd taken the opportunity to move to another school (again- I went to five in total), but I thought, "At least I know what to expect here", even if it did mean people trying to set fire to my hair on the bus home. I asked to be home educated- anything to avoid people, because it got to the point where I just wanted to hide away from everyone- but was told no, because my mother had to work.

I would ignore my mother's advice of, "Ignore it- they'll soon get bored!" I tried this, and it just made me a sitting target. I wish that I'd said something, or hit them back (especially in the mouth, so that they could see what it was like when people stared in horrified fascination at your wonky teeth), to make them realise that I wasn't going to take it sitting down anymore.

Lol You've clearly never been bullied. I hurt them once and never got touched again. It works. They only speak one language. You can give them all the detentions, lectures and exclusions in the world, the don't care. Embarrass them in front of their mates, you'll put a stop to it.

Lee Child on Desert Island discs said he broke the arm of each of the first two to bully him and then was left alone. In fact younger boys used to pay him in biscuits for protection. Years ago, when I asked my DS about bullying he said ‘I’m not the sort to be bullied’. I didn’t explore it further but he never was. Maybe the lessons my father gave him in fighting (only if attacked) paid off.

My child has had two episodes of bullying at primary school.

The first time it was one girl in her class when my daughter was 7. She told me about it. I spoke to the class teacher. From our perspective, we didn’t see anything change (although I realise that a lot may happen which it is not appropriate for us to be party to). This girl was telling my daughter that nobody wanted her, that she should just leave the school, and then that she should go kill herself. My daughter was really worried that this other child would turn everyone else against her.

What helped was that my daughter had good friends outside school - she was involved in a team sport, she had friends she frequently saw in another activity, and a couple of close friends that she had known all her life. She knew she was valued and liked by all these people which I think helped maintain her self esteem.

Also, she found that her fears at school were unfounded. Everyone else just carried on as normal, and didn’t gang up on her. So after a bit of her seeming to be unbothered by the bullying, the other girl got bored (and, as we subsequently learned sadly, moved on to the next person).

In our chats about this at home, we talked about them-problems and you-problems, and how this was a them-problem, not a her-problem. It wasn’t her fault that these awful things were being said to her. She hadn’t done anything wrong.

I work in a field where we are public-facing at a time where people can be aggressive or violent towards staff. It helps me to cope by thinking the following: truly content people don’t behave that way to other people, so something must be causing them to be so horrible - worry, frustration, stress, whatever. I have to bear their aggression at the time, but I then go home to my lovely family. For them, they have to continue living with whatever the thing is that made them behave that way towards me. Same with this little girl. It’s very unlikely that she was bullying because she was a bad person, but there must be something not right in her life to prompt her to behave like that. It doesn’t excuse the behaviour and my daughter shouldn’t have to put up with it, but there will be some sort of underlying factors. I think this also helped my daughter to frame it as a them-problem and not a her-problem, and to have a little empathy without being a doormat.

The second episode was when she was 9, and it was a large group of boys. It had been going on for quite some time. I was informed about it by another mother, whose daughter had told her when it escalated to racist language. They had already reported it to the deputy head that day. When I spoke to my daughter about it, it had started off with teasing about her being fat (which she clearly wasn’t) and then moved on to ridiculous racist comments. She hadn’t mentioned it to me, as the teacher had been telling them off and saying that she would speak to their parents…but actually she was glad it had come out, because she hadn’t yet spoken to anyone weeks later. Also, she felt that one of the TAs was joining in!

I emailed the school about it, plainly stating the details of what had been going on, and naming how this constituted bullying using the criteria from the school’s bullying policymaker and acknowledged that the class teacher was trying to address it but this was not effective. I was invited in to speak to the Deputy Head, and both I and my husband attended and we explained how what was happening made our daughter feel. We did not go in guns blazing. We also wanted to be clear that we were reasonable, and acknowledged up front that most of the boys involved probably had just got carried away without it occurring to them how the recipient of the bullying would feel, and that they might not even realise that it was bullying.

This time, it was handled very effectively. After we had gone, the class teacher sent my daughter and the girl who reported the racist stuff to speak to the Deputy Head separately on the pretext of showing him some work they had done. He triangulated the names of the children involved from my daughter, the reporting girl and the class teacher. He met with the children involved on the same day, and then over the next two days, spoke to all the parents concerned (as it was a lot!).

As predicted, it was largely a thoughtless pile-on. A few of the children involved apologised to my daughter spontaneously. One of the parents contacted me to say she was horrified to hear that her son had been involved. One child told my daughter off for getting them in trouble, but the rest just quietly stopped, not just for my daughter, but I never subsequently heard of the same happening to anyone else from this group of boys.

Sorry that’s a bit of a ramble, but from these experiences, this is what I learned.

1. Encourage your child to have friendships outside school is a really good protective factor. It might be miserable at school, but that’s only part of your life. It’s helpful for your self-esteem to know that there are others who value and respect you

2. Make sure they know that they are not the problem. They are not being bullied because they are deficient in some way. Bullying is sadly very common and seen in every single school. Make sure they know that they do not have to put up with it. For me and my daughter, it has been helpful to think that there are reasons in someone’s life that might make them behaving horribly, not as an excuse, but because it helps frame it as a them-problem. It’s also easier to not be scared if you are seeing the bully as a human being who also has problems and feelings

3. It is really helpful to look at the school’s own bullying policy. It helps you to explicitly articulate in writing how what is going on matches the school’s own descriptors of different sorts of bullying and abuse, so it has to be acted on. It also allows you to be calm and reasonable but yet still very clear and firm about what your expectations are regarding actions and accountability from the school. It is easier to help the reasonable person than the person who comes in high emotion with all guns blazing.

4. You need to find the right (effective) person to deal with the problem, who might not be the person you would think you should first go to. If the first line has not resolved the problem, then find the effective person.

5. It is all of our job to call out bullying. I am really impressed by the girl who reported the racist pile-on on my daughter, she saw it, she knew it was wrong and she told someone about it. I was very proud of my own daughter recently. The mother of one of her classmates got in touch to ask me to thank her. Her daughter was being ostracised by the girls in the class, led by the ‘popular girls’. When the children were lining up to go in, this child was left standing alone. My daughter didn’t confront anyone but she just went and stood with the left out child. She knew that it might make her the next target, but she knew that leaving this girl out was wrong.

With regards to your question about when to step in, I think that’s a really tough one.

I may be jaded from growing up as an ethnic minority in a very white area in the 1980s and from doing the job that I do, but I sort of think it is unrealistic to think that she will go the rest of her life without having people behaving badly towards you (including casual racism). Therefore she needs to develop strategies to deal with this.

I worry that stepping straight in to bulldoze problems away would mean that she would be left without resilience for this problem. On the other hand, I want her to know that she is heard, that it isn’t to be put up.

So my thoughts are that it might be best to talk it through with your child, find out if it’s at a point that needs swift intervention, and find out what they want you to do. Give them some strategies to try out if they want to try to handle things but make it clear that you will step in if needed. And then monitor for a short while.

In the first instance of bullying, this worked.

In the second, it was obvious that this wasn’t a situation where we could sit around and try different things out, so I did contact school early.

My daughter was bullied by an ex friend in primary. It was relentless and exhausting and progressed to bigotry eventually (we are Jewish). We had meetings and phone calls and all sorts but once it was an actual hate based incident we escalated straight up to the head teacher and showed up in his office the next day. They put things in place to separate them but I lost my mind when they suggested my daughter sit in the nurture room each break time to keep herself safe. It’s a ridiculous policy that the bullied child has to self exclude. We refused this and kept up showing up every single day until they put more robust measures in place.

On her first month in high school, several older boys surrounded her in the hallway yelling Free Palestine and refusing to let her past. That time I went to the police and there was a flurry of meetings. I also signed her up for self defence classes as all the restorative communication in the world won’t save her from a group of 6 foot tall teenage boys looking for trouble. Of course I’m sorry for the bullies, something must be very troubling in their lives, but I don’t care half as much as I care about keeping my child safe so that’s my main focus each time.

On a friendlier note yes, having activities and friends outside of school is super important. My daughter is a dancer and keeps in touch with a couple of friends from nursery and such and it’s lovely to have these escapes when the school day is a bit brutal.

What age is your child?

Normally best to be very upfront with school and put all issues in writing. Never approach parents informally.

Don't really understand this, how do you think getting adult support in school would make things worse? : I sometimes worry about stepping in too quickly and making the situation worse for my child

What is actually happening in your case?

One thing many parents do is take too long to a) call it bullying b) tell school c) move schools.
When it starts, respond quickly. If school is unhelpful, move quickly.

Oh and don't waste time discussing at lower levels.

You just tell someone senior in writing and ask them to tell you how they will ensure it doesn't happen again.

Bullying isn’t always or even often physical. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to learn martial arts or self defence but escalating anything physical is always more likely to result in someone getting hurt, and there's no guarantee that it'll be the original aggressor. People love to tell stories of 'I hit the bully back once and he never bothered me again!' but an equally, if not more, likely outcome is 'I hit the bully back and so then his mates joined in and I was very seriously hurt'.

When my daughter was being bullied at the age of around 8, I asked for a meeting with the teacher about it and the Deputy Head also sat in. To their credit, they took it very seriously, and said they would talk to DD and make it clear she could come to them any time she had a problem and she would be believed. They would also talk to and keep an eye on the bully. Whatever they did, it worked, and DD became much happier about school within a short space of time.