How should your child deal with bullies without lashing out

[DamselinDistress24]

I know this is more of a child development question but those boards tend to be very slow so please forgive me for posting here for advice

If your child can't avoid a bully (easily or at all) how would you advise them to deal with a bully to prevent them lasing out?

My child lashed out at a known bully today.

I had anticipated a possible problem and told her if the other child was annoying them or they were getting stressed to come to me and we'd use an excuse to leave.

I checked on them twice and they said things were going well.

10 mins later I found out they'd pushed the other child ...after the other child did what they often do by repeatedly correcting them (totally unnecessarily, based on a silly rule in her own household), insisting my child was wrong and should do what she's told by her etc. resulting in a two way scuffle.

(I think my child pushed first, it's not 100% clear).

I have told my kid she just can't get physical, even if someone is hassling or annoying her.
She got very upset (genuinely) afterwards and when I was trying to talk to her about it

I've told her to walk away. But I suppose it's not easy in some circumstances.... They were in a small upstairs wendy house. She clearly lost her temper before she had the wherewithal to leave it.

(She is just turned 7).

Does anyone have any advice on how to deal with this?

This is just children learning about boundaries within their group and activity settings. I'd just leave them to moderate their own behaviours. None of this sounds like bullying.

Nope.

But thanks for the accusation.

We have a couple of visitors from Aibu apparently.

That's very true.

The group is not a fantastic "fit"for me/I'm not a fantastic fit for it (however you want to phrase it) but what is? ..... They're nice people and it's good to get out sometimes.

When a strange child identifies someone as a bully, and coincidentally their parent tells you that other children have accused them of bullying, and another child says they're throwing her stuff where she can't get it, and the child just happens to have been mates with the infamous class bullies in her class ...... and you find out your child was pushed off the top of a slide by them, and called lazy by them, and harassed about using a not v offensive word by them etc etc......that's a lot of coincidences for a child not to be a bully.

This child is also comfortable calling an adult a "silly girl" twice to their face, bold as brass.

So I'm afraid I'll have to disagree.

Right back at you

Your posts on this thread suggest you should find a good therapist YOURSELF.

And I can imagine a lot of issues for anyone you've raised or are raising..

When a child is identified as bullying by several children, and you observe them behaving a a bullying fashion ...... there's a teeny smidgeon of a chance they're a bully.

I'm so sorry you have such immense difficulty grasping that very simple concept - one can only imagine what the issues & motivations are behind someone's 'inability" to grasp that.

But it's very clear you're projecting such issues onto this thread and you are triggered enough about it to devolve to repeated personal attacks ......resulting in posts being deleted.

Perhaps you'll take your expert psycho-analytic knowledge and inability to express yourself without personal attacks; to other threads where posters can "benefit" from it.

The thing is OP, you can't gave it both ways.

Either the kid is a bully, in which case, why are you forcing your DD to play and interact with the bully and be their victim?Not just that, you expect your daughter to manage her behaviour and feelings rather than you taking control, as the parent.

Or she's not actually that bad, and it's just kids playing and falling out.

I think there are too many coincidences with this child's behaviour. The word bully keeps cropping up in relation to her and my kid is clearly finding her problematic, so I won't be attending playdates with her again.

Its a pity my DD will miss out on playing with the other kids in the group regularly but what can you do.

(If social things for the Mums crop up, I won't rule out attending and will just be diplomatic about my reasons for not bringing lo to the regular playdates).

The thread was not just about this particular situation, but a request for advice in general terms. Because, as a poster above has pointed out in a very sensible, insightful post - this is quite common.

So I can remove my child from this situation with this particular child, but they may well come up against it again in other circumstances.

That's part of what I was asking. How to teach them to deal with it without lashing out - if they don't have a parent or teacher nearby.

Incidentally myself and the child's parent spoke about the incident yesterday. We stayed extremely civil.

I was very diplomatic and did not mention anything about this behaviour being a pattern ..... I simply don't think there is any point. The child's parent had already talked about her child being labelled a bully and how she doesn't accept it/it's a misunderstanding/it's the parents not clarifying what the kids are referring to etc.

It would only lead to a blow up/fall out and (presuming we all continue at the school) 4 years of sheer awkwardness.
Possibly even more since it's a small area so the same post primary school is not unlikely.

That's part of what I was asking. How to teach them to deal with it without lashing out - if they don't have a parent or teacher nearby.

You teach them a few stock phrases like "Well, that's your opinion" , "We're all different " , "I don't want to do this right now, maybe later", "that wasn't very nice/kind/I don't like this.".

Or If they're more confident they can just laugh it off for example "omg x you're soo weird" reply with a big grin on her face "I know, right?" and move on.

Or Walk away and don't engage, it's a very useful skill.

It's a lot easier to do these things when there's an opportunity to walk away and it's infrequent as there won't be a massive previous build up to it.