- Suitable for 3-8Years
Bullying: helping your child
Bullying is something that adults need to treat very seriously. Rather than leaving it up to a child to sort out, schools, parents and community groups can work together to combat bullying effectively .
Bullying can be devastating for your child’s confidence and self-esteem. She needs lots of love and support, both at home and wherever the bullying is happening. She also needs to know that action will be taken to prevent any further bullying.
This means supporting your child at home and talking to your school or the sports club or community organisation where the bullying is occurring so that together you can help your child and stop the bullying.
- Talking to your child's school
- If the bullying doesn't stop
- Supporting your child at home
- Ideas for coping with bullying
Talking to your child's school
Get the help of your school as quickly as you can. Schools take bullying extremely seriously, and your child’s teachers will be trained in spotting and handling bullying. They will work with you to try to prevent further bullying.
Your school will assess the situation with you. Schools will always focus first on protecting the victim, and then on changing the bullying behaviour and deterring others from bullying. Their suggestions will depend on the circumstances of the bullying and on the individuals involved. When choosing a school, check that they have a policy and procedure on bullying.
How to involve the school
- Tell your child you will talk to the school.
- Discuss the problem with the class teacher or year coordinator.
- Ask for the teacher’s views.
- Be assertive, not angry or accusatory.
- End the meeting with a plan for how the situation will be managed.
- Keep in touch with the school.
If the bullying doesn’t stop
- Remember that it is still safer to work through your school than to take matters into your own hands.
- Inform the school of further incidents.
- Keep a record of the bullying incidents.
- Write a note to the class teacher and ask for your concern to be addressed in writing.
- Speak to the principal.
- Seek professional help.
It takes time to change behaviour, so you may not see overnight results. Do let the school know, though, if your child continues to tell you about incidents of bullying. If you’re not satisfied with the results, ask to see the school’s grievance procedure. If your child is still being bullied and you don’t think the school is doing enough to stop it, consider looking for another school with a better record of addressing bullying.
Supporting your child at home
Give your child as much support and love as you can at home. Continue to offer support at home while you, the teacher and your child come up with a plan for fixing the bullying.
You can give support by listening and talking, and by equipping your child with ideas for coping with a bully.
You can also talk to your child about some of the different ways of dealing with bullying behaviour and why these work. This will help your child feel more confident and less powerless about being bullied.
Ideas for coping with bullying
Here are some ideas to help your child think through ways of handling bullying.
| Idea | How it works |
|---|---|
| Ignore it, move away. | You physically remove yourself from children who are teasing or bullying. |
| Tell the bully to stop. | Confronting bullies in a calm way lets them know that what they are trying to do is not working. |
| Avoid high-risk places. | By keeping away from situations where bullying occurs, it can help you avoid the attention of bullies – as long as you are not missing out on activities because of this. |
| Stay around other people. | It can help to have others around to protect you if you feel threatened. |
| Ask other children for support. | Other children probably understand what you are going through and are likely to help you if needed. Bullies are less likely to strike if they can see that you have backup. |
| Tell the teacher. | Your teacher will be able to help you deal with the problem, and will come up with a plan – the bully may not even know that the teacher is helping you. |
It might also help your child to know why some children bully. Research shows that some children bully because they:
- have inflated or unhealthy self-esteem
- are copying family members or friends
- want to be socially accepted or are trying to deal with peer pressure
- are trying to overcome poor social or problem-solving skills
- are bored or lack empathy and concern for others.
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- References
Rigby, K. (2002). A meta-evaluation of methods and approaches to reducing bullying in pre-schools and early primary school in Australia. Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department, Canberra.
Roberts, W.B. (2000). The bully as victim: Understanding bully behaviors to increase the effectiveness of interventions in the bully-victim dyad. Professional school counseling, 4(2), 148-155.
Smith, J., Schneider, B., Smith, K. & Ananiadu, K. (2004). The effectiveness of whole-school antibullying programs: A synthesis of evaluation research. School psychology review, 33(4), 547-560.
Stassen Berger, K.(2007). Update on bullying at school: Science forgotten?, Developmental Review 27, 90–126
Veenstra, R., Lindenberg, S., Winter, A., Oldehinkel, A., Verhulst, F. and Ormel, J. (2005). Bullying and victimization in elementary schools: A comparison of bullies, victims, bully/victims, and uninvolved preadolescents. Developmental psychology, 41(4), 672-682.
