Bullying: Supporting your child- Parenting

Bullying is unfortunately very common among children and young people. It is found in every culture, and frequently pops up wherever there are groups of people below a certain level of social skills development. Peak occurrences of bullying are found to occur at around age fourteen.

Being bullied is a traumatic experience and can affect a child’s developing self worth, emotions and attitude to school. Long term effects of bullying include higher levels of depression, loneliness, generalized and social anxiety, and lower self-worth. Bullies have also been found to be negatively impacted by their behaviour.

Bullying is often hidden from adults, so it may be some time before parents and teachers learn it is going on. Given the costs to all involved, it is incredibly important we all stay vigilant and attempt to take a preventative approach. Thankfully, almost all schools are engaged in this process now, having implemented a “no tolerance” policy.

Types of bullying

Bullying is a specific form of aggression. It involves an imbalance of power, where a more powerful person repeatedly and intentionally causes harm to a weaker person. Put in simple terms, it means using power to hurt someone else over a period of time.

Bullying is very different to conflict due to the two words “power” and “time” in the definition. The person (or group of people) doing the bullying always has more power, either physically or socially. And bullying always happens repeatedly, over a prolonged period of time — it is not one occurrence of harm, but many.

Bullying behaviour is anything done to cause or threaten harm (either emotional or physical) to another person. It can range from verbal teasing to using physical violence.

Verbal: Teasing, insults and put downs, name calling, spreading gossip.
Social: Shunning, isolating someone from their peers, cutting them out of a group, turning against them.
Mental: Mindgames, gaslighting, blaming things on them to get them in trouble.
Physical: Pinching, hitting, restraining someone, throwing things, tripping someone up, purposely knocking into or bumping/shoving.
Extortion: Demanding money, lunches or snacks, making you steal something for them.
Gesture: Facial expressions, body language, non-verbal signs and signals.
Racial: Any bullying that focuses on a person’s racial or cultural background differences.
Gender and sexual: Sexism, sexual based harassment, comments about body, “slut-shaming,” homophobia.
Phone: Harassment through phone calls, text messages, sexting or using Apps such as Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp.
Internet: Verbal and emotional harassment and threats using social media such as Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, forums or email.

Causes of bullying

Historically bullying has been viewed as maladaptive. Children who bully have been observed to experience troubled home lives, with aggression, corporeal punishment, or even family violence taking place at home. It is thought that children learn aggressive behaviour as a way to solve problems by observing adults in their lives doing the same.

Another, more recent theory is that it is actually an adaptive behaviour. This is backed up in the research showing it takes place in every society and is so wide-spread. It is thought that bullying is a way to exhibit superior strength and resources, and so can be an effective way to gain further power and social standing.

Some children do bully others to gain popularity, particularly when they see other apparently powerful children succeeding in this way. These children may already feel bad about themselves and want to feel more powerful. Sometimes they may bully another child simply because their friends are doing it, and they want to fit in.

Children who are sensitive, shy, cautious and quiet tend to be bullied more than others. They may react to bullying in ways which reward the bully, such as crying, shutting down or giving in. Bullies then become used to getting what they want and continue to bully others.

No one factor puts any child more at risk of bullying, or of bullying others. As mentioned earlier, bullying happens across the country, even across the world, in all situations.

Effects of bullying

Some common immediate effects of being bullied include:

Embarrassment.
Shame (which is why they may not tell their parents about it).
Low self esteem, self worth, and/or self acceptance.
Anxiety.
Stomach pains, headaches.
Sleep problems, such as difficulty sleeping or nightmares.
Wetting the bed.
Refusing to go to school.

Longer term effects can be a serious issue also. If bullying continued unchecked, it can have disastrous consequences for a person, continuing into adulthood. Those who have experienced bullying over longer stretches of time may exhibit:

Difficulty expressing emotions.
Difficulty verbalising thoughts and feelings.
Social anxiety, generalised anxiety.
Difficulty forming relationships with others.
Very limited support networks or social isolation.
Fear of rejection, or not being accepted.
A sense of hopelessness, or helplessness.
Depression and suicidal thoughts.

Parents may worry about their child and not know what to do.

Early signs your child is being bullied

Shyness around other children.
Difficulty expressing thoughts.
Low self esteem.
Anxious, fearful, distressed.
Trying to avoid situations where other children will be present.
Refusing to go to school.
Frequent complaints of illness: headaches, tummy aches.
Isolation, not seeming to have many close friends, spending a lot of time in their room.
Increased risk taking.

How to respond to your child

The first step is to create an atmosphere where your child can come to you about anything. Let them know that you are always open to hearing whatever they have to tell you, and that you won’t get upset. Nor will you take any action without talking to them about it first. Children often worry that their parents might do something that will make the situation worse.

When your child is ready to talk, simply listen to them. Be with them. Don’t jump straight into problem solving. Validate their thoughts and feelings. Reflect them back. Make sure your child feels really heard.

Let your child know you want to help. Tell them that they don’t need to go through this alone.

Tell your child that they are not alone. This happens to hundreds of children! The fact that they are being bullied does not mean anything about them as a person. It is not your child’s fault!

What you can do

Once you have the full story, and your child feels unburdened and less alone, then you can take action.

And take action straight away. Don’t ignore it! Don’t assume it will go away on its own. By acting quickly you send the message that bullying is never acceptable.

Brainstorm with your child. Involve them in finding solutions, from small steps they can take, to big ones you can take together. Write them down in a plan.

Whenever you have plans to do something yourself, tell your child what these plans are. Get their feedback.

Talk to the adults in charge. Arrange meetings with teachers or other parents. Discuss anti-bullying policies in the school and what can be done.

Ensure that the children are talked to separately, and not in front of other children.

A very common mistake is making the kids apologise to each other, or talk publicly about what they saw.

How to help your child manage bullying

Listen openly. Show that you are hearing your child.
If you feel your own strong reactions, keep them quiet. Stay calm.
Assure the child that the bullying is not their fault.
Ask what your child did that made them feel better or safer. Positively reinforce even tiny actions your child took, as this was all they knew to do.
Tell your child that bullying is a problem and needs to be stopped.
Ask your child’s opinion about how they think the problem of bullying might be solved.
Offer suggestions. If your child is being bullied, they could:
- Tell the bully to stop in a calm clear voice, using assertiveness skills.
- Try to laugh it off, which may catch the bully off guard.
- If these options aren’t safe, walk away. Find an adult to help you.
Choose a solution from all the options and help your child to try it out. Use role playing.
Practice the solution and then talk about how it went. Keep practicing.
Praise your child for coping.

What actually works to stop bullying?

There has been a lot of research into strategies that schools, organisations and parents can to do inhibit bullying. Different approaches show varying degrees of success. The main concept to keep in mind is that bullying only takes place when the benefits outweigh the consequences. Programs such as “zero-tolerance” ask bullies to give up an advantageous behavior without gaining anything in return — not a recipe for likely success.

Typical responses are social skills training and anger management. These have varying degrees of success, but are definitely worth-while.

The two things that have been shown to be most important in reducing bullying are parent training, and discipline, or consequences for this behaviour.

Since bullying is so difficult to detect, particularly by adults, it makes disciplining this behaviour pretty problematic. Increased efforts in identifying bullying when it occurs is thus likely to be helpful. When bullying has immediate consequences, then the benefits are automatically outweighed, making further bullying much less likely.

Therefore, increasing parental awareness of, and intolerance toward, bullying can be very effective. Encourage your children’s school to send literature out to all parents, advising them what to look out for. Include some educational resources in effective discipline strategies.

Educating students on the benefits of defending victims, rather than being “bully bystanders,” has also proven very helpful. Including a rewards program for coming forward even more so!

Bullies can also be shown that pro-social strategies can be used, as an alternative to coercive strategies, as a means to attain social standing. Using a problem-solving skills training framework can help with this. For instance, using strength and athleticism to defend a victim from a bully is a good way to display attractive qualities to each other. Doing favours for people will increase not only the child’s popularity, but the likelihood of reciprocation from their peers later. It’s simple; people who do engage in these behaviours are often well-liked.

The key to this approach is focusing on the child’s social goal of attaining popularity or social power. We’d be using a problem-solving approach to help them attain that goal. By doing this we are highlighting alternative, helpful and healthy strategies that achieve the desired benefits with far fewer costs than bullying.

If you need further help

If you or your child need counselling or support through this, please contact our Family and Relationship Services (Brisbane), Operation Kinder Community (Riverview) or Early Parent Centre (Inala). We are available to provide parenting, family counselling and children’s counselling. We also provide educational and social skills groups in schools. Contact us to learn more.