My child is being bullied. Now what?

child is being bullied
  • Save

Your child is being bullied. This realisation is one of the worst moments of parenting. Your son or daughter is being picked on, insulted and intimidated and you feel powerless. Of course, you feel angry but powerless is the saturating emotion that every bullied child’s parent is struck with. However, while you may feel immobilized and helpless, you are anything but. You do have options and you do have the power to protect your child. Here are steps you can take to deal with your child’s bullying.

Calmly and lovingly talk to your child for the full account

It is very important that you know what happened, when, how and with whom. If your child is being bullied, being aware of the details relating to your child being bullied will allow you to relay the information to a third party as well as show your child that they can come to you in times of trouble. Your child needs to see you as a strong caring source in their life.

Preserve any evidence

If it’s a text message, image, letter, etc. keep it. Sometimes, especially if the bullying is very cruel, the child wants to move past it and throw a letter away or delete a message. As painful as it may be, if your child is being bullied, the evidence needs to be kept for relaying the event to a third party.

Involve a third party

If your child is being bullied at school, get them involved. A school should have the resources to investigate and deal with the bullying. Additionally, a school is objective enough to deal with the issue logically while many parents and relatives are too emotional to be impartial.

If the bullying took place in a digital environment, reach out to the company behind the game or app. Many digital platform developers have departments to address cyberbullying and can ban the offender from the environment.

If possible, block the bully

If it is a digital environment, take the time to review the rules on bullying and how to report such an account. Many accounts have the ability to block a user from communicating with your child. Refer to the game or app help sections.

Report the bully (especially if digital platform)

Once again, while cyberbullying is extremely dangerous, it is the easier type of intimidation to track. If you can’t block the bully or perhaps find their username, take the evidence and information to the gaming platform or app developer. Like a school they should have resources to deals with the bullying and suggestions to protect our child online.

Final thoughts

As much as our children can feel powerless when being bullied, we as parents and trusted adults can also feel immobilized and helpless. However, in truth, we have the power to do something about bullying. We can talk with our children; we can reach out to the appropriate third parties and we can block and report the bullying. More importantly, when your child is being bullied, we can empower them and let them know they are safe and they are loved.

If your child is being bullied, we hope this advice helps you to give them the support they need and helps you understand the best thing to do.

Chad Hunter is the author of “Zack and the Zombie – No Bulliezpleaze.” The bullying-prevention and empathy-promotion book, blog and more can be found at www.zackandthezombie.com. Along with his son, Hunter hosts the “Nobulliezpleaze” podcast at www.nobulliezpleaze.podbean.com.

Picture credit: Photo by RODNAE Productions from Pexels

3 comments

  1. It’s awful when your child is being bullied. We went through it a few times. This is really good advice to help others going through it x

  2. I hate this for children, I don’t know why everyone can’t just be nice to each other! lol! The children are being taught about bullying from a young age now and why we shouldn’t do it, but it’s still happening and very hard on many children

  3. This is really good advice, getting to the bottom of it and keeping records is vital to help beat the bullies. Thank fully our school is very hot on it and stamp it out very quickly

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.