Teaching Your Child to Deal with a Bully

Relax. This isn’t your worst nightmare. And although it’s a difficult situation which must be dealt with carefully, it’s certainly one that you’re capable of managing. It’s true that you can’t protect your kids from the horrors of the world, but you can use every opportunity as a learning example for giving your child the skills necessary to deal with the difficult situations that the world will bring to you. And teaching your child how to deal with bullies is one step in that learning process.

The first thing that you need to do is get your own feelings of helplessness under control. Parents often feel an immediate protective urge towards children who are bullying their kids and this can sometimes lead to negative situations in which parents react poorly to the bullies. Since you are obviously bigger and older than the child bully, you actually perpetuate the problem if you handle it poorly because your child sees that the bigger, stronger, older person wins. Instead, take a moment to relax and handle the situation appropriately. Remember that the child bully probably has a reason that he or she needs to assert such power over your child and remember that you’re the adult and these are the children.

Be supportive of your child and help to give your child a sense of empowerment so that he or she can deal with the bully. This means talking with your child about the situation, encouraging him or her to come up with some solutions to the problem and discussing appropriate ways to handle the situation. Simply having an open, loving and safe environment in which to solve the problem can help your child immensely in dealing with the bully. Consider reasonable solutions to the problem and teach your child how to enact those solutions. For example, verbally confronting the bully is one option. Teach your child to appropriately say, with confidence, “you may not treat me this way”.

If your child can not cope with the bullying on his or her own after strategizing and working to solve the problem, you may need to intervene. This is particularly true if your child is being physically harmed or is too frightened to attend preschool or otherwise engage in normal social activities. It is best if your child can deal with the bully alone, but if that’s not possible, you must protect your child. Doing so means handling the situation appropriately in a manner which doesn’t diminish your child’s abilities to handle the situation. Having your child discuss the situation with a teacher at the preschool or another authority figure in a position to help can get the trouble under control while still allowing your child to exercise some power in the situation.

Remember that the best attack against bullying is to teach your child preventative measures from an early age. Help your child to develop self-esteem so that he or she does not allow him (or her) self to be bullied. Also teach your child to handle problems (such as issues in sharing with other kids) on his or her own with appropriate behavior. And always create an environment in which your child feels safe to come discuss the problems that he or she may be having with others and to problem solve about them with you.