Teaching Your Child to Stand Up to Bullying

While bullying is defined as "repeated" aggressive speech or behavior, a child's response to the first unkind words can affect whether the bully continues to target them. If the aggression gives the bully what they're looking for, a feeling of power from successfully pushing the other child's buttons, it may well escalate.

So teach your child that every bully is looking for a reaction. The more your child can stay calm and control their reaction, the more likely the bully is to give up. Of course, staying calm when someone is being cruel is hard, even for adults. Your child won't do it perfectly, and they don't need to. Every bit of practice builds their confidence.

It helps enormously to talk about this before your child ever faces a bully, so they're ready to stand up for themselves when someone first "tests" them.

Below are six skills you can teach your child, to help them stand up for themselves and for other kids they see being targeted.

The best way to teach these is to make a game out of role-playing them. Get your child laughing to dissolve any tension about feeling vulnerable. Then practice, letting your child claim their power as they stand up to you, the mock bully. Practicing creates a model in the subconscious, so your child is more likely to access this attitude and these words in a stressful moment.

Assert yourself.

Teach your child to face the bully by standing tall and using a strong voice. Your child should name the bullying behavior and tell the aggressor to stop: "That's teasing. Stop it." or "Stop making fun of me. It's mean."

Question the response.

Ann Bishop, who teaches violence prevention, tells her students to respond to an insult with a non-defensive question: "Why would you say that?" or "Why would you want to tell me I'm dumb (or fat) and hurt my feelings?"

Use “I want.”

Communication experts suggest teaching your child to address the bully starting with "I want," then saying firmly what they want changed: "I want you to leave me alone." or "I want you to stop teasing me."

Agree with the teaser.

Consider helping your child create a statement that agrees with the teaser. Teaser: "You're dumb." Child: "Yeah, but I'm good at it." Or Teaser: "Hey, four eyes." Child: "You're right, my eyesight is poor."

Ignore it.

Bullies love it when their teasing upsets their victims, so help your child find a way to not let his tormentor get to him. Fifth graders offer these kid-tested ways to ignore teasers:

“Pretend they’re invisible,”

“Walk away without looking at them,”

“Quickly look at something else and laugh,”

“Look completely uninterested.”

Make Fun of the Teasing.

Fred Frankel, author of Good Friends Are Hard to Find, suggests that kids answer every tease with a reply, but never tease back. The teasing often stops, Frankel says, because the child shows the tormentor that the teasing isn't going to get to them (even if it does). Suppose the teaser says, "You're stupid." The child gives a rehearsed comeback such as "Really?", "So?", "You don't say," "And your point is?", or "Thanks for telling me."

When your child sees someone else being targeted

These same skills work when your child stands up for a classmate. Often the most powerful thing a child can do is simply refuse to be the audience: walk over, stand next to the child being targeted, and say, "Come sit with us."

The Most Important Protection: Your Relationship

These strategies work well for everyday teasing. But no script works every time, and some situations, like physical threats, ganging up, or bullying that keeps happening, are too big for any child to handle alone.

That's why the single most important thing you can do to keep your child safe is to make sure they'll tell you. More than half of bullied kids never tell an adult. Often they're ashamed, or afraid they'll be blamed, or worried that telling will make it worse. Your job is to be the adult they tell.

You build that trust long before there's a problem, in all the ordinary moments when your child learns that you'll listen without overreacting. When your child does come to you, take a breath and stay calm, even if you're upset. Listen before you jump in to fix anything. And thank them for telling you, so they know they did exactly the right thing.

Let your child know, too, that if the bullying continues, it's never because they did something wrong or didn't use the "right" words. Bullying is the bully's choice. Getting help from you, a teacher, or another trusted adult isn't tattling. It's what brave kids do.

You can't be there for every moment of your child's day. But when your child knows they can always come to you, they're never facing it alone.

For more on how to respond if your child is being bullied, see 12 Ways to Empower Your Child Against Bullying -- Including CyberBullying.

The strategies above were inspired by bullying expert Michele Borba. Be sure to check out her website for more info on bullying. 

Borba has also written a terrific book for school communities, with best practices based on what research shows is most effective to reduce bullying: The 6Rs of Bullying Prevention: Best Proven Practices to Combat Cruelty and Build Respect.

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More Bullying Articles on this website

12 Ways to Empower Your Child Against Bullying -- Including CyberBullying

Talking with Teens and Preteens about Bullying

Using Play to Help a Child Who Has Been Bullied, Bossed

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