How to Teach Your Kid to Stand Up to Bullies

One of the more difficult things that crops up for parents is when they learn their child has become the target of a bully. Amongst feelings of anger at the bully and a feeling of helplessness comes a desire to help the child learn how to fend for themselves. The question though, is how? Licensed social worker and author of several books, Signe Whitson has some very good suggestions in a recent article in Psychology Today.

First, she says that it’s important to teach children how to stay connected with others in their world. Bullies most often, like wolves selecting the weakest to slaughter, go after those children that appear isolated from others. Thus, keeping connected makes them less likely to be a target.

The next thing is that parents need to build cocoon of awareness around them and their children. The idea here is that children never come to feel that telling a parent about the bad behavior of another child will be shrugged off. They need to know that when they go to their parents, that their parent will hear them and understand that it’s something important and will be there to help them, or at least back them up if necessary.

Along with that is that children need to be taught the difference between being a tattle-tale and telling their teacher or parents when another child is behaving in threatening ways.

Something else that can help kids is being taught that bullying is something that should be dealt with right away, meaning right from the get-go. If nothing is done, the bully will feel encouraged and will strike again, likely more assertively. Thus, children need to know that they should respond in appropriate ways right away.

And of course children need to know how to respond when the first occurrence happens. Whitson writes that the best approach is for a child to act assertively, and by that, she means, looking the bully in the eyes and using direct language to let the bully know that he or she will not put up with the bullying behavior. In so doing, the child should keep their voice low, address the bully by name and should stand a pace back when speaking so as not to appear ready to react physically. Also, if the victim can maintain a posture of strength, that helps a lot too. Most bullies prefer to pick on kids who act like victims.

Of course, not all bullies fit into neat categories, and as children get older, some bullies simply resort to violence. But even then, by making it clear to a child that they don’t have to endure such abuse can help them maintain some degree of strength that in the end should help them both avoid bullies, and then deal with them should the need arise.


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