What To Do If Your Child Gets Bullied

Great points!
Being bullied is a lot more serious than people realize, and it's honestly so scarring to people's lives if it gets serious. Thanks for posting this!

Standing up to these bullies is one of the hardest things for the child to do. If the kid has been continuously harassed by the bully for a while, his self esteem is probably shot to a point of no return. So telling the kid to come back with sly remarks and all that is easier said then done, esp b/c the teased child's conviction and tone lack confidence. The bully will see that, and pounce on the child's weakness, often demoralizing the child even more. How do I know this? I have many younger siblings who cry about bullies all the time, esp because they can't confront the bully with a teacher or parent because it is embarrassing, the "sissy way out."

I believe the best advice given before is to walk away and act as if the bully is nonexistent. However, this only delays the problem at hand in many cases, so another alternative in my opinion would to stand up to the bully with other victims or friends. The mob would give the child the confidence to speak his mind.

These MMA fighters and boxers also give little tidbits on the negative effects of bullying. Such agreat thing these guys are doing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UkHLDm6DkI

hsieh wrote:or maybe a better strategy would be for you and your child to learn why people tease? that takes the focus off your teased child and puts the focus where it should be - the teaser.

teasing is all about the teaser not the teased.

reasons why a child may tease others - their parents do it to them or do it to others (learning by example), the child feels insecure because their parents teach them to feel insecure, the child wants to fit in and the ONLY WAY THEY KNOW HOW to fit in is to tease others (that means they have a hard time learning to socialize), their parents or somebody abuses them so they turn around and do that to others as a way of taking control of their uncontrollable situation, etc.

you can't defend yourself if you don't know what you're defending yourself against. if you understand why people tease then you can better defend yourself against that.

chucky once posted - cruelty is self hatred projected onto others.

i would suspect when a child is abused or grows up in a dysfunctional environment they may feel self hatred?

I think it would be very difficult and impractical for your child to analyse the teaser and come up with a solution to the teasers issues and what if your child meets other teasers when changing schools or at sports clubs etc,? Is your child expected to analyse and cure them all?

I like the original posters suggestions I think they are very practical and I think the techniques mentioned would help whether your child is at school or at other clubs.

I also think these techniques work well with adults too

number one rule of being a parent is to protect your child!! do what it takes. face up to it. face up to the school. ask to see their anti-bullying policy. tell the board of governors. tell the parents. sue the school. empower your child. most of all - never be a victim!!

As a schoolboy i was bullied more or less every day for 7 years, this includes time at junior school.
I did nothing about it, i wish i had, i had no real friends to speak of.
It made me angry, angry at myself for doing nothing about it.
It turned me into a bitter person and i hated it, but now all that bitterness and anger has given me confidence to fight back.
Physically or mentally, i don't take any crap from anyone anymore, God help anyone who does, now i give as good as i get, or just ignore them completely.
If i ignore them, they eventually go on to someone else because they know they won't get a response out of me, which is what they're looking for.
So i don't give them the satisfaction.

Here is some food for thought. Do you think anyone in New York would have dared to pick on John Gotti's kids?

Human beings are predators and sometimes we pray on of human beings particularly if they're weak. Lions rarely go after elephants or hippos or rhinos because I'm not stupid.

With a bullying situation with my son and we knew if he had reported it to the principal left would've gotten done and things got worse. He was not one of the popular kids and the kids picking on him were the popular kids with rich parents. With the no tolerance for fighting crap he was unable to put a beat down on the ringleader. My son's very resourceful and creative. He and another friend got the ringleader aside and explain to him that if he didn't stop he would set the kids house on fire and shoot them all they came out. People knew that he hunted and was a pretty good marksman. He never would've done it but they did not know that.

We can take all the psychological theories about why people do what they do and break it down into what motivates people. Two things that motivate people are fear and money. That's true of animals except that their reward is on it's just food. That's why the lion won't go after rain over water buffalo especially on its own. The ego gratification for the bully could not supplant his fear of death.

In some cases victims need to get a helmet. Some of the bullying you hear about today, like stuff on Facebook and other social media would not have affected kids of my generation because we knew that we could settle things with the proper application of violence and I think that's why bullying was not as prevalent back then. If and when you had a problem with somebody you could duke it out without anyone making a federal case of it. Most of the time Sunday would back down because nobody really wants to get in a fight and get beat up but occasionally it would come to blows. I was saw it as an honorable thing. I guess that's why I like hockey.

I don't think that it is a school's responsibility in all cases to solve the bullying problem. Victims need to stand up for themselves and the means taking a knotty hairdo in the process, that's the price of honor.

I witnessed a lot of school fights and back then a crowd would gather and the fight would get broken up relatively quickly, pretty much like a hockey fight. Think we need to go back to that. The damage of being a victim is far worse than a bloody nose and a black eye. Bullies bully people because they can but deep down bullies are cowards. There are kids today do still have honor in spite of crappy parenting and whiny moms. They know right from wrong and they're the ones the need to stand up for the weak and when they don't need to be taught how to stand up for the weak among us. Victims need to become empowered. There is a wonderful video on YouTube where a fat kid is being picked on. He takes it for a while he picks up the bully and he slams onto the pavement. That bully was cured. It's a must watch for any kid who was been bullied.

Hello,

I am new to this forum. I have seen some insightful questions that dig deeply into the issue of bullying and in this case, teasing.

From an intellectual level, it is good to understand why someone does what they do, particularly when it comes to bullying and teasing. It is good to discuss this with a child, as long as they mentally can grasp what concept it is you are trying to relate.

The challenge comes when we as educated, thoughtful adults try to explain something as complex as why people do things to a child who only cares about making the bullying stop.

Teaching a child specific techniques and thought processes regarding how to deal with bullying and teasing is easier on the child and gets the results the child wants faster.

As parents, we can be the ones who talk among ourselves and try to identify why people do it, and if we can talk to the parents of the child doing the bullying, maybe we can figure out a way to connect and help them.

What we don't want to do is to get "caught up" in the bully's emotional or mental games, conditions or environment; they aren't our business. Our business is making sure our kids are mentally and emotionally prepared if they get bullied or teased.

Thanks.

I dealt with this one, whenever i look back on those phases (while being on the receiving end) i'm quite clear about things i did and what others did on me.

Some of the things i'm writting down here would be cold and rational but that's who i am.

The motivation why people get bully or why people get picked on is quite extensive, one could bully because he seeks some form of self gratification or because it gives some form of power/leadership over others.
Why people get picked on comes from their tendency to let it all happen or they don't see the smalls signals fast enough. Eventually i would say these reasons could vary a great deal also.

I'll share some of the things i've dealt with and share my vision on things as they where back then and now and most importantly things to prevent escalation.

note that i'm diagnosed with ASPD or Antisocial Personality disorder, something which was a fact before things started to go haywire, some of the things i state could be interpreted to be cold and rational and i'm not interested in empathy or compassion.

I'm only doing so because i ended up with a violent tendency (mental/physical) towards personal attacks (both actual attacks and perceptional attacks) which isn't the best thing to have but at least it's better then being hardcoded to hate myself and getting victimized.

I always was (and still am) someone with a extra bit of fat slabbed on the body, this was one of the main reasons "i stood out of the crowd"
My life as target started on a young age (8 yrs old) and continued until my 18th birthday (aprox)
After i graduated from high school i resumed studying and it wasn't until college that these picking on/picked on circle was broken.
Started doing drug until i found the "perfect one" which was amphetamine, which in turn destroyed everything the first time, broke out of the cycle on my own strength and fell down the hole the second time which led me into a detox clinic.
did my chores there and was diagnosed with ADHD, which explained my "perfect drugs" called amphetamine.
I smoked weed and hasj before the "smeagel moment: my precious/amphetamine" which started when i was 14 years old, all that time i did drugs to suppress the symptoms of ADHD and ASPD (which actually worsened).
Off course it had serious effect on my persona in the sense that drugs suppressed my agression and made me an introverted person (didn't speak about myself to nobody etc.)
I did enough work towards "rediscovering myself" inside the clinic and changed back into the "real me", and the real me wasn't the nice kid who would be playing nice with his friends but rather contolling these so called friends.
I did nasty things (it's nasty because others tend to see it that way), i tortured animals, tortured humans (mental/physical), stole frome my parents (1st time at around 5 years old), lying on a pathological basis, manipulating people, brainwashing people (yes it's possible !), used my brainwashed minions to steal from other for me, used my brainwashed minions to do all sort of things, turned people from "social & friendly types into savage's (one of them was arrested lately for slapping someone's brain out of the socket with a steel bar), sold drugs, enslaved women and sold their body, sold weapons, intimidated for money, threatened (and almost slit the throat while swooping the ceramic cook's knive right before his face), and much more !
and i don't feel guilt or remorse what so ever.

There where times that it did something inside of me but this was only because my choices to do so had concequences for me, thus quite self centered.

Now you see this is contrary to the fact that i got picked on, drugs made me more humane (a bit to much) and because of that i didn't do nothing about those who picked on me (i was strapped with the knive but never did "a live section") it's funny because i never ran into the so called juctice system.

this leads me to next part: why people bully and how to prevent or stopping the bullies

"standing out the crowd" this is one of the factors to promote the tendencies to pick on/be picked on.
basic "so called rules and laws" are so nice in theory but reality doesn't work that way !
Because things like respect and equal men/women is a hoax, and if one believes in it, they will be slapped in the face when they are confronted with situations where respect doesn't apply !

As parents tend to "protect" their children, by doing so they make it even worse because the child doesn't learn to deal with it themself.

You should (as parent) try to break the walls and barriers your child builds along with the experiences of getting picked on, because doing so gives your child someone to "ventilate" those issues.
I didn't have these parents but instead i had parents who "critisized" and slapped me (mentally).

As for the child itself i would not only recommend but "order" you to force him into doing martial arts like: Karate, Aikido, etc.
In Japanese martial arts (and others of course) things like: respect, selfworth, personal growth, selfcontrol are not only "rules" but A WAY OF LIFE.
And if the child experience these things they will become "balanced", they will deal with those who mess up or choose to do "personal mischievous things"

The reason why your child is getting picked on is because they let people do it to them, they are victimized because they don't break facebones of those who play mindgames with them.

I learned a lot of human behavior by doing mischievous things to other people and when people did mischievous things to me !

"social behavior" (what the community want's you to do) is a mask, because humans smile nicely and stab you in the back.
Every human being is a ego-centric creature, they will kill, manipulate, destroy you for the things they're motivated to get.
Society means in essence that you don't have to kill to eat, don't have to destroy other humans (they are competitors/a threat to your food or woman)
But it doesn't mean that these "primate" behaviors are gone, they still remain part of you and they are unwanted because "social behavior" or "the mask of society" doesn't need them anymore.
Back in the days you where forced to protect your land/wife/children/food/possesions.

With this knowledge in mind there is no victimizing/no "how could people do that!" because these are
primal behaviors.
If one acts "a primate" on you, do the same ! and stand up for yourself instead of being victimized.

And yes Laws and Boundaries where created to prevent this from happening but it happens, so go with the flow and deal with the threat accordingly because Rules where created to create FEAR.

Now you could say "hey you know what ? your're right (while you wipe the s**t out your eyes), or you end up thinking "i'm fed up with life and fed up with me" and you tie noose and commit suicide to get it over with.

the choice is up to you ! because end of the day it's either being VICTIMIZED or making them YOUR VICTIM.

DON'T LIFE A LAW ABIDING LIFE, LAY DOWN YOUR OWN LAWS.

if it helps you then so be it, if it doesn't than to bad for you.

It's not a good idea to make up threats you don't plan to carry out like setting a bullies house on fire and shooting their family. First of all let make note of the fact that John Gotti's family may not have been subjected to a lot of bullying as children, but quite a few of them ended being buried as landfill with lots of bullet holes in them. The more you depend on extreme intimidation to control the behavior of other people the more people are going to regard you as a serious threat to their survival which they will try to eliminate whenever they get the opportunity. There's no point in being afraid of somebody like Hitler or Osama Bin Ladin whom you believe is a maniac who's probably going murder you someday no matter what you do. We all have a right to self-defense. My old man was a Marine D.I. who taught me never to point a gun at anybody if you didn't plan to use it. It undermines your credibility if you make phony threats and makes you more at risk of becoming a target for preemptive attacks,

I had some kids bullying me back in high school. I brought a dead cat I found to school in my lunch bag. The word got around about that very fast and nobody ever bullied me again. No threats were made. It wasn't necessary for me to say a word. There was nothing anybody could have filed legal charges on me for doing either, let me add, unlike threatening to murder somebody's family.

My niece recently had the teenage brother of a friend of hers threaten her with a gun. She told her mother and older sister. They went to see the boy's family. The kid said the gun wasn't loaded, the
mother blew it off as a joke, and said the boy's father the gun belonged to who lived in a separate apartment was asleep and my sister couldn't talk to him. Hitting that stone wall, she simply reported the matter to the Dallas Police who put out an arrest warrant for the kid on a 2nd degree felony.