7 Strategies to Help Your Child When They Are a Bully

Imagine getting a call telling you that your child is being bullied. So hard. Now imagine that you receive a call from your child’s school saying that YOUR CHILD is bullying others. Perhaps even worse!

When you receive that call saying that your child is engaging in bullying, you should believe it, and then work to understand why your child is acting this way and map out a plan to help. Most parents think their kids behave admirably and wouldn’t engage in behavior that harms other children (at least we hope so). When their parents are present, children may behave very well. And most bullies, child or not, think their behavior is justified.

This is not a small problem. The United States Department of Educational Statistics (2019) found that more than 20% of students report that they have been bullied.

7 Helpful Strategies When Your Child IS the Bully

So, as the parent, what do you do?

Prepare to communicate. Explore with your child the story of their interactions with the target of the bullying in as nonjudgmental a way as you can. If you start the conversation with an angry tone, the amount of information you receive will be markedly lessened. Like many adults, children will need to know that their story will be heard in order to tell it. There may be a reason for your child’s behavior, sometimes not a valid one, but still important to understand. Only by understanding this “why” from their perspective can you help them fix how they express themselves. The reasons for acting out will likely focus on a single event or the negative traits of the bullied child rather than your own child’s pattern of behavior. These could look something like, “I wanted what she had,” “It was my turn,” or “He’s annoying.” It is possible to be compassionate towards your child and the target, as well as to patiently gather information before indicating that a behavior was out of line. Being open to their negative, and sometimes unflattering, opinions is a critical first step.
Understand your child’s own vulnerabilities and insecurities. Who do they pick on and why? Can you help them build up their own armor about these insecurities? Do they worry about how many friends they have and see the target as a liability or a gateway to greater popularity? Help combat these vulnerabilities so that they don’t need to pick on others. What are your own child’s experiences that may have led them to bully a peer?
Work on humanizing the person they are bullying. Your child may benefit from knowing more information about their target. It is harder to be mean to someone who you know in a deeper way. One of my patients, a teenager with heart disease, was bullied at school. Peers mocked his rapid weight gain, which came after he had a transplant. One day, after scripted practice with his mother, he simply said to one of the kids, “I’m overweight because I have a heart condition.” The peer never said a mean thing again, instead becoming a friend and a protector in the school community. Trudy Ludwig’s 2010 fictional account from a bully’s perspective is a helpful resource to read with your child.
Stop accommodating your child when they are using aggressive strategies at home. A lot of bullies in the adult world say that they do it because it helps get their desired results quickly and efficiently. Ask yourself if your child’s aggressive strategies work with you. Does your child tolerate “no” from you? Sometimes, to avoid conflict, do you or other adults ask other children to “give in” to the child who struggles to wait or share? Help other children in your family to mount a reasonable response so that the child who is bullying doesn’t profit from it. Through empowering potential targets, bullying is made less fun or successful. Adults may have to build their own distress tolerance in order to manage the child’s feelings of disappointment and rage when not given what they want.
Use questions to begin changing unhelpful thoughts. Usually children who are bullying others believe that they are entitled to do what they are doing or they minimize the impact that it can have on a target. They may believe that they are not getting their fair share, that there are reasons that their turn should be longer, or that people who they see as lesser (usually stated as “annoying”) deserve their ire. They often describe their behavior as “funny” and not mean. No parent wants to hear this, but a child may find enjoyment in hurting others or getting a response from the victim or from an appreciative audience. These kinds of questions can help clarify motives and feelings:

Was it reasonable to do what you did?
Would you do that to a friend?
Would you find that funny if someone did that to you?
Why did you pick that person?
Did they find it funny?
Was it fun for you when they looked upset?
What do you think they think/feel about you?

Build replacement behaviors. Often, kids say they don’t know how to manage challenging situations, such as a peer whose behavior is annoying. Annoying is a frequent descriptor used for the bullying target’s behavior. Practice what your child should do in these situations, in a way that is assertive but does not cross the line to bullying. Provide scripts to manage situations that provoke their impulse to bully, with honesty, such as, “I need to take a break. I am having a hard time listening to your gum chewing…”
Help develop skills in the social arena. Jenkins et. al (2014) found robust connections between bullying and social skills. Bullying can occur when the child has a poor repertoire of skills to manage big emotions. Building flexibility, taking turns and delaying gratification are important skills to learn across environments. Building social skills, through groups at school and in the community, outside of the bullying situation can be very helpful.

Early on in my career, I worked at a big public middle school to make ends meet as I completed my graduate degree. Bullying was plentiful at this school, as it is in many schools across the country. One bullying lesson has been extremely influential both in my career and in my personal life. One of my patients was a tween whose bullying focused on the boys he assumed or knew to be gay in school. He showed no remorse for his cruelty and peppered each session with derogatory words about gay people. In one session, in my frustration and as a way to get him to stop (not necessarily very therapeutic), I said, “I’m starting to think you use those words (cruel words about gay boys) so much because you think they apply to you.” He shocked me by responding, “How did you know?” This key moment changed everything for the better in therapy for him and improved his treatment of others.

Though it isn’t always this straightforward, I have noticed since this interaction that most of the words people use to insult others directly relate to their own fears and insecurities. See the table below for examples.

Words used	Likely insecurity
Dummy, idiot, “low IQ”	One’s own intelligence
Racial slurs	One’s own cultural identity
Body slurs	One’s own appearance
Sexual orientation slurs	One’s own sexual orientation
Powderpuff, weakling	One’s own strength

And now that I have said this, you might notice that the words others, and perhaps you, use as insults say a lot about the speaker’s own concerns about themselves.

Is There a Positive Side to Bullying?

On a positive note, sometimes there can be “better endings” for bullying scenarios. One of my patients was a third grader. He was a charismatic, highly verbal kid whose brightness sometimes was seen as annoying by peers. One peer was particularly cruel, calling him names and physically pushing him around. Instead of going to the higher authorities to complain, he asked the peer, who my patient knew had a challenging home life, what his favorite pie was and my patient agreed, with his mother, who was an excellent baker, to make him one if he came to his house for a play date. The peer was shocked and surprised that someone would make a pie just for him.

During the playdate, successfully chaperoned by my patient’s mother, they got to know more about each other, including some of the hardships faced by the bullying peer and some of the interests of the target. A new friendship was born. Though my information came only from the target’s retelling, I believe they both profited. The target of the bullying is now a successful college graduate. The bully is reported to have been kinder to not only my patient but others in the school community.

In a world where people often act with minimal understanding of each other, I am hoping for more “pie solutions.”

To learn more about how to thoughtfully parent, visit our website at www.aligningforgrowth.com or read our book: “Working with Parents in Child Psychotherapy.”

References

Jenkins, L. N., Demaray, M. K., Fredrick, S. S., & Summers, K. H. (2014). Associations Among Middle School Students’ Bullying Roles and Social Skills. Journal of School Violence, 15(3), 259–278. https://doi.org/10.1080/15388220.2014.986675

Ludwig, T. (2010). Confessions of a former bully. Tricycle Press.

US Department of Education (2019). Student Reports of Bullying Results From the 2017 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey (ed.gov)

Author biography: Elisa Bronfman and Johanna D. Sagarin are the authors of Working with Parents in Child Psychotherapy. Elisa Bronfman is a staff psychologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is also the first author of AMBIANCE, a research tool used to assess parent-infant attachment. Johanna Sagarin served as a vice-president in a community mental health agency for over 15 years and is now a professor of practice at Assumption University. They both have thriving private practices.