Six tips to help your child beat the bullies
Psychotherapist Stella O’Malley, explains how spotting bullying patterns and empowering your child can help to tackle the issue effectively. LISA SALMON learns more
can’t always be there to protect their children and stop bullying. But what they can do is equip their kids to deal with it confidently.
Through strategies, that include how to be an upstander rather than a bystander, and how to deal with mob mentality, psychotherapist Stella O’Malley explains how to give children the tools they need to feel empowered and able to handle bullies and dominant characters in her book Bully-Proof Kids.
Based on many years’ experience counselling both bullies and their targets, Stella also identifies effective ways for families to cope with bullying, including approaching school authorities and the bully’s parents, and tips to tackle cyberbullying.
“While we may not always be able to completely stop bullying, if we can reduce the intensity, frequency, impact and negative fallout in the aftermath of bullying then this can make a significant difference to your child,” she says. “This is often perfectly good enough.
“In a fair world, our children wouldn’t have to deal with bullies and the perpetrator would be sufficiently punished in a way that would mean they’d never bully again. Sadly, we don’t live in a fair world and bullies are often let off the hook and feel free to target others with impunity.”
Stella stresses that reducing or stopping bullying often takes a lot of commitment and effort from parents. “This can be challenging, but in the long-run it’s worthwhile – it’s a gift for life for a child to learn how to deal with bullies and other tricky people.”
Bullying usually happens, she explains, because the bully feels inadequate in some way and feels more powerful by making their tarPARENTS get feel inadequate, or simply because they’re seeking more power. “Perhaps they want to be ruler of the classroom and feel annoyed when everybody doesn’t fall into step with them and so, like a tyrant king, they go for the dissidents,” she suggests, explaining that parents need to figure out exactly what’s happening within the ‘bullying dynamic’ so they can help their children.
Once they’ve established why the bullying is happening, parents need to spot patterns of behaviour and communicate this to their child. “When the child is sufficiently equipped with the knowledge of why it’s happening – which part each child plays in the conflict, the patterns of when it’s worse and when it’s better – then they’ll have enough knowledge to anticipate the bullying behaviour and take pre-emptive action.”
Such action could be standing beside a teacher without saying anything, changing position in a queue so they’re not targeted, or perhaps using their interpersonal skills to distract the bully or gather potential upstanders to their side. “None of this is easy,” stresses Stella, “and it’s important for the parent to explain to the child that this is a campaign that’s worth fighting and they’re ready to stand by their side until they vanquish the bully together.”
Here, Stella outlines six practical ways to deal with bullying...
It’s important for the parent to explain to the child this is a campaign that’s worth fighting and they’re ready to stand by their side
1. Know the characters involved
This means knowing who’s the bully