Teaching Your Child to Deal with a Bully

By TheNanny612 On June 24, 2007 · Leave a Comment

You feel like your
worst nightmare has come to pass. Another child in your preschooler’s
life has started to bully him or her and you’re not sure what to do about
it. On the one hand, you want to teach your child to stick up for himself and
to handle things alone. On the other, you want to intervene and stop the bullying
before it gets out of hand. You have no idea what to do. And the worst part
is that the situation brings out all of your feelings of helplessness as you
begin to realize that you are not going to be able to protect your child from
the world.

Relax. This
isn’t your worst nightmare. And although it’s a difficult
situation which must be dealt with carefully, it’s certainly one
that you’re capable of managing. It’s true that you can’t
protect your kids from the horrors of the world, but you can use every
opportunity as a learning example for giving your child the skills necessary
to deal with the difficult situations that the world will bring to you.
And teaching your child how to deal with bullies is one step in that learning
process.

The
Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander: From Preschool to High School–How
Parents and Teachers Can Help Break the Cycle of Violence

The first
thing that you need to do is get your own feelings of helplessness under
control. Parents often feel an immediate protective urge towards children
who are bullying their kids and this can sometimes lead to negative situations
in which parents react poorly to the bullies. Since you are obviously
bigger and older than the child bully, you actually perpetuate the problem
if you handle it poorly because your child sees that the bigger, stronger,
older person wins. Instead, take a moment to relax and handle the situation
appropriately. Remember that the child bully probably has a reason that
he or she needs to assert such power over your child and remember that
you’re the adult and these are the children.

Be supportive
of your child and help to give your child a sense of empowerment so that
he or she can deal with the bully. This means talking with your child
about the situation, encouraging him or her to come up with some solutions
to the problem and discussing appropriate ways to handle the situation.
Simply having an open, loving and safe environment in which to solve the
problem can help your child immensely in dealing with the bully. Consider
reasonable solutions to the problem and teach your child how to enact
those solutions. For example, verbally confronting the bully is one option.
Teach your child to appropriately say, with confidence, “you may
not treat me this way”.

If your child
can not cope with the bullying on his or her own after strategizing and
working to solve the problem, you may need to intervene. This is particularly
true if your child is being physically harmed or is too frightened to
attend preschool or otherwise engage in normal social activities. It is
best if your child can deal with the bully alone, but if that’s
not possible, you must protect your child. Doing so means handling the
situation appropriately in a manner which doesn’t diminish your
child’s abilities to handle the situation. Having your child discuss
the situation with a teacher at the preschool or another authority figure
in a position to help can get the trouble under control while still allowing
your child to exercise some power in the situation.

Remember that
the best attack against bullying is to teach your child preventative measures
from an early age. Help your child to develop self-esteem so that he or
she does not allow him (or her) self to be bullied. Also teach your child
to handle problems (such as issues in sharing with other kids) on his
or her own with appropriate behavior. And always create an environment
in which your child feels safe to come discuss the problems that he or
she may be having with others and to problem solve about them with you.