What to do when your child is the bully

Any parent will dread finding out that their child is a bully. It is even more challenging when you are unaware that your child has any behavioural issues. Your child might be a completely different child at home. Well mannered and respectful, but a completely different version of himself at school.

So you just received that phone call that your child bullied or has been bullying someone. What now?

Why is my child being a bully?

Many times, bullies yearn to acquire and retain power or avoid the need to deal with social issues. Children who struggle to have effective social relations with other people usually turn to intimidation. It is easier for people to be scared of you instead of you having to create a healthy relationship with them. Rather than talking to people, they should be scared of them.

This makes children feel like they have a sense of control, not only over their lives but even those of others. This is why it is easy for them to scare people off and make them jump at their commands. Which seems to help the bully maintain a sense of power over others.

How did they learn that intimidation and aggression aid them in getting their way?

Mostly due to social behavioural learning. This means that children learn from observing how adults interact with each other. If they are being bullied at home, then they will most likely try and regain the power they lost through bullying their schoolmates, according to Childline South Africa. 

According to the author of Empowering Parents James Lehman, behavioural issues also stem from the absence of social skills. Some children have issues that inhibit them from learning these skills. So special attention has to be paid to them, or else they will navigate social settings as they see fit. And most times, without the right tools.

This inevitably leads them to display behaviours of intimidation, rather than interaction. They generally don’t know how to do the latter.

After understanding where your child’s behaviour stems from, you can then start building.

What do you do?

 Teach them accountability 

Firstly, make it clear in your household that accountability is key. Everyone needs to be accountable for how they behave at home, in the playground, and at school. According to the bullying prevention expert Sherri Gordon, “when parents discover their child is a bully or that their child is a cyberbully, they often want to make excuses or provide explanations for the behavior. But blaming others doesn’t help your child learn important behaviors like self-control and anger management”. 

Build that culture within your home.

A bully will always make themselves look like the victim. Abusive adults are the same. They always have to be ‘provoked’ to beat their partners to a pulp. It is never their fault.

According to Gordon “victim thinking allows your child to believe her actions were in some way justified because she was victimized in some way”.

So making an excuse for them, or accepting their excuses is doing more harm than good. They need to be held responsible for their behaviours, regardless of the situation.

Management of emotions 

Secondly, it is important to teach our children the right way of managing their emotions or frustrations. If they are used to getting their way when throwing a tantrum at home, they will also act out in school when they aren’t getting their way.

Teach them healthy ways of managing conflict. Rather than acting on impulses, they need to learn to take a step back before being mean or hitting someone else.

It might sound like a therapy session, but we need to instill these lessons very early on in their lives. It is the same as teaching them to share with others, or being told “no”. If they don’t know how to do these things and find themselves in environments where these behaviours are required (schools), they will struggle a lot.

Even children can resort to aggression or defensiveness when they don’t get their way, the same way some adults do. 

Our children sometimes have underlying behavioural or social issues they need help resolving. Let us help them before this trickles into their adult lives.

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