What’s Your Best Advice for Dealing With Bullies?
At dinner the night before, my son had told us about a friend of his who had been bullied at school. He’s a super cute 13 year old boy, but very shy and attending a new school, so he’s been without his squad since last year. A classmate noticed his awkwardness with that strange radar of weakness possessed by bullies, and now she regularly insults him in class. This is a classic scenario where an angry child chooses a shy child.
His school has a “do not bully” policy, but he is a smart bully, effective at inflicting emotional stress in a seemingly innocent way without leaving the victim immediate help – you really can’t walk up to a teacher and say, “She said I had beautiful hair, but she said so ! “
Aside from “stay away from her as long as possible,” my wife and I realized that we had very little helpful advice. “Bullies are likely to treat the people they target at some point in their lives badly and send a weird Facebook message that will make your friend feel controversial,” isn’t particularly helpful. Also there is no “Bullying? Jesus Christ, try to pay your mortgage. “
A lot of the standard advice about this kind of bullying seems terribly naive . I mean, “Tell them they hurt you?” That’s the point, isn’t it? And any self-respecting bully would say, “I’m really, really sorry.” (But that would be as they say.)
Another common piece of advice – “respond with your own humorous tone” or “ be more confident ” – is based on bullying character traits that they clearly lack, otherwise they would not find fault with them at all.
So I’m going to open this up to you readers: What advice can you give to a child dealing with bullying that you cannot accurately report to administrators? Leave your suggestions in the comments, we will collect them and share with others. Oh, and this is a really nice shirt. Perfectly matches your style, champion.