3 important things about *bullying* that I shared with my preteen—as a mom who holds a Master’s in Forensic Psychology, has worked in law enforcement intelligence, and who founded a mental health nonprofit that serves survivors of human tr*fficking as young as 2 years old:
1. When our daughter was 9, she talked about a group of girls who enjoyed making kids cry. Instead of being outraged (which is what she expected), I said, “Wow, sounds like these kids are really angry, and sad.”
A: “What do you mean?”
Me: “Kids like that are feeling a lot of tough emotions and don’t know how to express it. For a moment, hurting others makes them stop hurting. No happy kid would do that.”
A: “That’s sad.”
Me: “It is but they aren’t allowed to treat you that way.”
I reframed it this way because a conversation like this makes space for empathy, which in turn de-personalizes the behavior. Instead of asking “what’s wrong with me?”, now my kid is wondering “what happened to them?”—all while holding the boundary that no one gets to treat her this way.
I think that this is the distinction that gets muddled in the name of “compassion”. Understanding behavior doesn’t excuse it–it just allows us to comprehend on a deeper level that when someone treats us unkindly, it has everything to do with them, and very little to do with us.
Now whatever emotional damage this could have inflicted becomes externalized, rather than a heavy burden that would have shaped the way that she sees herself for decades to come.
2. I explained that bullying is partly about control. More often than not, the bully feels a lack of control in other aspects of their lives. Inspiring fear is a way for them to feel like they’ve regained some of that control.
Shedding light on possible causes of the behavior lessens its impact—the same way that horror scenes aren’t quite as scary when you know it’s corn syrup and not blood.
It’s also easier not to feel triggered when you just feel sad for the other person.
3. I explained that bullies seek power through fear. As soon as they realize they can’t scare you, they back off. The interaction no longer feeds their needs.
This part was easy because while she’s sweet, my kid is quick with the comebacks and knows how to throw a punch.
But simply telling a kid to “just ignore them” is really unhelpful and can actually do so much damage because it invalidates their experiences. It also reinforces their greatest fear: that they’re really alone, and can’t come to you for help.
Keep in mind that most kids actually don’t want to worry their parents, and they carry so much of the bad things that happen at school on their own so that they aren’t a burden. For some reason, experiencing abusive behavior feels shameful, and even saying what happened out loud can be so hard.
If they’re coming to you for help, please do your best to meet them where they are. Even saying something like “Thank you for telling me, that must have been hard” and “I don’t know what to do yet, but we will figure this out together” can make them feel less alone, and like you have their back.
One of the most damaging and isolating effects of bullying is making kids believe that there is something wrong with them.
They wonder why they’ve been singled out, and the shame drives them to isolation.
This feeling can persist for decades. It erodes their sense of self, and deeply affects their feelings of self worth.
So you can’t just tell your kids not to care; you have to make them understand why they shouldn’t.
I also recognize that many of us have been on the other end of bullying–that seeing our kids experience something similar pokes at old wounds and unravels the armor we’ve built around it. If this is you, I hope you also find healing in these insights and that you can finally put down these heavy feelings with clarity and understanding that it was never your fault.
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This piece was originally written for Threads, and while I’ve added more context to this post, I didn’t get a chance to touch on cyber bullying or physical bullying. For more resources on Bullying, head over to https://www.stopbullying.gov .