For Parents of children who are bullied

Having a child who is bullied can be very difficult for a parent.

Your heart aches as you send them off to school. Will they be all right today? Will someone beat them up or abuse them? How will they feel when they come home and if something has happened, will they tell you?

That sick feeling sits in your stomach all day.

It is very important for you to look after yourself. If you are really going to be a help to your child, you need to be happy and confident in your own right.

So how do you do this? The best advice that we can give you is to have someone to confide in. This person does not have to be able to offer you any advice, they just have to be able to listen. Ideally, this person would be someone from outside the family. You need to be able to drop in, or phone them, tell them your concerns, then, if possible, change the subject so you can end the conversation on a positive note.

Do you know another parent whose child is being bullied? Befriend them or arrange to meeting at least once a month. Knowing that you are not alone is really helpful. You can discuss strategies or simply listen to each other's stories.

If you do these regularly, the sick feeling in your stomach should lessen and your positive outlook will help to your child.

Share the troubles and you will halve them.

Wendy Nichols and Robyn Collins

freefrombullies

freefrombullies

ADHD children who are bullied

Irma's story

We tend to think of children who have ADHD as the 'naughty ones'- the kids who are dishing out the bad behaviour that the 'good kids' have to put up with. At times this is true. Unfortunately, their inappropriate behaviour sometimes causes the other kids to reject them, and instead of getting the support that ADHD kids badly need, they are bullied.

I recently spoke to a mother of an ADHD child. Irma is a single mother and one of the most positive people I have ever met. I was stunned to hear that her son, Joe, had never been invited to a birthday party in his entire time at primary/elementary school. As well, he was frequently bullied at school. The kids would tease him, call him names and refuse to play with him.

Hoping to rectify the situation, Irma decided to throw Joe a graduation party. Just before the party, the kids went on school camp. Joe was used to camping and loved the outdoors. While several of the kids struggled with the activites, he completed them easily and was able to help some of the others. The kids were surprised at his expertise.

Most of the kids still refused the invitation to the party, but a few of the girls came.

Joe was also good at swimming. None of 'swimmers' were in his class at school. Irma made the effort to invite some of the kids around - one at a time. One of the boys, TJ, seemed more tolerant of Joe's behaviour than the others. He was happy to return to their house.

Irma went out of her way to help Joe cement this friendship. She would often pick both the boys up after swimming and, as TJ lived a long way away, invite TJ to sleep over. I'm sure this sometimes proved demanding during the school week but Irma perservered.

As well as seeking out activites that he was good at, Irma gave Joe all the love and positive feedback he needed.

Joe now has two swimming friends and his behaviour and grades at school have improved enormously. According to the boy I spoke to, Joe's behaviour isn't that bad any more and he fits in quite well with the other kids in his class.

I have no doubt the Irma deserves the credit for the improvement in Joe. She now has a much happier child. And what greater reward could a parent ask for!

Should I change schools?

Question: My daughter has been bullied since the beginning of the school year. It has become so bad that she wants to change schools. What do you think?
Answer: We are so sorry that your daughter is having trouble with bullies. It is just awful when someone upsets our children and all we want is to take away everything that hurts them. Unfortunately our experience is that if your child is being bullied in one school, it is quite likely they may be bullied when they change schools. This is why we use a two-pronged approach to bullying, and this is set out in our book, freefrombullies.

Firstly, we want the bullying to stop and, secondly, we want children to become bully proofed so even if it does happen again, they know how to cope with it – and because they are coping they do not feel the need to change schools and add even more stress to their lives.

Here is our suggestion. Stay calm, (no matter how upset you are feeling inside) try not to let your upset show too much. You want to convey to your daughter that you are in control and together you are going to take back control from the bullies.

Although you would like to see the bullies punished, and maybe even made to feel as bad as your daughter does, this is secondary to the most important thing - stopping the bullying. This may even mean that to a certain extent the bullies 'get away with it' but it may be you need to live with that to get the bullying to stop. The most successful school programs recommend an approach that is non confrontational.

We think that bullying needs to be reported. The problem is that sometimes we feel so emotional when we are reporting, that the message we want to convey - we want the bullying to stop - gets lost.

So, now to the specific steps:

1. Document the bullying - who is actually doing it, when is it happening, what is the nature of the bullying, how is this affecting your daughter? Write this down ready to take to the teacher.
2. Make an appointment to see your daughter's teacher.
3. While you are waiting for the appointment, discuss with your daughter things she can do to ignore the bullying.
4. Ask her to practice what to do if she is bullied. She should say something like, "I feel very sad when you say bad things about me. I want you to stop." The bullies may laugh when she says this or continue saying something mean. Tell her not to lash out at the bullies or try to argue with them. Bullies love this. Just say again "I feel very sad that you think like that. I want you to stop." Then she should walk away. Maybe this hasn't stopped the bullying at this stage, but your daughter now has some control. Also, because of her behaviour, the teacher cannot accuse her of provoking the bullying by answering back aggressively.
5. See the teacher. Have your documented information about the bullying with you. Be pleasant but firm. Don't threaten. Calmly tell the teacher that your daughter is being bullied, show her the evidence (but make sure you keep a copy) and tell her you want it stopped. Follow the process in the book about reporting to the teacher.
6. After the meeting document what was said and send a letter to the teacher - see the bonus letter to the teacher, and part B of the ebook.
7. Give the teacher 48 hours to carry out the actions discussed at the meeting with you.
8. If nothing happens work up the chain, to principal and higher authorities.

If you work through all of the steps you should see your daughter taking back control of what happens to her and thus feeling less anxious to change schools.

Unfortunately, there is no quick fix. You do need to work through the whole process. Remember the first and most important thing is to get the bullying stopped. The next thing you want is to help your daughter get her confidence back and be happy at school.

There is no guarantee that the bullying won't get worse but this is unlikely if you and your daughter stay calm and use a 'no blame' approach. We also know that as children get older and are more able to cope, bullying actually gets less.

It is important to stop the bullying, however, bullying does sap the confidence of the victim and it can have long term effects. This is why we keep on mentioning 'control'. You might stop this bullying problem only to have another arise, or change schools and find there are bullies at the new school. You can't control this but you can control how your daughter reacts. If you can give her the skills to deal with bullies by using assertive, not aggressive, behaviour, use strategies to improve her self esteem, help her find a good friend and use all of the other strategies in the book we hope that she will be bully proofed for life.

We do hope that all of the above things help and your daughter's school life improves.

4:09 AM

Wendy Nichols 

Robyn Collins 

Welcome

Welcome to our blog. We finally finished our bullying ebook and posted it on the web. Phew! The writing part was easy; it was the technical side of getting it on the web that gave us a headache. Still, it's up there now and we're very proud of it. Have a look - the URL is http://www.freefrombullies.com.

Our biggest problem when writing the ebook was deciding what to leave out! We had oodles of information that we wanted to include but knew we'd run into downloading problems if we gave people an encylopedia of information. (We also thought people might get sick of reading it if we made it too long.) So we decided to stick to a formula that we knew would help anyone, regardless of their problem. That was great but it meant we couldn't address the specific problems, such as those faced by ADHD children, or offer advice to the poor parents of the victims who seem to go through as much angst as the victims themselves.

Then someone suggested a blog. What a fantastic idea!! We'd always hoped to include a free question and answer section with our ebook and here it is.

We'll answer some questions, address some specific problems and tell some more personal stories. All in the hope of reaching the people who are troubled by bullying. Wouldn't it be great if, together, we could drastically lessen the number of bullying incidents in schools? We're passionate about helping to solve the bullying problem and we hope you are too. So keep coming back to this site. We're sure there will be something to interest you here.

Robyn Collins and Wendy Nichols