Introduction
This One-minute guide has also been designed so that schools and settings can add this content into their parent or guardian newsletters.
Understanding bullying
There are various definitions of bullying but in essence, all definitions include three core elements:
- unwanted aggressive behaviour
- observed or perceived power imbalance
- repetition or high likelihood of repetition of bullying behaviours
The Devon County Councils definition of bullying is when an assailant has targeted an individual on two or more occasions.
There are four main types of bullying:
- Physical – including spitting, tripping, physical harm, making hand gestures and pinching.
- Verbal bullying – including, teasing, name-calling, inappropriate sexual comments, and taunting.
- Social – excluding, spreading rumours and lies, embarrassing someone in public and telling others to not be friends with individuals.
- Cyber – sending texts, messages, videos, and emails, making online threats, posting inappropriate things about others, imitating others when online and excluding.
Signs your child is experiencing bullying
While everyone is different, a child who is being bullied may:
- seem low or anxious
- seem less confident in themselves
- show signs of distress such as feeling upset, teary or panicky
- avoid school or refuse to go altogether
- often complain of feeling physically unwell
- have outbursts of unexplained anger at home
- seem withdrawn, isolated and wary of others
- have few friendships
- make changes in their behaviour, for example dressing very differently or suddenly doing new activities to meet peer pressure
- act in a bullying way towards others
- have unexplained physical injuries such as bruises or scratches
- do less well at school
- eat and/or sleep more or less than usual
- use things like self-harm or drugs and alcohol to cope with difficult feelings
How can parent(s) or guardian(s) support their child
It is important to have an understanding as to whether this incident is bullying or a one-off experience. Helping children to understand this can also be useful and we know that many strategies to support a child with bullying or one-off incidents are very similar.
The strategies below are for peer-on-peer bullying. For all other types of bullying, such as violence, hate crime or repeated harassment or intimidation please also contact the Police.
How to manage a disclosure
- Reassure your child that they have done the correct thing by telling you that they are experiencing bullying.
- Explain that you will support them, that you will need some more details and will inform the school. Being open about the process you will follow is important to help the child to feel safe.
- Turn off/put on silent all technology and sit with your child with a pen and paper. If this isn’t possible, reach out to someone in your community to take notes or ask the school.
- Ask them to start at the first incident and to give you as much information as possible. Allowing them to have breaks if they want to.
- Ensure that you are letting them lead their explanations. It is understandable if a child can’t remember every detail, but if the conversation is lead, the child may fill in the ‘blanks’ with incorrect facts. This can make it harder to investigate.
- Once they have finished explaining, ask them what they need right now. This could be time alone, or to not be left alone, or even to do something to take their mind off of it.
Contacting the school
Your child’s school will have an anti-bullying policy. This might be contained within the Behaviour or Relational approach policy. All policies can be found on the school website.
The education and inspection act 2006 outlines that
every school must have measures to encourage good behaviour to prevent all forms of bullying amongst children. It also gives head teachers the ability to take measures to supporting children’s conduct when they are not on school premises or under the lawful control of the school staff.
You may already have a key contact in the school, such as a tutor, head of year or class teacher. If you don’t have this, then you can email the school’s ‘admin’ email or call the school and ask for an email address.
- Send the school an email outlining each event with as much detail. Details include dates, times, who was involved and where the incidents happened. It can be useful to number the incidents or bullet point them – so that key details don’t get mixed up. Sending an email also means that the school has all the information in one place. If you are unable to send an email you can of course call the school and you can ask then to write down the conversation and share the notes with you.
- If your child is concerned about attending school the following day, you can follow up the email with a call to the school asking for an emergency plan to be put into place.
- You should expect an acknowledgement from the school by the end of the following day, during the school week. If you haven’t heard from the school, then please ring the school and ask them if you can speak to someone in the leadership team. The delay in responding, maybe due to a missed email or staff absence.
- When the school do contact you, agree a timeline and ask them to send this to you in an email if you are discussing this over the phone.
Supporting your child during and after the investigation
The school will need to explore the incidents your child has outlined, as well as making decisions for education and consequences for potential assailants. It is unlikely you will be told exactly what the consequences were for identified assailants.
- The school can arrange a meeting with your child and yourself to complete a ‘My safety plan’ to explore areas of worry or concerns and how collectively you can all mitigate these to help your child to feel safe.
- The school should report all incidents of bullying to the Local authority and seek support if necessary.
- The school can arrange a staff member to be a mentor. Providing check-ins and ongoing support.
- You can ask the school about counselling options, however, do be mindful there may be a waiting list. You can also explore other counselling alternatives such as Stop.Breathe.Think. which have nearly no waiting times and are free to some families. You can view other supportive agencies at the end of this guide.
- Ensure you make time for your child each day. Planning activities or sitting down together for dinner. Checking in with each other is one of the best supportive strategies you can utilise.
- Have an agreement with your child about you monitoring their online activity, including mobile chat groups.
- You may need to explore temporary arrangements for your child to get to and from school if this makes them feel anxious.
- You can read our One-minute guide for parents on Bullying, prejudice and racism incidents, to have an improved understanding of incidents.
How to prevent your child from being exposed to bullying
We can’t control other people’s behaviour, however you can give your child some awareness of how to stay safe.
- Build their self-esteem and resilience. Through activities, such as exercising or baking together.
- Embed the importance of speaking to an adult throughout their development. Ensuring that as they grow up, they understand the strength it takes to tell someone and how it can help to improve things.
- Ensure your child is on appropriate social media platforms and that the settings for privacy etc are set correctly. Show them how to screenshot, block and report things online. Is your child clear that anything they post online then becomes the public domain, of which they have little control over? Spending a few hours checking and having these conversations every few months can prevent unwanted cyber bullying.
- Have clear discussions about acceptable online communication with their peers. Ensuring they don’t become a bystander and drawn into bullying themselves.
- Share the signs that someone is being bullied. This will help them to identify this in their friends and themselves.
- Model positive healthy relationships. Children who have an understanding of positive friendships are more likely to surround themselves with likeminded supportive friends.
Things to avoid
Things to avoid
As a parent/guardian seeing your child upset can be very emotive and of course you want to solve the problem then and there, however be mindful that some things can create more trauma or retraumatise a child.
We also need to be mindful that peer-on-peer bullying involves children, including the assailant. Although these incidents are negative experiences for targets, due to the assailant also being a child, we need to be mindful on the impacts of everyone involved.
It is useful to be reflective, if your child had made a mistake, how would you like the other family to respond.
- You shouldn’t ‘vent’/share on social media. Sharing your child’s experience on social media can make them feel embarrassed or more worried that others will see what is happening.
- Don’t turn up to the assailant’s house. This can be deemed as intimidating behaviour and you will unlikely be able to calmly voice your concerns – thus not receiving the response you desire.
- Aim to not email lots of different staff members at the school. Facts can get misunderstood and often staff members might feel that someone else in the email chain is handling the matter. If you aren’t happy with the staff member that is managing the incident, ask them to refer you to their line manager, or another staff member.
- Try not to keep your child from school. Working with the school on a Safety plan can often be the answer to helping your child feel safe. It is likely that any absence would be an unauthorised one, and we know that worries can build, causing more anxiety for the child if they have been off and then need to re-integrate back into school. Structure and consistency will help with their well-being.
- Just because you have had bullying, being safe and other discussions with your child once, don’t feel that they received all of your messages. As children grow up their experiences will be different and so ensure that you have these conversations regularly.
Useful websites and contacts
Useful websites and contacts