How to help your child stand up to bullying

Help your child stand up to bullying by keeping communication open, watching for signs of distress, assuring them it is not their fault, and building the self-esteem and assertive body language that bullies avoid. Your role is not to fight on their behalf but to give them the tools to stand up safely, with adults involved whenever needed.

Bullying grows in the one who does it and hollows out the one who receives it: fear, trauma, and a shame the victim did nothing to earn. The scale justifies the word epidemic. US figures from stopbullying.gov report that 90% of students in grades 4 to 8 have experienced harassment or bullying, and in India a 2017 survey found 42% of students in Classes 4 to 8 and 36% in Classes 9 to 12 had been bullied.

What bullying does to a child first

Self-doubt. A bullied child starts finding fault in themselves rather than concluding, correctly, that nothing is wrong with them. Fear, shame, social exclusion and loneliness follow, and most children choose to suffer alone rather than seek help. Over 10% of school dropouts are linked to repeated bullying.

That silence is why communication is the key. If the channel between you is open before anything happens, your child can open up when it does. And your role is precise: not to fight on their behalf, but to prepare them to stand up on their own.

How can parents help a child stand up to bullying?

Listen, don’t ignore. When your child wants to tell you something, give it your full attention. Trust is built in the small conversations before the big one arrives.

Look for signs of distress. Changes in behaviour, sleep, appetite or enthusiasm for school are cues worth following up gently.

Watch for the other pattern too. Hard as it is, stay alert to signs that your own child might be bullying. Catching that early is a kindness to everyone, including them.

Show them with examples. Role-play at home: act out what bullying looks like and practise the responses. Rehearsed words come out when they are needed; unrehearsed ones often don’t.

Assure them it is not their fault. Mean things said by a bully do not become true by being said. A child needs to hear this from you, plainly and more than once.

Build their self-esteem. A confident, self-reliant child is a poor target, because strong self-worth is a standing disadvantage for bullies.

Teach assertive body language. Standing tall, holding eye contact, speaking in a steady voice. This is not about physical fighting; often the body says “no” more convincingly than words do.

Teach them to intervene. Bullies back off when someone steps in. Even a child who is not being bullied can learn to stand up for a friend, and schools change when bystanders stop being bystanders.

Encourage them into a group. Friends are both support and shield; belonging builds confidence, and bullies prefer isolated targets.

Teach them to involve adults. Speaking up, for themselves or for someone else, is strength, not tattling. Make sure they know which adults to go to at school.

Stay informed yourself. Know where to find help, counselling and the school’s guidelines on bullying, and get in touch with the school and other authorities when the situation calls for it.

A bully’s power runs on silence and self-blame. Break either one, and the whole thing starts to collapse.

Signs of hope worth knowing about

October 3 is marked as World Day of Bullying Prevention. In India, a 13-year-old named Anoshka Jolly built an app called Kavach that lets students report bullying anonymously and get help; she presented it on Shark Tank India and won investment for it. And counsellors increasingly argue that schools must pair anti-bullying campaigns with social-emotional learning, teacher collaboration and one-on-one parent interaction, because conditioning comes before counselling.

Reported cases in India still span skin colour, social status and appearance, and most incidents never make the news. So interact with your child and every stakeholder, know how and when to get help, and above all assure your child that this can be fought; understanding how bullying works is a good place for a parent to start, and cyberbullying needs its own watchfulness.

Dr. V.S. Gayathri is a Certified Dyslexia Therapist, an Orton-Gillingham trained literacy specialist, and the founder of Flourishing Kids. She has delivered over 4,000 hours of one-to-one reading and spelling intervention, helping children across multiple countries build stronger literacy skills. Children who learn differently are bullied more often, and protecting their confidence is part of the work; get in touch for a free 15-minute conversation.