My Kid is Being Bullied. What Should I Do?

The Ask Lisa Podcast does not constitute medical advice and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have concerns about your child’s well-being, consult a physician or mental health professional.

The following transcript has been automatically generated by an AI system and should be used for informational purposes only. We cannot guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the information provided.

Reena Ninan:

Episode 166, My Kid Is Being Bullied. What Should I Do?

There is a gift my daughter got me for Christmas that has transformed our home. Tell me it’s called this. Do you see? Can you read it? It says,

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Oh, that’s so funny.

Reena Ninan:

Mom’s last nerve.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

It’s a candle.

Reena Ninan:

It’s a candle.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

And what does it say at the bottom? My 53-year-old eyes are not working well today.

Reena Ninan:

“Oh look, it’s on fire.” And this is their subtle way, when I lose it and I’m nagging and annoying and just in a bad mood, she doesn’t say a word. She goes over, she picks out the candle, she lights it and she leaves it on the island butcher block.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Because our kids are geniuses. They are.

Reena Ninan:

You don’t have to say a word to me.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

No,

Reena Ninan:

And it also smells jasmine, which I love.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

That’s very nice.

Reena Ninan:

So it’s like the scent calms me down. It’s like that is like a master parenting move that I wish I could have done the reverse for my kid.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

So wait, she gave it to you as a gift?

Reena Ninan:

It was a Christmas gift. And I said, “How did you even think?” she Googled something like “heartwarming Christmas gift from mom,” and that’s how she came across it. She’s like, this is perfect.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

That beautiful. It’s funny. It’s apt. It’s clever. It smells good. And also Reena, it really gets to the painful truth that our kids know us better than we will ever know ourselves. And we have to. And especially when they get to be teenagers. Man oh man.

Reena Ninan:

That’s so right. Gosh, that’s so good. Well, anyway, for those of you who haven’t subscribed, subscribe to the YouTube channel so you can see this in full video because it’s a must and it has transformed our relationship.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

I see myself getting 20 of these next year.

Reena Ninan:

We just send you one, I’m going to send you one. Oh, well, it’s nice when your kids are in a good place and you guys can laugh about it, but it’s hard when your kids are struggling, especially with relationships, peer to peer, and we decided to tackle the topic of bullying. Because that’s something that you see a lot, right, Lisa?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Yeah, more and more, unfortunately.

Reena Ninan:

I want to read you this great letter we got. It says, “Dear Dr. Lisa, I found your advice on your podcast so helpful, and I’m hoping you can help me navigate this issue. My daughter’s facing. My daughter’s 12, and in the seventh grade she dreads taking the bus home from school because three boys on the bus who are a year older sometimes pick on her saying mean things about her appearance. It seems to happen on and off, and mostly when only one of the three boys was present, we’ve talked about how she can stand up for herself and apparently the boys have picked on some of her friends too, but they were able to stand up for themselves more effectively. So now, they just pick on her. She’s asked if I can pick her up from school in the afternoons as they only pick on her during the bus ride home, not to school. She’s asked me not to involve the school and believes the bus driver wouldn’t do anything to help. I’ve worked hard to avoid being a helicopter parent and to teach her how to advocate for herself, but in this case, I’m wondering whether I should remove her from the situation since it’s unhealthy. I work from home and I could pick her up from school, but I don’t want to set a precedent where I swoop in to the rescue. Thanks in advance for your help.”

Oh my goodness. There’s so many good things here, and I love that this parent is acknowledging, I don’t want to be that helicopter parent, but I feel like maybe this is a one-off where I actually do need to take more action than is needed.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Yeah, there might be some action in order here. I agree.

Reena Ninan:

So I want to ask you, how would you define what is bullying and conflict there?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Yeah, this is a really important place to start. The term bullying gets used a lot. It gets used to describe things that we would not technically say are bullying, though I do think this is bullying. So when we walk up to the question of what is bullying, the way that psychologists define it and it matters to us to be very, very specific about this, is that bullying is when a kid is targeted by another kid or a group of kids and is unable to defend themselves.

So that we’ve got that here and hopefully the letter also articulates. There are other kids who can defend themselves, and then there’s her kid who is unable to defend herself and is on the receiving end in an ongoing way. Everything else we call conflict. So the other kids who are defending themselves, they’re having a conflict with these boys on the bus, but they’re able to stand up for themselves and make it stop. Kids not getting along at school or one kid’s given it on Monday, the other kid’s given it on Tuesday. That’s conflict. This is bullying and actually a very clean picture of it.

Reena Ninan:

It’s interesting. She says, this happens on the way back home, not going to school. I’m curious what you think about that. And also Lisa, why do kids do this? Why do they bully?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Actually, Reena, I don’t quite know what to make of the one-way situation here. And it may be maybe different bus drivers, who knows? It may be that in the morning. I think teenagers, a lot of them do this. They’re still waking up, they put on their headphones, they keep to themselves on the bus, but having had the fullness of the day, they’re all riled up and they’re interacting. Who knows what the dynamic is. But that’s, it’s really an interesting question. In terms of the why, there’s no one reason that describes all situations, but there are some things we see that explain why kids bully.

Sometimes kids bully because it’s how they’re treated elsewhere. They’re being mistreated either at home or in another relationship. They are acquainted with a painful dynamic of receiving mistreatment, and they can start to sort of construct this idea of like, well, there’s one of two spots you stand in, you’re either the bully, you’re either given it or getting it, and so they may be getting it elsewhere.

And so then given the opportunity, they’re like, I’m going to give it. I don’t want to be on the receiving end. I want to be on the giving end. So that’s one explanation.

Sometimes we see kids who get drunk on the social power of it, Reena. I’ve seen this. It’s so weird and disheartening. Not all kids are willing to be mean. Most kids are not willing to be mean. And every once in a while they’ll come across a kid who either is willing to be mean or is willing to experiment with being mean. And they do it. And what they quickly discover, especially seventh, eighth grade, is suddenly everyone wants to be on your good side. No one wants to give you a hard time. Right, because you’ve basically just demonstrated I’ll be mean.

Reena Ninan:

It’s some sort of weird social power is what you’re saying.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Yeah. They just sort of get drunk on power. And there was a funny and perfect New Yorker cartoon a million years ago, and it’s like these two, I think it was the steps of congress, two male congress, people walking up the steps holding their briefcases, and one says to the other, “Well, how do you know you have power if you don’t abuse it?” And I remember looking at being like, yeah, that’s the seventh grade right there, kids.

Reena Ninan:

That’s funny. That’s funny.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

So I think there are kids who are like, “Check it out. If I’m mean, all of a sudden everyone like cuts me a wide birth and wants to be my friend because they don’t want to be a potential target.” Then there’s this other reason, and this is the dumbest reason, Reena, but it’s a reason. Sometimes kids bully because they’re bored.

Reena Ninan:

They’re bored?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

They’re bored.

Reena Ninan:

But it’s so painful. It’s so horrible and just out of boredom, that’s why they do it?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

You know what, nothing going on want to, we stir something up and start it, right. So they’re all really miserable reasons that one, I’m like, “Oh, give them their phones,” whatever. Really keep them from being bored. So that’s why those are some of the reasons we see.

Reena Ninan:

Are you surprised when apparently there’s one kid, specific kid present, it gets worse?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

No. This is fascinating.

So it’s interesting, kids, the dynamics in groups of kids can easily be swayed by one strong personality. So the way that this comes up in my work is that people will say to me, what do you think about fill in the blank school? We’re looking at fill in the blank school for my eighth grader. And what I’ve learned over years is if they’re asking me about the social universe at that school, I usually can’t comment on it unless I happen to know a whole lot about that dynamic in that school, in that year of the school. So you can have a school where, and schools will tell you this all the time, fifth, sixth and eighth grade or fifth, sixth and seventh grade, easygoing kids, people get along well, but oh my God, there’s a really, really intense bunch in the eighth grade who has warped the whole dynamic of the entire class or even a single intense personality that is shaping the dynamic of the interactions that happen in the whole class. So I see it all the time that there can be kids who just have strong personalities, forceful personalities, and they honestly, warp is probably the best word. They sort of warp all that happens around them with their big personalities.

Reena Ninan:

I want to go back to this kid because I think this is what every parent worries about and we don’t know what’s the impact of bullying on your child?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Not good, Reena, not good. We’ve studied this and we’ve looked at it in short term and we’ve looked at it in long term and true bullying, so not given it getting at conflict, but true bullying makes kids anxious. It makes kids depressed. It can cause what we call somatic symptoms where they have stomach aches or headaches that can be in the immediate term. When we look down the line, we see more substance use, we see more depression, we see more really lasting things. And this doesn’t mean that every kid who’s bullied is going to suffer from all of these things, but this is to say, we don’t mess with this. Right? We take bullying very seriously. And Reena, there was something you said last week about, we were talking about romances and breakups, about even in middle age, having this lasting feeling from those early injuries or those early heartbreaks. This is, I think especially true in bullying that people who were bullied in middle school or elementary school or any point in their life, they can be 40, 50 years old. And when they think about it, it’s like they’re back there and it is exquisitely painful. Bullying can really, really leave a very lasting injury in people.

Reena Ninan:

I want to ask you, Lisa, what are solutions that parents can do? But first I want to ask you, should the parent reach out to the bus driver because now they’re video, there’s video on buses. I also cannot see a situation where the bus driver just doesn’t want to get involved and just doing their job and doesn’t want to get involved. What do you think? Should the parents write a letter and hand it to the bus driver?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Maybe? I think the first step is really digging into what the kid’s concerns are about why the parent doesn’t want the bus driver to know. Again, our kids have tons of data. This kid’s riding the bus a lot. She’s observed this bus driver a lot. She knows a lot of things. So I would really find out what the issue is. And it may be like the kid can say, the bus driver’s laughing when they’re doing it. I mean, there’s details and data here to be had that would inform the next step. If the kid’s like, “I just feel embarrassed and I don’t want the adult to know.” I mean, there’s a lot of shame that gets caught up with bullying. Kids feel very ashamed and these boys are making fun of her appearance. I mean, it’s like basically a shame-a-thon here anyway. The thing that all adults need to know is that all 50 states have anti-bullying laws that require schools to intervene, to investigate and intervene in bullying. And that covers the school building, the school buses and school activities.

Reena Ninan:

I did not know that all 50 states have bullying laws where it sounds like the burden is on the schools…

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Yes.

Reena Ninan:

…to nip this in the bud.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Yeah, they are not allowed to sleep on this, if they’ve been informed. You know, they can’t do something about something they don’t know about. And it extends to buses and it extends to school activities, maybe not happening during the school day.

So the parent has the law on their side here. And so if the bus driver turns out to be more approachable, and there’s a reason I think start with the bus driver and just say, “I’m hearing this. Are you seeing this? What’s going on?” And get the bus driver activated. If there’s reason to doubt that the bus driver is going to be a useful player in this, or if it feels like that could make it worse. And this is really critical around bullying, how it gets handled is really important. And so the well-meaning bus driver could get involved in a way that actually the boys take it underground. It gets uglier, right? I mean, and the kid may have a sense that the bus driver may mean well, and it’s still going to get worse.

Reena Ninan:

Yeah. I mean, could you imagine this scenario playing out, you’re in middle school and your mom walks on the bus to talk to the bus driver or even hand the bus driver a note. That is not something that happens. Everyone is on alert now. And now you’ve been flagged that clearly the mom got in touch with the bus driver.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Exactly. Right. So that’s why I am saying start with what the kids’ reservations are. Now, it may well be that the reservations are severe and exactly what you’re describing where the kid’s like, “Oh my gosh, if you want to make this worse for me, the first thing you can do is stand at the bus stop with me and take it up with the bus driver.”

Reena Ninan:

But what do you do then, Lisa, when the child is telling you, “I don’t want you to call the school”? You just said it. The school can’t take action if they don’t know. But the kid is so terrified it’s going to get worse.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

So what I would honestly have a parent do is either buy or check out from the library, this ancient book called “Bullying at School”. That’s the name of the book. It’s by Dan Olweus, O-L-W-E-U-S. This is a guy who devoted his entire career to studying bullying, did brilliant work on it. And what he actually laid out was exactly what schools need to do to not make things worse. And so I would, as a parent, if this were my kid, I would get myself informed about that. There’s also websites. If you just search his name, this stuff will come up. And then I would reach out to the school and say, I need to alert you to a bullying situation. Tell me your procedures. And what you want to hear from them is that they have also read this book, and they are also totally up to date on the ways in which we intervene in a way that does not make it worse, actually makes it better. And if they’re like, oh yeah, we bring the kids in. We have ’em all talk to each other. We do a peace circle. That is not what is recommended in the bullying literature. That can be great, great, great for kids who are in conflict, but not for bullying. You deal with each kid separately. You make sure there’s no possibility of recriminations. I mean, we know what to do. It’s complex and it’s smart. So if I were the parent in the situation, that would be my first stop would be informing myself about that.

Reena Ninan:

So if a school does get involved, because ultimately you’re going to have to report this, right? To get this dealt with. What are the right ways that you’ve seen schools handle bullying?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

So they should be very, very careful. They should probably collect a bunch of data, quietly. Get a look at the situation. Often, and this is really important for us to remember, schools are working with a ton of their own information. As soon as a parent calls and says, my kid is in the seventh grade and is on the receiving end of some bullying, they may not even name the kid they’re thinking of. And the school’s like “mhm”.

Reena Ninan:

They already have other touch points on this.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Yeah.

Reena Ninan:

You’re just another one.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

You’re working again, and this is something Reena, as we’re talking it through, I realize it’s such an important thing for us to zoom out and name, which is these are very context heavy situations where the parent is operating with very little information but could get more information. So what I mean is the kid who’s like, “Don’t tell the bus driver.” I think as a parent needs to be like, but the bus driver needs to know, no, that kid has a ton of contextual information. Find out what the reservations are, use that data. And then same with the school. You might think this school doesn’t care, doesn’t know. And then you call and you’re like, my kid, and I need to know how you’re going to handle this. And they say, “Yes, we are fully trained in how to handle bullying situations, and we are so glad you called. And we are actually working with a great deal of information.” I mean, there’s a whole, this is wildly detailed. And the more that we assume best intentions in the people who are in charge and give them a chance to catch up to the information if we have not given it to them, and trust that there actually is often a lot more that we don’t know that helps these situations, which are so hard and so challenging, go better, not well, but better.

Reena Ninan:

So on that topic of there are just touch points, we don’t know what if the child insists, “I don’t want you talking to the bus driver, and I definitely don’t want you calling the school” and is freaked out about that thought. What do you do with that?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Well, you can’t let your kid get bullied. You just can’t. We’ve talked in the past, and I think this is a good place to bring it back around, about this idea of half steps. The parent could call a trusted person at the school and say, “I’m not prepared to give you any more information than this. But, when you hear about situations where kids are being bullied and truly bullied,” I mean the parents should say, “not conflict, like one way, victimization. What are the steps in your school? How do you handle it? What would happen next?” Get more information and then say, “Thank you so much.” And you could even try to make it an anonymous phone call. You could have a friend call, just to keep it away from your kid. Say, “Look, I’m calling for a friend who doesn’t want her kid involved yet. This is the information I need.”

I mean, schools should be able to talk with you about their procedures. Then the parent can go back and sit with a kid and say, “Okay, I’ve looked into this in a way that this cannot be attached to you. Here’s how this would unfold. Here’s what would happen.”

And again, work the process. Take it step by step, collect information, check that the school knows how to handle it well. Help the school handle it well if they are still coming along in their procedures, involve the kid. Reena, I think about so often in my school consulting work, when I was deep in it, one of my favorite things I would do with the teenagers is I would say to them, “You can come to me for a consultation about a situation,” where I would say, “You can tell me everything you’re worried about a peer,” usually they’re always worried about their friends. They’re so good about their friends. And I’d say, “You don’t have to tell me the name and you tell me everything, and I will tell you exactly what we would do in response to that. And then you can decide if you want to tell me the name.”

Reena Ninan:

So you’re giving ’em an opportunity to sort of run through the scenario without having to actually run through the scenario.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Whole deal. And so they’d be like, “Okay, here’s what’s happening.” And they would give me flora detail on what was happening. And I’d say, “Okay, here’s what I would do. I would have you go back to the friend. Or I would call the folks.” I would just lay it out and they’d be like, I never had a kid say, “Okay, nevermind. I’m not telling you the name.” They just need to know what’s going to happen.

Reena Ninan:

When you deal with this type of a situation. And, in the past when we’ve talked about interactions with kids and whether you reach out to the parent, one thing you’ve said that’s always surprised me is your relationship with your kid is worth so much more than what intel, you might have to give a parent or something like that. But do you think in this situation, it is worth going directly to the parent to nip this in the bud?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

The parent of the kids who are doing it?

Reena Ninan:

The kid who’s bullying, yeah.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

I have yet to come across this situation, Reena, where I think it’s a great idea to start with a call to the other parent, especially if that other parent is the parent of a kid who you think is mistreating your kid.

Reena Ninan:

Even if you might have a relationship with that parent or know that parent, you still think it’s not a good idea?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

I mean, I will defer to people’s, again, broader contextual knowledge, right?

Reena Ninan:

There’s not a one size fits all of this, right?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Yeah.

Reena Ninan:

But generally you’re saying if you don’t know the parent, it’s…

Dr. Lisa Damour:

It’s our job to defend our kids.

Reena Ninan:

Yeah. That’s right.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

So I mean, I think the moonshot outcome is you call and you say, “Look, your kid’s harassing my kid on the bus.” And the parent says, “I’m so glad you called.” I mean, they’re going to say, “How do you know this?” Or, “My kid says this about your kid.” I mean, it tends to not make it better. And it often, I think a lot of times schools are like, “Oh man, why’d you do that?”

Reena Ninan:

When the parent reaches out to the other parent?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Yeah. Schools would much rather, especially if it’s on a school property situation where they are required to handle it, they’re like, “Please do not mix it up in the community. Bring it to us.”

Reena Ninan:

Especially if it’s a small community and everybody knows everybody too. But that’s interesting because it also, I think, could you prevent other bullying by going directly to the school so they can nip it in the bud? And it’s on the record. It’s almost like I feel as a parent now, I have a moral obligation to tell the school, because who knows who else is involved in the bullying.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

That’s exactly right. Actually, schools need parent allies who treat schools as the earnest and usually almost always upright partners that schools are. It’s hard for a school when people come at them already angry for what they haven’t done about something they do not know about. I think that it’s a huge gift to a school if a parent calls and says, “Listen, I think you must not know this, and I need your help trying to sort this out. How do you typically handle these situations? What do you need from us?”

Reena Ninan:

Last week we talked about romances and shielding your child from heartbreak, which you very beautifully pointed out that you just cannot shield your child from heartbreak. Is there anything though, that we as parents can do that could help prevent bullying?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Yes, thank goodness, Reena. Yes. When we look at the research, when we look at the research on bullying, the number one form of intervention is actually activating bystanders. It’s the kids who are around when it’s happening that have the most power to do something about it.

Reena Ninan:

But they’re too scared, Lisa. I mean, no one’s going to stand up when the bully, you just open yourself up, right? I don’t know any kid who would do that, right?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Most kids won’t. So here’s what we say to our kids. We say to all of our children, “You are not allowed to bully, obviously. And, if you witness bullying, you must must must do one of three things. You must tell the bully to knock it off, which most kids are like, no, thank you. You must take the kid who’s being bullied under your wing, just say, come sit by us. Come over here. Or, you got to let an adult know.” Now, so if we go back to the bus scenario, it’s not just four kids on this bus. There’s a lot of kids on this bus, and there’s a lot of kids who are watching this go down. So, if all of those kids, or at least one of those kids had the instruction that you have to do one of these three things, it’s really different if another kid is like, “Hey, bus driver, what are you doing?”

Reena Ninan:

Right, right.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Then it’s not the victim squealing and all the stuff that can expose a kid. So if we want to address bullying, it actually is a community wide thing with a very clear expectation for every single person’s child that they have to do at least one of those three things. They don’t have to do more than one of those three things, but they can’t do nothing.

Reena Ninan:

Having that conversation, walking them through these three options, telling them in advance, you are saying to me, can really make a difference?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Absolutely. Right? And this is why I love that we have researched this, right? If you want to disrupt bullying, you activate bystanders. Full stop. We know that.

Reena Ninan:

Is there anything else, Lisa, that you feel we should keep in mind when it comes to bullying that parents, because it’s so emotional for parents, and you’re seeing your kids suffer to stay clear-minded, and focused and get to the goals you want to in resolving this and having it end. What do you see over your years of experience that you think, don’t do this, or we should keep this in mind?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

On this letter I don’t feel this way, but as a general rule, kids are not always great at owning their part in things. I have sat with kids clinically who want to show me how badly they’re being treated, and they show me their phone and a text thread, and they’re pointing to the mean kid things that other kids said. And I’m like, “But wait, is this you here?” And they’re like, what they said is super mean. And they’re like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but look what they said to me.” And I’m like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” So, I think when kids are like, I’m being mistreated somehow this letter, I’m like, I think it is what it is. But I think that we as parents need to be open to the possibility that our kid is telling us part of the story or only sees part of the story. So this is again, why you don’t want to go in loud and heavy. You want to ask questions because you don’t always know what’s going on.

Reena Ninan:

And so often you see your child suffering and going through it, and you take that one side of the story because it makes sense. It makes total sense.

Great. Well, I just feel like I have tangible things to deal with. And even if your child isn’t going through bullying, everyone’s got a part here. Everyone’s got a part. Whether you’re going through it or not.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

There’s things you can do. Everybody can do something.

Reena Ninan:

I love that. I absolutely love that.

So what do you have first, Lisa, for Parenting To Go?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

I think the most important thing in situations like this is to remember that schools are our partners and they want to be our partners. And I will tell you, it is really hard to be an educator. And it was very hard through the pandemic. It’s still hard in many ways. And the problem for schools is that they’re trying to serve the needs of many, many families, and they can’t always meet everyone’s need in the right way at the right time.

But if we approach them as partners, and give them a chance to do what’s right, they do. If we come in already frustrated or already assuming that they don’t have our kids’ best interests at heart, they will often still do the right thing, but we’ve unwittingly made it harder for them.

Reena Ninan:

So sometimes letting the process run itself and having faith in the institution, giving that a shot first.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Giving it a shot. And then, schools make mistakes and schools mess things up. No question. But I think it’s important to give schools every opportunity to handle things well.

Reena Ninan:

And so often we just feel enraged and that it’s not enough and it’s easy to go. Guns charging. It’s a great reminder, Lisa. It’s a great reminder.

Well then I’ll see you next week, Lisa.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

I’ll see you next week.