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Key points
- The first step in helping your child who is being picked on is to check in with yourself about how this is affecting you.
- Children may not tell parents they are being picked on. It may appear as a mood change and a reluctance to go to school or be with peers.
- When you have gathered your thoughts, a conversation with your child would follow their cue, asking gentle questions and listening.
Danny had been very quiet when he came home from school that afternoon and had spent an unusual amount of time alone in his room. This was a very different pattern of behavior, thought Debbie, as she mentally reviewed observations of her 12-year-old son. They had had a particularly nice weekend with his friends and her friends. He had recently made a giant step with his math that boosted his grades and his confidence. What could be happening for him? reflected Debbie, being mindful not to catastrophize what was going on for her son.
Bad Moods
What parent has not worried themselves sick over the bad moods their children get into? The fact is, kids get into moods. Moods are a natural byproduct, for all of us, as we experience our biology at work and we reflect on our experiences. Moods can be major boosts to our motivations, or they can be major impediments to our feelings of well-being.
It is important that children learn how they can modulate and otherwise regulate their inevitable moods because they have significant implications for how they will feel in their everyday experiences with themselves and others. And what parent hasn't scratched their head wondering how to approach their child and create a conversation on what might be a very sensitive topic?
As it turned out, Debbie overheard Danny telling his friend how he felt bullied and picked on at school. He felt like he did not have a chance at getting back with his friends since they were all going with his nemesis. He did not know what to do.
Debbie kept her feelings to herself although she had a great conversation with her best friend Rachel who also had a 12-year-old son. As much as she could get it off her chest with her friend, she found herself aching for Danny. He just wasn't his usual exuberant self.
Several nights later, Danny gave her an opening, as is often the case, when she was saying goodnight to him. He opened up about not feeling like going to a school activity Friday night. As he went on to explain it, he felt there had been a turn in his friendship with Charlie and a few of their shared friends. As he got into it, Danny seemed to relax and speak more. Debbie knew to leave well enough alone and just listened. He described how Charlie was taunting and teasing him in the locker room and how the other guys would join in and leave him feeling really bad. He found himself wanting to avoid gym class and had no idea how to remedy his relationship with Charlie. All of this was making him feel worse, which is what Debbie picked up on when she thought through approaching him.
Parents' Own Experiences
Clear yourself in preparation. Being a parent often involves coming up with solutions to problems your child is having. One of the first places parents can go in an effort to find solutions is to their own experiences. Depending on your own success or failure, much more even having had a similar experience, you have more or less to offer your hurting child. To make matters more difficult, this is an area where parents often give in to their own upset and intensify or minimize their child's experience in their moment of difficulty.
It is imperative that a parent, entering into this type of conversation with their child, plumb their mind for a thorough review of their own earlier, formative experiences. Think through your memories and identify your hard parts. Reflect on how these carry into today and try hard to sort them out. By all means, talk with your friend, your partner, and, most of all, with yourself. The only way you can successfully achieve the imperative of meeting your child where he experiences what is happening is by being clear on what's in you and what's in him.
Giving Space
Once clear, tune in to your child. "Danny, I see you have really kept to yourself this afternoon. I'm just wondering how you are doing." Depending on how he answers, you can use your acquired information to taper your questions to wondering how he feels with his friends. If he continues to maintain privacy, we suggest leaving it alone. Giving him his space will help him to clarify how he is feeling and what he wants to do about it. Since independence is a primary goal, it is OK to leave him alone, even if he is suffering—something very difficult for a parent to stand by and observe.
The key here is to weigh the dimensions of how he is. You can guide yourself by asking: Is he sleeping? Is he eating? Is he talking with friends? Is he doing his homework and attending to his responsibilities? If you can check these off, leave him alone. Remember, you are setting the stage for many conversations to come, so you want to set a comfortable style, which certainly means not being intrusive. Most importantly, you want to be responsive to what he is feeling and not to what you would be feeling were you to be in his place. When you do approach your child, start low-key and gentle.
At first, Debbie was filled with rage. How could Charlie be so hurtful, and after so many years of closeness with Danny? How could these friends turn as they had? She was reminded of Cindy, her friend who had bullied her all those years ago. Thinking about Cindy actually gave her hope. She recalled how her mom had called Cindy's mom and how they had gotten their girls together, shortly thereafter, and talked it through.
With this memory front of mind, Debbie approached Danny and told him her sad story that paralleled his own, but added the positive outcome. Danny said, “Please don't” when Debbie asked him whether he would permit her to call Sandy, Charlie's mom and her old friend. At first, he said no, going on about how there was no use. Eventually, he gave in, and they all got together. Because the moms had easily talked through what was happening, they got their boys to tell their side and then to articulate the impact they on Danny. Within this openness, the boys again found their care and connection with each other and agreed on a plan to get along with each other. Debbie was heartened by this, but she also called Danny's grade advisor to alert him to what was going on so he could alert the teacher to monitor Danny and his friends.
When things do not go as you hoped, you can always go back and do it better in the next conversation. As parents, we tend to overthink what is happening with our children, feeling as though their pain is our pain. Especially when this involves being picked on, a universal experience, we can only be as good a guide to our child as we were for ourselves. It is imperative that we think through our reactions past and present to these social wrongs we see our child experiencing. With an eye toward helping our child take care of themselves, it is best to observe from a distance and, when constructive, approach your child gently and with empathy.
In these moments when we can feel enraged over our child having to experience social hurt, it is important not to further upset their hurt by imposing our own and expecting them to immediately remedy it as you might. They have their own reactions to rein in and understand. In your role as parent, support them by providing encouragement, and let your responses convey that it is them you have in the front of your mind, and not a leftover from your own experience of being bullied, left out, or otherwise socially hurt.
