How to Deal With Bullying

There are many ways of dealing with bullying. Some are more effective than others but the most important thing to appreciate is that every bullying situation is different. What will work well in one situation may well make things worse in another. Because each bullying situation is unique, you need to be flexible. Bullies are usually very flexible themselves. They have to figure out which techniques will hurt you the most and which ones will get the... Read More

Bullying clip

This is an excellent clip of a bullying situation in progress. I recommend viewing the clip before you read on……. Let’s do some analysis: The bully is being highly intimidating. He is aware that he has an audience – that may, or may not, affect how he is behaving. I would guess that he is putting on a show and wants to show everyone how tough he is. He may still have had the confrontation without spectators, in which case it... Read More

Why I like martial arts

Firstly, I’m not a martial artist. Also, I don’t think that children need martial arts training to stop the bullies. So why do I like it? Martial arts training almost always develops good emotional skills. With a good instructor you learn discipline, respect, confidence and self esteem. The physical skills don’t matter much as far as bullying is concerned. I actually disapprove of Dads who send their kids to martial arts classes... Read More

Bullying Advice for Parents

It can be incredibly frustrating being a parent of a child who is being bullied. Most parents would do anything to protect their children from being deliberately harmed by others but often they can feel powerless to help. It can be especially frustrating when you know your child is being bullied but they won’t tell you about it. Or if they do, they will give a vague description of what is going on, likely missing out the very details you want... Read More

Case Study Part 2

I found Charlie and his Dad, Ian, very easy to work with. They were very keen to learn new skills and were very open minded with the concepts I was putting across. This made the training session relatively short. We did about 5 hours actual training time. (A maximum time would typically be around 7 hours). First of all, we did a couple of exercises on how to feel good under any circumstances. We used body language, imagination, rapport, facial expressions,... Read More

How to help your child

It can be incredibly frustrating being a parent of a child who is being bullied. Most parents would do anything to protect their children from being deliberately harmed by others but often they can feel powerless to help. It can be especially frustrating when you know your child is being bullied but they won’t tell you about it. Or if they do, they will give a vague description of what is going on, likely missing out the very details you want... Read More

When someone constantly makes fun of you

I was asked a great question on Facebook: “What is the best way to handle someone who is very good at taking the p and the other person is not. When I look at people I find it very difficult to pick out anything bad about them as I don’t think it’s in my nature to do so. Thank you.” Only fight battles you have already won The first thing I noticed, when reading your question , is that you seem to think the right thing to do is fight... Read More

Physical Bullying

There seems to be a widely held perception that physical bullying is more severe than other forms of bullying. In my experience, I find this to be far from the truth. I have asked a great many of my clients the same question: “If you had the choice of ongoing psychological bullying, name calling, sneering etc., or just taking a physical beating which would you prefer?” Almost everyone says they would prefer the physical beating. The reason for... Read More

Bullying Advice

Every bullying situation is different. Bullies have a knack of finding out what buttons to press to get the reactions they want from you. So you have to be adaptable. Use the following general ideas by adapting them to suit your situation. Realise that bullying is ALWAYS ABOUT THE BULLY. I can´t stress this enough. People bully because they get something out of it. Sometimes it´s a feeling of control, significance, power or even inclusion. If they... Read More

Bullying is Subjective

What are your definitions of bullying? Are those definitions useful to you? One of the major problem schools have in dealing with bullying is in how they define it. It’s not just a paper exercise in thinking up labels, it makes a massive difference as to whether the organisation takes action as result of an incident or not. If you have a child who is being bullied at school, the school will only help them if the teachers believe that whatever has... Read More