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

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

Bullying in Schools

It is very likely that more school pupils suffer from bullying than any other group of people. Children are in the process of developing their social skills. They are learning what they can and can’t do in social situation, what works and what doesn’t and what they can or can’t get away with. This completely natural process, where everyone is discovering their possibilities and limitations, is bound to breed bullying behaviour. Teachers and... Read More

Being Bullied

An incredibly common question for victims of bullying to ask themselves is “Why is it happening to me?” Often this leads to a second, and an entirely unhelpful, question: “What’s wrong with me?” Unsurprisingly, the answers you come up with can lead to low self-esteem, a lack of confidence and reclusiveness. None of this will make the bullying stop. In fact, it’s far more likely to make you an even tastier target for the bullies. The question... Read More

Bullying Help

If you are being bullied then you need to get help. You can go to a specialist, such as myself, you can go to a friend, a work colleague, a family member or, in some cases, the police. Make sure the person you go to is someone you can trust and who will listen to you. Also, have in mind an idea of what kind of help you might want. Do you want someone just to share the problem with? Do you want them to intervene directly with the bullies? Do you want... Read More

Bullying Awareness Campaigns

Bullying awareness campaigns can be very effective at getting a message out that there is a problem which must be addressed. This can create some much needed public pressure to get some action taken. I wonder though if they do enough and I wonder how they could be made more effective. I have become increasingly sceptical of bullying awareness campaigns. Having questioned many organisers of such campaigns I have discovered a trend. When I ask what... Read More

Why is the bully picking on me?

This is the question that seems to crops up the most often from people being bullied. In many of the email enquiries I receive, I am asked this question in various different ways: “What have I done to deserve this?”, “what’s wrong with me?” etc. If you have ever asked yourself this question, I would like you to immediately change your focus. I want you to understand what is wrong with the question. Whose fault is the bullying? When a... Read More

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 at the Workplace

Bullying in the workplace is rife. One study* suggests about 1 in 4 people are victims of bullying at their work at sometime in their lives and that 1 in 12 are bullied on a regular basis. Bullying is so commonplace in our work environments that it has become ‘normalised’. We are so familiar with it that we unconsciously allow it, accept and, for many, take part in it. Perhaps we learned this in school. We have simply transferred the ‘social... Read More