Bullying Is About More Than Just Two People

If your child needs power and recognition – and that’s a great cocktail for success in many sectors – it can easily trigger bullying behaviour, and as a parent, you need to be aware of that, and active in how you manage it.

If you can nurture a sense of kindness in that child, help them und...

Bullying is a sustained pattern of aggression by a person with more power, targeting someone with less power. The key  is that it’s repeated behaviour. But beneath this simple definition lies a complex, multilayered situation that can be exceptionally tricky to unpack. What is the power, and wher...

Sometimes you come across a family where everyone is a bully: the parents, the older siblings, who bully the younger kids, and the younger kids, who bully others at school. These families are very difficult to help, but they’re also quite rare. What’s much more common is individualistic behaviour...

Kids with a supercilious presumption that they’re better than others can get into the bullying mindset.

Make sure your child isn’t that child: the idea that your offspring is inherently smarter, better looking and more skilled across the board, is, in fact, a facet of your own dark side – a...

Pay attention to your child, so you can work out what their vulnerabilities are. You know your child better than anyone: what are their emotional needs? Do they need love and belonging, or crave power, status and recognition from others?

The first of these could be a passive, gentle child ...

The truth about tricky people is this: they’re all around, and they’ll continue to be all around, right through your life. One of the biggest gifts a parent can give their child,  is the skills to handle tricky people.

It’s not about being big; it’s about being clever.

It’s about you...

The upstanders are the ones that weigh in. They’re wired to weigh in – even when it’s nothing to do with them. To some, they can be really annoying people, actually.

But upstanders deflate the bully or bullies and the important thing to realise, and to make sure your child realises, is that...

 Bullying is unpleasant, but it happens; and working out what’s going on, and going deeper into our own roles and our children’s roles, is a character-enhancing exercise.

Whether your child is the bully or the target, the bystander or the wingman, they can learn from it, and they can come ...