Parents

Bullying is a complex topic. In order to ensure clarity, the following terms and concepts will be used throughout the Parents section.

Bullying: When the actions and behaviors of one or more persons cause emotional harm to another. These two components of bullying, the behavior and harm, are important to remember. Behaviors that cause emotional harm to one person may not cause harm to another person. Another person might laugh, be unaffected, feel irritated, get annoyed, or get visibly upset, but not be emotionally harmed.

Because identical behavior can have different effects on different individuals, bullying cannot be determined strictly based on observed behavior. In other words, adults cannot judge whether bullying is occurring among students based on behavior alone. Whether bullying is occurring is determined by the person who is harmed by the behavior. 

Aggression: Actions and behaviors used in bullying. These behaviors can include physical contact, mocking, insults, words written and sent electronically, and exclusion. These behaviors can be directed at another by one person or by a group. In other words, the aggression can be from an individual or collective. It's important to note that behaviors that can cause and/or sustain emotional harm can be very subtle and appear innocuous or benign. While the term "aggression" might suggest overt, highly visible behaviors, bullying behaviors can be covert or may seem to an observer to be simply typical social interactions.

Aggressor: The person who uses aggression against another person is called the aggressor. The person is never called a “bully,” as that is a label and dehumanizing.

Target: The person who is harmed by the aggression is called the target. The person is never called a “victim” due to negative connotations of helplessness. 

Types of bullying: The behaviors that can harm others span a wide spectrum. However, for ease of discussion, these behaviors are divided into three broad categories of aggression: dominance (physical), rejective (often verbal), and relational (friendship harming).

• Dominance aggression consists of behaviors such as intimidation, light physical contact, verbal threats that are intended to make a person visibly show fear to any observing peers.
• Rejective aggression consists of a variety of behaviors such insults, mockery, and antagonism that are intended to make a person feel like they don't belong to a peer group. The person is "rejected" by the peers in the group.
• Relational aggression consists of behaviors that harm the friendships of a person. These behaviors are often covert and include gossiping, making up rumors, and pressuring friends to the person to stop being friends that person.

Cyberbullying: The use of social media to direct aggression at a target. Please note that while cyberbullying is often referred to as a type of bullying, it is not. Cyberbullying is simply the use of technology to direct one of the three types of bullying listed above at a target. 

One of the biggest myths about bullying is that children use aggression to intentionally cause harm. This is simply not true. The aggression used in bullying is normal and natural behavior that is used by children to increase, maintain, or protect their own social status (popularity among peers). In other words, the aggression that is used in bullying is intended to provide a social benefit to the aggressor. A child will use aggression to be liked by others and to be accepted by a peer group.

That almost all aggression occurs in front of a peer audience, i.e., those who determine an individual's social status, confirms the purpose of aggression. Bullying tends to occur in schools and other times and places where children are forced to be together with those whom they may not choose because of the natural human tendency for groups to organize themselves into social hierarchies. 

The use of aggression by students to improve and maintain social status is normal and natural. Starting around 3^rd grade for most students but as early as kindergarten for some, social status becomes the top priority for approximately 75% of students. Social status is so important that 33% of students will put social status as a priority over friendships, which is a student may not intervene when a friend is being bullied.

Although there are many ways for a student to maintain or improve their status among peers (achievement such as making the winning play in a game, acquisition of a valuable or desired item such as a cool car), aggression is one way that is extremely effective and can be used by anyone. In physical aggression, the aggressor tries to gain the respect of peer witnesses by making the target appear afraid. The aggressor makes that target think that he or she is going to be physically harmed. The aggressor does not intend harm but wants the audience of peers to witness the target’s fear. The fear suggests to those witnessing the aggression that the aggressor is a person to be feared and provides the aggressor with respect from peers. But a target who does not show fear can make the aggressor appear foolish and non-threatening which eliminates the social benefit and can even reduce the social standing of the aggressor in the eyes of peers.

In rejective aggression, the aggressor suggests that the target is somehow different from peers and does not belong to the peer group. This aggression can take the form of mocking, insults, or simply pointing out a characteristic with the implication that such a characteristic is a flaw. Characteristics used in rejective aggression can include physical appearance, ethnicity, socio-economic standing, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, ideology, and interests or other preferences. The characteristic that is pointed out as different does not actually need to be one that is a material difference; it only has to be something that peers will accept as a difference. In rejective aggression, the reaction of the target can actually make the aggressor more successful. A negative response by the target (i.e., getting upset) can be interpreted by observing peers as validation that the aggressor is right, that the characteristic is a flaw. Conversely, a target who does not get upset or even agrees explicitly or implicitly such as through laughter can minimize or eliminate the social benefit to the aggressor.

Relational aggression can be used by any gender by is is used primarily by girls. Relational aggression is generally used for one of three reasons. The first is to increase and maintain status within a social circle. Girls tend to define themselves in the context of their friends. A girl can become the center of that circle (i.e., the leader or "queen bee") by using relational aggression to threaten the loss of acceptance of the target by other members of the circle. The members will support the aggressor out of fear of becoming a target and ejected from circle membership. 

The second reason for using relational aggression is to deal with what someone the aggressor perceives as a social threat. The aggressor may view the target as someone who could reduce her popularity by drawing the attention of others away from her. Usually the aggressor perceives a characteristic of the target as providing the target with a social advantage. In other words, the target has something the aggressor doesn’t that can make the target more popular. This advantage can include such things as attractiveness to others, an ability to make friends, a special skill, excellence in sports or academics, or a nice possession such as a new car.

A third reason relational aggression is used is to get back at someone for an offense. It is a way for the aggressor to try to get justice without confronting the offender directly. 

In relational aggression, the aggressor launches a “campaign” against the target, which involves getting friends and others (participants) to no longer be friends with the target. The aggression is usually conducted covertly, so the target has no idea it is happening until her friendships have been harmed. The aggressor may make up rumors about the target, create a club that specifically excludes the target, or act in other ways that turn friends against the target. The ultimate goal of the aggressor is to leave the target socially isolated, with no friends. An aggressor who launches a campaign to get back at a friend succeeds when the target is upset from the loss of friendships. An aggressor who succeeds against a social threat feels reassured that the isolated target is no longer a social threat.

Cyberbullying is not a type of bullying but rather a means of bullying. Cyberbullying is the delivery of aggression to a target using technology or social media (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, email, texts). A tweet from an aggressor to a target saying “see you in gym class” where the aggressor routinely bullies the target using physical aggression is still physical aggression. An insult made in an online post visible to other members of the class is still rejective aggression. An Instagram to a target showing the aggressor and their friends having fun without the target is still relational aggression.

Cyberbullying is extremely effective and problematic for a number of reasons:

1. Constant contact: Technology and social media channels allow students to interact around the clock, allowing bullying to occur nonstop.
2. Broad audience: Social media channels, with their broad reach, provide large audiences to aggressors, a necessary element in bullying.
3. Addictive: Social media is literally addictive; students look at their devices constantly, hoping for a new message or information. Even students who are bullied using social media channels are generally unable to stop looking at their devices or turn them off. Cyberbullying essentially eliminates “safe time” for targets who have online access.
4. Invisible to adults: Cyberbullying can be invisible to adults. Unless adults are monitoring the social media channels of students, they may be completely unaware of bullying that is occurring in their presence.
5. Anonymity: Aggressors and supporters are able to use technology to direct aggression at others while remaining anonymous.

Schools that allow students to have smartphones in schools are contributing to the problem of cyberbullying. Prior to the advent of smartphones and other social media accessed via computers, the times of the day when students could bullying in school were those that allowed for unrestricted or unmonitored social interactions, such as on the playground, in the cafeteria, and in the hallways between classes. But smartphone use in schools allows for bullying to occur at any time and increases the negative effect bullying has on targets' education.

Bullying can be a confusing topic for children (and many adults!) for at least two reasons:

1. The term “bullying” neither describes behavior nor describes how a person feels because of that behavior. The term describes a situation that involves both behavior and harm. Children usually use the term to refer to behavior.
2. Research shows that while children may know what bullying is in concept, they don’t recognize when their own behavior is bullying. And that is perfectly understandable as the intent of their behavior is not to cause harm but to gain a social benefit. In addition, targets frequently hide their emotions. Aggressor can see the benefit of the behavior but cannot see the harm that is being caused. 

When talking to a child using aggressive behavior, explain that bullying is when his or her behavior makes someone very upset. It doesn’t matter if the intent of the behavior is to have fun, make others laugh, or demonstrate “toughness.” A child might protest that the behavior is “no big deal” or “how can it possibly make the target upset?” Agree that some kids might not be affected or harmed by the behavior and might find it funny. But everyone is different and some kids are affected differently, and the aggressor has to accept that the behavior is causing harm when a target says it is.

In cases of relational aggression, find out if the aggression is conflict-driven or if the aggressor perceives the target to be a threat to her own popularity. If conflict-driven, talk about the nature of the conflict and how to address conflict in a more constructive way. If social-threat driven, find out why she feels threatened by the target and talk about the positive characteristics that she has herself. Explain that her actions are hurting the friendships of another person and to think about how she would feel if she were the target of social-relational aggression.

If your child is a target, explain why kids use bullying behavior so your child understands that the bullying is not personal and that he or she is not flawed. Empathize about how horrible it must be to feel rejected by peers. Please see Actions to Take to Prevent Bullying for more information on how to help targets of bullying.

Bullying can be challenging to resolve because the perspectives of those involved often differ significantly:

• Aggressors generally do not intend harm but use the bullying behavior to improve their own social status (to become more popular). In addition, because targets frequently hide the pain and try to appear unaffected by the aggression, aggressors may not have a visible indicators that their behavior is causing harm. Even when targets gets visibly upset, any empathy felt by an aggressor may be overridden by the need for the social status benefit the behavior provides. And aggressors often direct identical aggression toward multiple individuals, some of whom may be simply unaffected or annoyed. The aggressor may see their own behavior as "no big deal." Aggressors will deny "bullying" another person because they don't view their behavior as harmful and are generally not thinking about how the behavior affects the target.
• Targets feel hurt by the behavior, often feeling rejected by peers. They may see the behavior as mean and cruel, but in some cases they may blame themselves for being rejected by peers. They may see any personal characteristic used in the bullying as a flaw. In addition, only the target truly knows that harm is occurring.
• Adults may not view the behavior as harmful because it doesn't appear to be harmful. They see similar types of aggression all the time and no one seems to get hurt. Aggression that causes harm is indistinguishable from the normal, natural, and constant aggression that makes up much of the social interactions of children. And the harm caused by bullying is a feeling of rejection by peers, which adults may not fully understand based on the observed behavior.

In short, bullying problems can be challenging to resolve because the aggressor does not intend harm and may not view the behavior as a big deal; the target may not visibly reveal the harm and is the only one who can say that harm is occurring; and adults are not able to distinguish behaviors that cause harm and those that do not simply based on observation.

Traditional practices used in schools, and state laws and district mandates intended to be helpful, are often ineffective and sometimes counterproductive in resolving bullying issues. The reporting a bullying problem may require an administrator to launch an "investigation" and make a "determination of bullying." This determination of whether or not bullying is occurring is often based on an outdated definition that the intent of bullying behavior is to cause harm. And the discipline code often requires punishment for a student who harms another. This almost always guarantees a poor outcome for all involved:

• A finding for the target, that bullying is occurring and the aggressor should be punished, puts the target at risk of the bullying getting worse and the feeling of rejection by peers increasing. The aggressor will view the punishment as an injustice because no harm was intended. The aggressor may not understand being singled out for behavior that doesn't affect others. Further, the aggressor may retaliate against the target for the punishment. The aggressor may also get an increase in social status from being punished, and peers of the aggressor and target will side with the aggressor (a higher status peer) and blame the target for "getting the aggressor in trouble." If the punishment requires that the aggressor miss sports practice, for example, the target may suffer the ire of the entire team.
• A finding for the aggressor, that bullying is not occurring, is an injustice to the target and a lost opportunity to educate the aggressor. The target is suffering harm, yet the administrator is essentially telling the target, "I don't believe you." A target has taken a risk by asking for help and is essentially told that no help will be forthcoming. The target is essentially forced to face the aggression with no relief in sight, and may suffer further social consequences for asking for help. And the aggressor is not educated on how the behavior is causing harm, but instead is given implicit permission to continue the harmful behavior against the target.
• For parents, the process is extremely frustrating. When the finding is for the target, the parents of the aggression will be upset that their child is being punished for not doing anything wrong and will be angry with the administrator and even the target. When the finding is for the aggressor, the parents of the target will be upset that their child is not believed and is being forced to be in an essentially abusive relationship with no help forthcoming from educators. 
• Laws and mandates that require an administrator to investigate and judge are putting administrators in a no-win position. No matter what the finding, the bullying problem will likely continue, and one or both sets of parents will be upset with the school.

Parents should not wait until their child is involved in a bullying problem to take action. There are many things a parent can do to help a child to better deal with aggression that he or she will inevitably face in their lives. Helping a child to understand aggression and how it is used can help the child avoid becoming involved in a bullying problem, increase the chances the child will reach out for help if needed, and make better decisions when witnessing or being asked to participate in bullying. Actions to take include:

• Educate yourself. Understanding bullying is essential to delivering effective solutions. By reading the content of the Parent page, you are already taking that step.
• Every now and then, ask your child if they are having any trouble or being bothered by anyone at school. Don’t ask if he or she is “being bullied,” as many children don’t recognize when they are being bullied. Focus on how others are making your child feel. In particular, ask about how things are going during lunch and recess. Social interaction time is when the majority of bullying occurs. Ask about who your child sits with at lunch or what happened on the playground. Don’t turn the questioning into an interrogation. Just check in now and then to see how things are going.
• Let your child know that you are available to help if needed. Not only should you say that you will be there if needed, but also say that you and your child will solve any problems together. Many children will not report bullying or interpersonal problems out of fear that their parent will take immediate action. Let your child know that you will listen first and together you will decide what, if any, action to take.
• Talk to your child about aggression and how it works. Help your child to understand the types of aggression and why kids use them. Talk about instances of aggression that they may have faced or you yourself have faced and what the aggressor was trying to accomplish from the behavior.
• Talk to your child about ways to respond to aggression that can render it ineffective. Most children naturally react to aggression in a way that makes it effective. But children can learn ways to thoughtfully respond to aggression that eliminates the benefits to the aggressor, which can get it to stop. The student guide (see the Materials page) describes these responses in detail. You and your child can even role-play a few examples. Not only will reviewing responses help your child when faced with aggression, but a child who understands why aggression is used is less likely to think the bullying is his or her fault and feel ashamed, which can make the child reluctant to ask for help.
• Encourage indirect bystander intervention or non-participation. Bystanders (those who witness the interactions between the aggressor and target) arguably have the most power to stop bullying as they explicitly or implicitly reward aggressors with higher social status. However, children will not step in and stop bullying incidents as doing so can put the child at risk of becoming a bullying target. A child should never be told to directly intervene in a bullying problem. However, the child can be encouraged to indirectly intervene, which carries minimal risk. Indirect interventions (also described in the student guide) allow a child to help a target or try to get an aggressor to stop the bullying with minimal risk. If a child is not able to act indirectly, the child should be strongly encouraged to not participate. A simple rule is to make someone feel included. If the child does not want to include someone in a group or activity, the person should not be made to feel excluded. If you can't include, don't exclude.
• Be aware of changes in mood. A child who starts to be bullied may exhibit changes in behavior, such as becoming withdrawn, refusing to go to school, becoming easily upset, etc. When this occurs, ask how things are going with friends and ask what activities are happening on the playground, at lunch, or other times of social interaction such as gym class. At the end of the conversation, give a gentle reminder that you are there to help if needed.
• Listen and ask questions. One of the challenges in recognizing bullying is how a child will ask for help. Children generally will not say that they are being bullied, but rather that they are being made to feel bad in some way, such as being excluded by a group. A common response from parents is to try to immediately solve the problem. If the child says they are being excluded, a parent might suggesting finding another group to play with or make other friends. While this response is understandable, it is actually one that does not address the full problem. Children may indicate they are being bullied in a variety of ways:
  • Direct Admission: “The kids at school are bullying/being mean to me.”
  • Roundabout: “I hate this kid in my class.”
  • Tangential: “Mom, I wasn’t invited to Becky’s party” or “I don’t hang out with Becky anymore.”
  • Characteristic-focused: “I hate my [characteristic, e.g., nose]/I wish I were different.”
  • Ask for Help: “I have a problem. Can you help me?” or “Can I talk to you about something?”
• Always take a request for help seriously. If your child comes to you and asks for help, listen with your full attention. Your child may come to you with a problem that you don’t believe is serious. Even if you don’t believe the problem is significant, take action; asking for help can be a very hard step for a child to take. If your child is not taken seriously the first time, they may not come to you for help again. In addition, a child’s perspective on a problem can be quite different from an adult’s; give your child the benefit of the doubt. Please note that some children do confuse “bullying” (resulting in emotional harm) with “bothering” (resulting in annoyance); even if that is the case, take the request seriously and act. Not only will your child feel good that you are taking action and know that they can rely on you for help, but you can also use the resolution process as an opportunity to help educate your child on the difference.

It can be very upsetting to parents when their child is being bullied. However, bullying problems can be resolved and are a great learning opportunity for all involved. Students face aggression throughout their school years and beyond, so use the resolution of this bullying problem as a learning experience for any future problems.

Please note that the following recommendations and suggestions are general guidelines. Every bullying case is unique, and parents should always use their best judgment and take actions that they feel are most appropriate.

1. Take a deep breath. You may feel upset and anxious, but emotion can affect objectivity and can hinder resolution of the problem.
2. Educate your child. Provide your child with the opportunity to get the aggression to stop on their own. Aggression is used to provide an aggressor with social benefits. However, there are ways the target can respond to aggression that can reduce or eliminate the social benefits and get the behavior to stop. If your child understands how bullying works and learns responses that can eliminate the social benefits, they may be able to get the bullying to stop on their own, which can do wonders for their self-confidence and esteem. See the Materials page for more information on the student guide that illustrates these techniques.
3. Check in daily with your child. Find out how he or she is doing and if the aggression has stopped. If not, it may be necessary to follow up with the child’s school.
4. Be your child’s champion. While you will be working with educators and others to get this problem to stop, you cannot simply expect that others will resolve this problem for you or make it their top priority. You must stay on top of the problem until it is resolved. And learn the details of the problem so you can accurately represent your child. Schools may sometimes not get the facts right or may seek to portray the problem in a way that minimizes the responsibility or actions of the aggressor or of educators.
5. Engage the school constructively. When you first engage with your child's educators, avoid using the term "bullying." This is important: the well-intended laws and some school districts' requirements for handling bullying issues can actually make resolving a bullying problem harder. Bullying problems can require paperwork, investigations, and district reporting that some principals may want to avoid. Some principals may tell you that they need to first investigate to confirm the problem and they may tell you that, in their opinion, there is no problem. This is perhaps the biggest challenge with resolving a bullying issue in school; you need educators to agree that there is a problem and to take action. Instead of calling the problem a "bullying issue," simply say that your child is being harmed by the actions of another student. While an educator can tell you that, in their opinion, "bullying" is not occurring, an educator cannot tell you that your child is not being harmed. Be explicit that your goal is not to get any child punished, but simply to get this behavior that is harming your child to stop. You would like those educators who are with your child from the start of the day to the end of the day to watch for the aggression and stop it if they see it. That's the goal. 
6. Give educators a chance to take action, but put it in writing. Educators are very busy people. Unfortunately, there may be cases when an educator agrees to take action but, for whatever reason, does not. Ensure that you summarize the conversation you had with the school including actions the school agreed to take to solve the problem. Public school email accounts are public information and become a public record. Written documentation can provide a reminder or an added incentive for the educator to take action.
7. Help to expand your child’s social network. Bullying makes a child feel rejected from his or her peers. In addition, students who are socially isolated or have few friends may have the lowest social status in their peer groups and are more likely to be the target of aggression. They are easy targets because they have little peer support. Any actions that you can take to expand your child’s social network can help improve his or her social status.
8. Protect against cyberbullying. Unless parents are monitoring their child’s social media, cyberbullying can be completely invisible to adults. This is unfortunate and dangerous as cyberbullying can be the most effective way to bully a target. If your child is the target of cyberbullying, ask him or her to provide examples, and make screen prints or screenshots for documentation. This documentation can help demonstrate that the bullying is occurring and involves social media and technology channels.
9. Do not engage law enforcement unless a crime has been committed. You should consider engaging law enforcement if the aggressor seriously harms your child or causes material damage to your property, even on school grounds. This should absolutely be a last resort, however.
10. Only engage the parents of the aggressor in certain circumstances. The school should manage the resolution process and parent engagement. However, if you know the aggressor’s parents and believe they may be objective and supportive, then by all means reach out. Plenty of bullying cases have been resolved when the parents of the aggressor and parents of the target work collaboratively on solving the problem. However, if you don’t know the aggressor’s parents, it is recommended that you do not proactively engage them and leave that engagement to the school. If the school punishes students for bullying, the parents are the aggressor may be less cooperative.
11. Do not directly engage with the aggressor. You should never engage the aggressor, no matter how helpful you feel doing so could be. Educators and the parents of the aggressor should be the only ones to engage the aggressor.

Parents of aggressors often have conflicted feelings. On the one hand, they have a good problem in that their child is using aggression in a socially skillful way. On the other hand, their child is causing harm, however inadvertent, to another person, and the benefit the child receives from the aggression may override the knowledge that it is causing harm and make the aggression difficult to stop. Parents of an aggressor need to understand this problem as one of education and behavioral change to help their child understand the effects of his or her behavior and the need to stop that behavior. 

Please note that the following recommendations and suggestions are general guidelines. Every bullying case is unique, and parents should always use their best judgment and take actions that they feel are most appropriate.

1. Take a deep breath. Being told that your child is bullying another person can be upsetting. Natural reactions include getting angry with your child and a desire to punish the child. Parents may also feel angry at the school, as though the information is an indictment of their child. Some parents may even feel as though the child’s bullying is a poor reflection on them and/or their parenting. An emotional response is normal but can hinder problem resolution. A parent must remain objective.
2. Get all the information from the school about where the aggression occurs, when it occurs, what kind of aggression is involved, if any other students were involved, and how the school plans to handle it. If the school uses the CirclePoint program, the school will offer your child the opportunity to change behavior without a consequence. If your child does not stop the behavior, he or she will face a constructive consequence, one designed to provide him or her with a strong incentive to stop. Also, all adults will be watching the behavior of your child and the target when they are together to ensure no further instances of aggression occur (this is known as Chain of Custody Awareness).
3. Understand that your child is using aggression to help him or herself, not intentionally to hurt others. The use of pro-social aggression demonstrates that a child has developed and is using social skills. He or she is naturally trying to positively change his or her social status and is not intending harm. But recognize that while your child is not intending harm, your child’s behavior is resulting in harm to another student.
4. Understand that your child’s behavior needs to change. No matter the reason why your child is using the behavior, he or she cannot continue to use aggression against the target. And although the benefits of the behavior might make changing it difficult, he or she must change it.
5. Recognize that because your child is not intending harm and because he or she may be directing identical aggression against others with no ill effect, your child may not think that his or her aggression is a big deal. If so, he or she needs to understand how aggression can affect individuals differently and that in this case the aggression is causing harm. He or she cannot shrug off or dismiss the aggression as no big deal.
6. Understand that you yourself cannot judge the seriousness of the problem based on your child’s actions alone. It is how the target feels that determines the seriousness of the problem. Even subtle actions by your child can harm the target. The harm is based on feeling flawed, powerless, and rejected by the peer group. Very subtle actions by a very popular student can result in these feelings.
7. Talk to your child about the problem. Start off on a positive note, expressing that the conversation is about behavior, not about the child. Let your child explain his or her actions. Express your understanding that aggression is normal and natural. Then express that the behavior is inappropriate and must stop because it is causing harm. Be prepared to hear denials and justifications or a minimizing of the behavior due to shame, fear of a consequence, or simply a different perspective. Make it clear, however, that no matter what drives the behavior or how inconsequential your child views the behavior, the behavior is harmful and must stop.
8. If your child expresses contempt for the target, humanize the target. Let your child know that the target is a person, no different from his or her friends. Also understand the contempt is learned and that you can teach a different view of the characteristic for which your child feels contempt.
9. If your child’s school uses the CirclePoint program, reiterate the constructive consequence that will be applied by the school if the behavior does not stop (and any other district or state-mandated consequences such as district reporting). Remind your child that the adults he or she is with during the day have been made aware of the problem and will be monitoring for any future aggression.
10. Understand, and help your child to understand, that only the target can tell if harm is occurring, and the target must be believed. It is not for your child to say how the target should feel or whether the target has a right to be upset.
11. Do not punish your child. Punishment is counterproductive. Since your child did not intend harm and was using the aggression for his or her own benefit, being punished will be viewed as unfair and unjust. Your child may feel a desire to retaliate against the target for getting punished. In addition, it may be confusing to your child to be punished for behavior directed against one person but not for that same behavior directed against others. Instead of punishment, use constructive discipline (the Constructive Discipline Process is a CirclePoint program mechanism). Constructive discipline provides the aggressor with an opportunity to avoid a consequence if he or she changes behavior. Let your child know that there will be no consequence at home if the behavior changes. However, if the school reports that the aggression has continued, your child will have a consequence. And that consequence should be a loss of social time with friends. Social time is the most important time for a child who is using pro-social aggression. A child should not be restricted from an activity, but rather from engagement with friends, particularly if the friends were involved in the bullying. A child should know the consequence in advance as this serves to motivate the child to change his or her behavior.
12. Find out what the school policy is for aggression. If the school does not use the CirclePoint program, ensure that the school not punish your child, as punishment can make the problem worse (as described above). It is strongly recommended that the school use the Constructive Discipline Process. In addition, the school should provide heightened monitoring of your child via Chain of Custody Awareness. Knowing that adults will be monitoring for aggression is a strong incentive for your child to change his or her behavior. It can help your child to refrain from using aggression against the target. An explanation of how these mechanisms work can be found in the Program Summary document on the Materials page of this website.
13. Support your child’s school administrators. Let administrators know that you understand the problem and support their efforts. Let your child know that you will support the school administrators in the actions that they take as your child’s behavior must stop. And let the school administrators know that they can convey to the parents of the target that you recognize the problem and fully support efforts to get your child’s behavior to change.
14. Be aware of any cyberbullying that your child may be doing. Cyberbullying is one of the most effective (harmful) ways of bullying a target. Social media channels allow bullying to occur easily, secretly, and effectively. If your child has used social media or technology to bully another person, let your child know that a consequence of further cyberbullying will be a loss of online or social media access. If a child continues to cyberbully, take away devices for a period of time or strictly limit device use to what is needed for school or required for communication (such as calling parents).
15. Monitor your child’s use of technology and social media. If your child has cyberbullied, we highly recommend that you review your child’s communications involving social media and use monitoring technology. A consequence of cyberbullying should be parental review of social media for a period of time (e.g., a week). Following that time period, you should use a monitoring service that allows your child a measure of privacy and freedom while alerting you to instances of cyberbullying. Please see Recommended Resources for more on social media monitoring.
16. Be aware of any bullying problems that may be occurring at home that might drive your child to bully another person at school. Sometimes a child will bully another if that child is being bullied. A child who is being bullied by a sibling, for example, or even another adult in the household may lead that child to bully another person in order to compensate for the loss of self-esteem and feeling of powerlessness from being bullied. Reassess your child’s relationships with others outside of the school to determine if your child is a target. If so, make getting the aggression directed against your child to stop a priority. See What to Do If Your Child Is a Target.
17. Only engage the parents of the target in certain circumstances. The school should manage the resolution process and parent engagement. However, if you know the target’s parents and believe they may be objective and supportive, then by all means reach out. Plenty of bullying cases have been resolved when the parents of the aggressor and parents of the target work collaboratively on solving the problem. However, if you don’t know the target’s parents, it is recommended that you do not proactively engage them and leave that engagement to the school.
18. Do not directly engage with the target. You should not engage the target, no matter how helpful you feel doing so could be. Educators and the parents of the target should be the only ones to engage the target.

Resolving a bullying problem can be challenging for schools. Some states and districts require schools to report the number of bullying issues identified during each school year, data which is made public. Principals are hesitant to report these numbers as many people do not understand that the identification of bullying problems is a positive sign that the educators have created an environment where students are comfortable coming forward for help. Schools may wish to avoid acknowledging a bullying problem in order to avoid triggering this reporting requirement. Parents need to be sensitive to the fact that state laws and district mandates, while well-intentioned, may serve as barriers to resolving bullying problems.

In addition, some schools use traditional approaches or use legacy programs that involve an investigation of bullying issues that result in a judgment in favor of one student or the other, an approach which generally ineffective and often counterproductive. Even in a school that might not be trying to avoid reporting a bullying problem, parents are best served by not having the school use these traditional approaches. Parents can frame the issue as one in which the behavior of the aggressor(s) needs to change. 

Parents can help educators work with the constraints that they face by doing the following:

• When parents engage the school about a bullying problem, they should not call it a bullying problem. Instead, they should describe the behavior of the aggressor and harm being done to their child. 
• State that you are asking the school to stop the harmful behavior being directed against your child, not asking for the aggressor to be punished. Punishment is ineffective and often makes the problem worse for the target. In addition, punishment can often create an antagonistic relationship between educators and the parents of the aggressor. Educators will want to avoid punishing the aggressor in order to avoid the risk of having to deal with the aggressor's irate parents. And targets don't want the aggressor to be punished either as they know they will be blamed by peers.
• In the context of stopping the aggressor's behavior, ask the school what they can do. Let the school propose a solution.
• Ensure any solution proposed by the school will actually solve the problem. In order to solve the problem, the school must stop the behavior and ensure there is not retaliation against the target. The target should not suffer a consequence, such as being removed from the environment in which the aggression is occurring. For example, the target should not be made to eat in a different location if the aggression occurs in the cafeteria at lunch. 
• Suggest the educators visit this website for information on the CirclePoint Method and the two effective mechanisms of Constructive Consequences and Chain of Custody Awareness. Constructive Consequences provides a strong incentive for aggressors to stop their behavior that does not involve punishment. And Chain of Custody Awareness ensures that adults will be monitoring the aggressor and target for the entire school day and will stop any aggression they see. 

For the parents of targets: When working with school administrators on a problem, be clear that the goal is to get the aggression against your child to stop. Acknowledge that punishment of the aggressor can make the problem worse and that the goal is to get the aggressor and any supporters to change their behavior. Do not insist on punishment for the aggressor. Recognize that your child does not want the aggressor punished but simply to have the aggression stop.

Further, your child needs to feel safe at all times. Review how your child’s school creates awareness of the problem among adults and ensures heightened monitoring is provided to ensure that the aggression has stopped. Ensure that all adults that your child is with from the start of the day to the end of the day are aware of the problem and will monitor to ensure the aggression has stopped. The CirclePoint program highly recommends that educators use the program’s Constructive Discipline Process and Chain of Custody Awareness mechanisms to ensure that the aggression stops and proper monitoring is provided. Chain of Custody Awareness benefits the target in that he or she will feel safer knowing that adults are aware, are watching, and will intervene if they see further aggression. Further, the aggressor is also informed that all adults will be watching for aggression, which provides both a deterrent and an incentive to stop. More information about the mechanisms can be found in The Method page.

While your child’s school may pledge to make changes, you must be vigilant. Ask the school to provide a status on adult observations a week following administrator action to address the problem. Asking for a status report will help to ensure that the problem is kept in mind by educators. Also, check in with your child on a daily basis to find out if the aggression continued or if any changes that administrators said they would make have actually occurred. If any aggression happened, find out the details (time, place(s), and who was involved) and report that to the school. When you make the report, have the school confirm that they will heighten their monitoring in the place(s) where the aggression occurred.

Although you should make every effort to resolve the problem through the school, there may be cases where it is appropriate to engage local law enforcement. If the aggression involves serious physical harm, material damage to property, or does not appear to be adequately resolved through the school, consider reaching out to local law enforcement for assistance.

For the parents of aggressors: The Why Kids Bully section describes how aggression is used not to intentionally harm others but for the social benefit of the aggressor. When working with school administrators on a problem, acknowledge your child’s behavior but discuss his or her intent. Schools are starting to come around and recognize how punishment for a student who uses pro-social aggression can feel unjust and unfair to the aggressor and is counterproductive. Discuss the solution to the problem as a behavioral change exercise with the goal of getting your child to stop the aggression. Pledge to support the school in talking to your child about how his or her behavior may be harming another child. Some schools, such as those that use the CirclePoint program, may use the Constructive Discipline Process, where the aggressor is given a chance to stop behavior to avoid a consequence. The consequence is the loss of social time where the aggression continues, for example at lunch or on the playground. Help your child to understand that whether the consequence is applied is up to him or her.

If the school does not use the CirclePoint program, insist on a constructive consequence. Ask that the principal give your child an opportunity to avoid a consequence if the aggression stops. Pledge to support the principal in applying a consequence if it does not stop. If cyberbullying is involved, support the school in restricting your child’s online access and to social media for a period of time until the aggression has been confirmed to have stopped.

Ask that the school use chain of custody monitoring. A CirclePoint mechanism, Chain of Custody Awareness, involves notifying all adults who are with the aggressor and target from the start of the day to the end of the day so these adults can provide heightened monitoring to ensure the aggression has stopped and stop it and report it if it doesn’t. Chain of Custody Awareness benefits the aggressor in that knowing adults are watching provides an extra incentive for the aggressor to stop, even if he or she is tempted to try and gain the resulting social benefits.

If your child has been cyberbullying, a constructive consequence is the loss of social media devices and access for a period of time. This may be challenging if a child needs a phone to keep in contact with you or has to go online to complete schoolwork. If your child continues to cyberbully after he or she has pledged to stop, take away the device, prevent online access, or restrict access to the applications used and verify that no further cyberbullying has occurred by checking your child’s devices. In addition, there are technologies that can help you monitor your child’s online activity and can alert you to cyberbullying. Please see Recommended Resources for more information.