Is it ever okay—or at least, understandable—for one child to bully another?
I spend a lot of time speaking to parent groups and students about bullying, and it’s common for parents to approach me after a talk with questions about their personal situation. A mother once asked for my thoughts about a situation in which her eight-year-old son had been accused of bullying another boy.
In my experience, parents often have a hard time believing that their child could ever engage in bullying; this mother clearly accepted that the behavior had happened, yet she just as clearly felt that there were extenuating circumstances. She pointed out that the target had the annoying habit of picking his nose, and this had bothered her son, who had lashed out.
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She hedged; surely, she thought, there could be circumstances under which it’s acceptable for one child to bully another.
If your child is being accused of bullying another, it can be surprising and upsetting. Beyond those understandable emotions, as a parent, you have many options to help your child understand their behavior and why it was seen as bullying.
Let’s first define what it is we are talking about: bullying means that someone repeatedly and deliberately hurts a less powerful person. Bullying is a very unhealthy and potentially damaging behavior, for both the target and the bully. Research tells us that children who bully carry mental health consequences like depression and anxiety into adulthood. This is especially true for kids who are both bullies and victims.
I think most people would agree that bullying sometimes calls for punishment, and often calls for interventions; but is bullying ever a behavior that calls for understanding? If your child is being aggressive once (which doesn’t meet the definition of bullying), and in self-defense, that may indeed be excusable. On the other hand, if your child is bullying, that repeated torment is not excusable. I reminded the mother whose son bullied the nose-picking child that bullying is harmful to both individuals, so even when it happens because of a provocation, it shouldn’t be shrugged off.
What’s interesting is that generally, children don’t excuse bullying. In a study in which scientists interviewed elementary school children (both those involved and uninvolved in bullying) in Sweden to understand how kids view bullying, the students tended to think that bullies were either psychologically troubled, or alternatively, attention seekers—bullying to gain social status (in other words, that they wanted other children to see their power and admire it).
Kids who bully others, however, tend to have justifications for their behavior. In my study of more than 2,200 teens, about 62 percent of those who admitted bullying others offered one or more of the following explanations: “People didn’t try to understand my point of view,” or “I needed to show I wasn’t intimidated or afraid,” or “My behavior was taken way too seriously; I never meant it.”
It’s important to understand that kids can engage in bullying for a variety of reasons. Parents may think of bullying as a behavior reserved for only truly disturbed kids. The research, however, shows that some youth who bully are otherwise doing well socially, while others, who tend to be both bullies and targets, struggle more with making friends and being social. It can be difficult to believe that a child who does well in school and has friends could actually be a bully.
What should parents do when their children are accused of bullying? How should they handle their child’s protests that they were justifiably provoked? Should they believe their child and accept the reasons for the bullying? Should the response be punishment, intervention or understanding—or all three?
The word bullying tends to be overused, and is sometimes applied to any situation (repeated, deliberate or not) when someone hurts someone else. How you approach the situation may be completely different if the aggression in question only happened once, or between two children with relatively equal social and physical power, which likely would not be bullying.
If the power dynamic is unequal, and it appears to be a bullying situation, talk to everyone to determine the facts. Make it clear to everyone involved that you’re approaching this with an open mind. The school’s perspective is almost certain to be different from your child’s. It’s not hard to imagine a situation where a school counselor explains that your child has bullied another student, but your son or daughter claims they were just mad and not thinking. Bullying is a behavior that is planned out. It is not an impulsive, one-time response to someone else’s provocation. A target may have engaged in nose-picking, and that may have been genuinely irritating; but repeated aggression against them isn’t impulsive or thoughtless.
While many parents are understandably reluctant to simply disbelieve their child, pointing out that there are other possible explanations doesn’t mean you’re calling your own child a liar. You can say things like: “You mentioned that you didn’t mean to hurt their feelings, but you must have taken a long time to draw all that graffiti on their car. Writing all those hurtful words doesn’t sound like an accident.”
Many children don’t yet grasp that different people can have different interpretations of the same behavior. It may not have occurred to your child that what seemed like self-defense to them appeared to be something else entirely to others.
Once you’ve understood the situation and had a chance to think through it, you’re ready to teach your child a few life lessons. Acknowledge that some of the circumstances may have provoked your child, but then draw a clear line between feelings, thoughts and behaviors. Point out that everyone is entitled to their thoughts and feelings, and sure, people can make us feel uncomfortable, angry or upset. But how you act is different from a feeling. No one has the right to hurt others, no matter what their feelings are.
You can also discuss alternative actions that can help in difficult situations. Is there an adult (perhaps a counselor or favorite teacher) who could help your child cope at school with their feelings (instead of acting out their aggression)? Maybe a friend can help them feel calmer and less aggressive. Or you can help your child find an activity to help them calm down when they are feeling aggressive.
Be sure to point out how the choices you make to act can result in real-world consequences. Consequences always need to be age-appropriate, and if possible, they can help rectify the hurt your child may have caused. When one of my children was a kindergartener, he made fun of another child because of their favorite stuffed toy. Our solution was to have him buy that child another of the same stuffed toy, with his own allowance, and give it to the target as a way of saying sorry. My child is now grown, but he still remembers that episode.
Finally, consider your child’s environment. Think about their technology use. Children differ markedly in how much aggression in video games or, say, on social media influences their behavior. One study of more than 40,000 teens in Russia found that aggression on social media was very common, but that different teens responded to it quite differently. Some tended to copy the aggression, while others saw it as part of the app’s amusement. Consider if your child tends to behave aggressively after interacting aggressively with others online, and discuss with them alternative activities while limiting their time spent online.
Bullying isn’t healthy, so consider counseling. Aggressive behaviors can be impulsive, but they can also reflect psychological struggles. A large meta-analysis of many studies found that emotional difficulties greatly increased the chances of being involved in bullying (either as a bully or a victim, or both). Is your child having trouble making or keeping friends? Perhaps they’re also a victim of bullying (it is not unusual for a child to be both a perpetrator and a victim of bullying). Maybe your child is coping with a bout of loneliness, depression or persistent anxiety. Maybe their best friend has abandoned them. The possible list of stressors could be long, but pursuing professional help can make a big difference in the outcome of a bullying situation.
Parents of kids who struggle with aggressive behavior can look forward to the summer as a time when less rigid, and more forgiving, behavior standards might ease their stress. But the summer is also an opportunity to discuss and explore these situations more deeply with your child or teenager. Any habit—including using aggression—benefits from reminders and reinforcing positive behaviors. So plan to continue that as you move into the new school year and monitor your child closely to make sure their psychological and emotional needs are being met.
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.