How to Motivate Your Kids to Fight Bullying?

Bullies are everywhere, at your child’s school, at your workplace, right about anywhere. Things can become difficult for kids who don’t know exactly how to deal with them. They feel terrorized, anxious, and depressed. While sometimes, as an adult, you have more experience to deal with them.

Bully victims hide behind a facade of fear and hope against hope that the bully eventually loses interest in them leaves them alone. This is where parents should come in to help them get over their fear as they identify the signs and teach them various techniques to fight bullies.

School is a hot spot for bullying. A child often shows reluctance to wake up in the morning, making you feel that something is wrong. It holds for younger children, who may show frequent excuses to stay put at home, come up with excuses of aches and pains, or may request the teacher for an early pickup.

You need to be sensitive to your teens too, who may show the tendency to skip school. Children very often fear Mondays, especially when they feel safe on the weekends, and may not want to let go of the security blanket and go to school, as they may feel exposed to fresh bullying episodes. Please find out the exact ways you can teach your child to stand up for themself and stop bullying at the onset.

Teach Them to Use Confident Body Language

One of the best hacks to prevent bullying is for your child to maintain a healthy sense of self-esteem and display confidence. Kids who are victims of slouch keep their eyes averted can appear weak and a soft target for bullies. You can teach your child to walk with a purpose and show positive energy. The kid should make eye contact less aggressively. They should keep their gaze neutral. Kids may always portray confidence even if they don’t feel it inside. Of course, this would take time to build up, but practice can certainly make them master it.

Avoid Confrontation

Sometimes kids don’t realize that when they are going in the wrong direction. Parents need to guide them back in the right direction. It would help if you reassured your child that reacting to a certain situation is not cowardly. Instead, remind them that it takes courage to leave the situation before it gets ugly.

Fighting can often lead to violence and injuries. Encourage kids to confide in a coach, parent, or school counselor. You need to tell them when the situation is going out of hand and when is the right time to walk away from it.

Acknowledge That it is Not Acceptable

Teach kids to understand that it is not just acceptable, so ask them to make a lot of noise, especially if someone is threatening them or harming them. Apart from using a strong voice, they also can even shout, yell or scream.

Every bullying situation is unique, and if the bully attacks your child, the best way is to get out of the situation. The idea is to keep the bully at a distance as you attract attention to the situation, especially from adults or teachers. This tactic comes in useful if a stranger is attacking the child. Yelling, in such a case, may escalate situations.

Encourage Them to a Self-Defense Class

You may even consider enrolling your child in a self-defense class. A popular self-defense class may turn out to be taekwondo. While it is widely thought to be a martial arts discipline, taekwondo was originally developed as a self-defense technique. The American Taekwondo Association offers a wide number of options that can work great for children.

Taekwondo and other martial arts also offer many things such as confidence and self-control. Often, diffusing bullying situations may teach a child how to respond to a situation in a cool and collected manner before it escalates to physical bullying.

Bullying can have far-reaching consequences on a child and leave an indelible scar on their minds. It is important for you as a parent or a responsible adult to teach them and motivate them to fight it with gusto and not act like a helpless victim. Together you can beat bullying with strength and the power of the mind.