The Not-A-Victim Process

As we have seen, a child that is not mentored correctly through bullying will be bullied for far longer than necessary, because the majority of children who experience bullying have not yet developed the cognitive fitness or emotional intelligence to understand why bullying occurs and how to deal with it.

Over the years, we have developed a system to help mentor students through bullying. Not A Victim is a step-by-step process for mentoring your child and yourself through the transition of bullying. Regarding this, we will explain how it works.

The 6Ps

The emphasis of the first phase of our process focuses on the child: directly enabling the child, giving them the tools and understanding they need, empowering them to navigate this transition and move positively through it. The emphasis of the second phase focuses on the parents, who can feel overwhelmed and hopeless as they send their child to school each day unable to help them, unable to look after them and control the outcome of the day, knowing that their child must go through this and grow from the experience so that it does not repeat itself.

Step One: Perception

The word ‘bully’ comes from the sixteenth century Dutch word boele, meaning ‘lover’. Originally, it was a term of endearment. Later, it became a familiar form of address for a male friend, meaning something like ‘good fellow’. Later still, it was used to describe a daredevil. Only relatively recently did it acquire its modern meaning. As we can see, perceptions of what a ‘bully’ is have changed over the centuries – and the first step in our process is to change your and your child’s perceptions of bullying.

We have seen that bullying appears to be a learned behaviour and that there is a real danger of the child who has been bullied continuing the cycle. There are some fantastic initiatives in schools to help educate and raise awareness of the subject, but sadly these often lack follow-through and there is little training for staff in this area.

We have also seen that, in almost all cases, bullies bully because they are missing something, and it makes them feel better. Bullying shows a weakness of character, not strength. Changing the perception of the bully from a threat to someone we should feel sorry for reduces the fear of being bullied and prevents us from reacting with aggression or distress. If we respond in this way, a bully has gained the reaction they need to reinforce their position as the dominant person in the social setting, and the bully–victim relationship is reinforced.

So many young people don’t report bullying because they blame themselves. Reframing bullying will help your child open up about their experiences and encourage them to participate in the next 5Ps. This first step is so powerful that many of the young people we have worked with find they overcome bullying within a week after changing their perception.

Nevertheless, we often find resistance from parents at this first step in the process. When they discover that their child has been bullied, they are emotionally hurt, they feel guilty: ‘Why did this happen? How could I have done things differently to prevent it? Why wasn’t I there for my child?’ In many cases, parents feel more pain and heartache than their child, as children have a natural ability to forgive.?

Your child wants to forgive their bully and live a life without conflict, but often it’s the parents who prevent them from doing so and subconsciously build barriers around their child, preventing them from reframing and changing the context of bullying: ‘How can I possibly tell my child to forgive their bully after they have been hurting them for so long?’

Our response is to ask parents: ‘What if you don’t teach them to forgive the bully?’ By not forgiving them, they will hold onto these feelings of anger, frustration and emotional distress for years. We ask parents to ‘selfishly forgive’ the bully, because they are not doing it for the bully, but for their child.

You should explain to your child that bullying happens for a multitude of reasons. Break down bullying for them, as we did in chapter three. In the process, you will teach your child valuable life lessons and develop their emotional intelligence. It’s a difficult process for both parent and child, but a rewarding journey to go on together.