Of the many worries that parents have about their children, one of the greatest is the fear that your child will be bullied.
In situations like this, parents often feel completely helpless about what they can do to best support their child through this difficult time. When children take the long summer break from school, we like to think that that time will be filled with happy memories, but for some children, there is an overwhelming sense of anxiety about the day of returning back to school and having to face up to their bully once again.

How can you help your child best respond to and feel prepared in the face of a bully? Most parents will take the reasonable action of first; discussing their concerns with the class teacher or the headteacher of the school, and whilst most schools have robust anti-bullying policies this doesn’t mean that they are always effectively executed or that your child will benefit from them.
While some children might suffer challenging tournaments as a result of the bully (who may be identified and reprimanded), other children will simply find particular personalities overwhelming and intimidating. This is probably one of the hardest situations to deal with because there may not be any evidence that your child is actually being bullied. What happens when your child feels a sense of fear of certain personalities? Or they are particularly in-touch with their emotions meaning that they may find a particularly boisterous personality difficult to deal with. In these instances, it’s really important that your child learns how to tolerate different personalities and how to become more resilient. There are techniques that can be taught with the help of NLP (that’s neurolinguistic programming) – an alternative form of therapy which crosses over between the worlds of counselling, CBT and psychotherapy.

In my work as an NLP4Kids practitioner, I help children develop better communication skills and more confidence without compromising the empathetic aspects of their personalities.

Bullying can easily go under the radar, but the scars that it can cause can last for many years and even into adulthood. By helping children in and around Basildon, Billericay, Crays Hill, Chelmsford, Southend-on-Sea and Wickford, I’m able to prevent them from carrying these negative events with them for the rest of their lives.

It’s also worth mentioning that children who are bullies are themselves often in some kind of emotional pain. It may be that they are seeking connection, love or attention from others by behaving in the way that they do, perhaps because of complicated family history and hierarchy. They may find themselves craving a sense of power or authority to make up for other areas of their lives where they feel less in control or inferior. At NLP4Kids we have specific processes that can be used to help bullies to see the impact of their behaviour on others.

As I work with parents too, I’m able to help parents of bullies and the bullied to support their children through this difficult stage and will fit the practical suggestions I would give you, based on whether your child is a young person or in their late teenage years. You can contact me now for a free consultation where I will tell more about how I can help you.

By Gemma Bailey
https://www.essexchildtherapy.nlp4kids.org/bookings