Parents really need to be an advocate for their child and report the bullying to the school. In order to do that, you need to create a detailed timeline of what actually went on. The school wants to know all the details: the where, what, when and with whom everything happened. The school needs you to provide the relevant information so they can talk to the kids and get to the bottom of what actually has been going on.
When our son was being bullied, we needed to report what was going on with our son, but at first, he seemed muddled about the situation and couldn’t tell us what had happened in a logical order. We had to find a way to extract what his bully had done (the full scenario), so we could both analyze it for solutions and report what had been going on to the school.
Our son didn’t tell us about the bullying right away
We were really surprised that our son, Jake, who we had a close relationship with, didn’t tell us that he was being picked on. His good friend, Lucas, had started pulling away from him and acting really weird and encouraging other kids to be mean to him.
Our son, Jake, didn’t really get what was going on, because the intent was hidden. It is kind of like breaking up with someone, afterward you can look back at the situation and see that there were clues. Things don’t make sense at the time, when you look back you see the person was pulling away from you.
When your child doesn’t tell you that they are being bullied, it’s can be because they can’t fully process the situation themselves, a child often needs an adult to help them figure it all out. They also may be afraid that you’ll say that it’s their fault, so it is important to be understanding.
Creating a timeline of what happened with our child’s bully
It took a long time to put the timeline together and figure out the right questions to ask to extract the information from our son. We needed to ask our child fifty to sixty questions to find out what Lucas and others had been doing and we had to piece it all together in a comprehensive understanding. (if you need help with this we have something that can help you because we found it quite challenging to put it all together, let me tell you).
Our son’s bully had done a lot of things behind his back to turn other kids against him. As we asked our son Jake questions, we were able to piece together what had happened and establish a timeline and framework.
After getting all the details, we were ready and informed enough to write an actionable letter to the school to report the bully in the best way to get an effective intervention.
When we figured out what had happened we were pretty shocked. We joined the dots and we could see that this kid was extremely manipulative, and paranoid. Regardless of your next steps for your child, it can only help to effectively document, analyze to get as close and possible to a clear picture.
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