How can bullying impact a family? Who does bullying affect?

Welcome back to Best Case Parenting!

Today, I want to talk about bullying. I want to help you understand how important it is to deal with bullying within a family. Also, to highlight the effects bullying can have on a family unit.

It is important that we build up an accurate picture of what bullying is! This article should put one piece in the puzzle, so to speak. But that puzzle is a large and complex one, so I would encourage you to continue educating yourself on this subject.

We have an Ebook in the Best Case Parenting marketplace titled “A Parent’s Guide to Bullying.” 

We have tried to use this book to provide a more detailed explanation of Bullying. As well as offer advice to parents when trying to deal with this within their family.

Anyway, on to the article!

When a lot of parents think of bullying, they automatically think of that stereotypical school bully grabbing their child’s lunch money.

And, although this situation certainly exists and plays a fair part in the bullying landscape, there is so much more to the overall picture.

The plain fact is this! Bullying can happen anywhere. It is not limited to any specific location. It is not limited to people of a certain age. You will hear equally as many stories of adults being bullied than children.

It is a fact of life, that when you get a group of humans together bullying has a possibility of happening.

Go pick up a newspaper, and see how many times you can highlight something as a form of bullying!

Look at your own lifetime. I am sure you have had some form of experience with bullying.

It could be someone that you know that has been bullied, you may have heard stories from your friends about bullying. It is more common than you may think and cannot be limited to the school environment.

The ​problem comes when we think about the knock on effect. Bullying can have a pretty severe impact on a person’s self esteem and emotions.

These effects are wide ranging, from a mild feeling of dislike to a life threatening depression. Dealing with these effects can cause immense stress and anxiety in some people. They start having such feelings as anger, desperation and the development of mood swings. Health problems can start to develop, from simple headaches to eating disorders.

From a parenting perspective, bullying can cause your child to struggle at school. When all this tension and stress is running through a child’s body from bullying, they may loose focus on school or begin “playing up” uncharacteristically.

The impact of bullying is not only on the child

Unfortunately, when thinking about the impact of bullying, it is not only confined to the child involved.

The family of those involved in bullying can also find themselves being heavily impacted. Maybe they will also have feelings of anger, guilt and stress.

Often, they have a feeling of helplessness. They desperately want to solve their child’s problems but don’t know how to! The families stress can be even worse if they have tried to bring the bullying to the school’s attention, only to feel unsupported by those in charge.

This feeling of helplessness can grow and start to get out of control.

This feeling of helplessness can also be felt by people who simply witnessed bullying. Could I have done more? Could I have said something to change the path of events? A sense of guilt (or even shame) can set in.

So, you can see that the impact can be widespread, throughout the core of a family. If bullying persists in their life’s, several members may begin to struggle with low self esteem or develop trust issues.

In Conclusion

Bullying honestly has very little to do with the victim. It is an action that is driven by the need for power and control. The bully wants to feel like they are a powerful force in another person’s life.

These bullies often end up in this situation due to peer pressure and their own lack of social prowess. Maybe they have problems in their home life, or maybe simply because they did it before and “got away with it.”

Bullies that are able to continue these antics without any form of challenge or need to face up to what they have done, can even end up being the types of adults to get in trouble with the police! This bullying behaviour can follow a person into adulthood!

So, if you are worried about bullying or suspect your child is somehow involved in a bullying situation, you must act now.

Get them the help they need before it’s too late. Bullying is a complex problem that needs time and expertise to unravel. Don’t hesitate. Take action!