Discovering that your child is a victim or perpetrator of bullying can place a parent in a situation of failure, reactivate childhood wounds and transform family relationships. How can trust be restored?

With the law aimed at combating school bullying and the freedom of speech on these situations, the taboo that weighed on this violence between students has been lifted. However, its treatment remains very sensitive. It is marked either by hyper-mediatization, which reinforces the effects of collective emotions without accompanying them, or by a silence that tends to close the files as soon as they are treated, by the application of procedures and the elimination of what is symptomatic .

However, the psychological after-effects of bullying experiences do not stop with the simple treatment of the crisis and go beyond the space-time of the school. They can affect the child who is the victim in the short, medium and long term, but also the child perpetrator, and witnesses. Studies also show similar psychological vulnerabilities between child victims and perpetrators of bullying as well as similarities in psychosocial pathways .

So, both for prevention and for the management of situations, all children deserve to be listened to and supported. And, to do this, it is essential to take into consideration their different environments.

Being seen as a failing parent

Students and, by extension, families are hardly considered in the entirety of their journey. An experience of bullying at school risks crystallizing children and families in suffering fueled in particular by the violence of the designation and the stigmatization resulting from the procedures.

For parents, witnessing the suffering of their child who is a victim of bullying sometimes leads to distress in the parenting role, in the parent-child bond, and in the school-family bond.

Similarly, learning that one’s child is actively involved in bullying can be a shock in the face of which parents may try to deploy strategies of minimization, protection, and justification, to deal with the unbearable cruelty expressed by their own child. While practical guides and ministerial measures are aimed at parents of so-called bullying children, the guidelines remain based on a behavioral and pragmatic level and do not take into account the difficulties affecting parenting in these experiences.

The scientific literature does not specifically address the experiences of parents in situations of bullying. However, some testimonies from parents in certain studies show that the announcement or discovery of bullying marks a break in the way parents perceive their child, and in their perception of their relationship with them.

In these situations, they are summoned to the position of failing parents, either by not having noticed the distress of their child victim, or by not having noticed the violent acts of their child perpetrators. In both cases, the feeling of confidence, in oneself as a parent, in one’s child, in the parent-child bond and in the school-family bond, is affected.

Adults become aware that they are facing situations that put their protective functions to the test and that they cannot always protect their children. They may also be overcome by feelings of strangeness, faced with their child who has kept the situation hidden for a long time. Indeed, bullied children say they do not feel protected by adults even when the situation is known and measures are taken , and often consider their reactions to be inadequate.

Childhood wounds reactivated

Parents feel guilty and excluded from their children’s lives, especially since bullying situations often escape adults’ attention for a long time and are only revealed late, when it is very serious, or long afterward. This feeling of guilt can be the source of a need to act, intervene, protect and repair urgently, or to regain “control”.

In a consultation, the father of a child who was a victim of harassment expressed his dismay and anger at not having understood earlier. Faced with his child’s distress and the administrative slowness in establishing evidence, he verbally attacked the child harassers and their parents. This mirrored violence demonstrates the need to support parents whose role is being put to the test.

Some bullying situations reactivate the parents’ previous school and social injuries and suffering. This same father mentions his son’s experience of bullying, his own experience of bullying when he himself was in middle school. A mother whose daughter was subjected to racist remarks at school about her skin color, is outraged by the way the school defended itself to quickly dismiss the subject, and recalls what she experienced during her own school years and her hopes that her daughter would not experience the same thing as her.

On the same subject, another mother of a 3-year-old child in kindergarten worries that her son will become a “bully” because he rejected another child, specifying the educational values ​​transmitted in his family. If certain childhood resonances in parents are at the origin of confusion between the experiences of the parent and the child, they can be a driving force to revisit their own wounds while supporting their child. But this requires distinguishing one’s own story from that of one’s child and benefiting from a listening space.

Experiences of bullying also affect family relationships, where the trauma can indirectly affect parents and weaken parent-child bonds. Overprotective reactions can be associated with suspicion (of bullying or of being bullied again and of hiding it) and generate paradoxical effects of distancing, strangeness and incomprehension.

Finally, parents may feel stigmatized in turn, designated as victims but often in some way responsible for what happens to their child or what their child has done (for example, not having noticed the child’s distress in time, or feeling responsible for not having sufficiently “equipped” their child to defend themselves, or being criticized for their educational style, or their sociocultural environment, etc.). This feeling could reinforce isolation, the feeling of shame and the lack of initiative to call on available help.

How to restore trust?

Studies show that the family is an ally in the care and treatment of bullying. According to a literature review, a study in the United States shows that when sanctions are associated with meetings between parents and teachers, recidivism rates are lower than in the absence of these meetings. Similarly, preventing bullying requires a relationship of trust between parents and school stakeholders, beyond security aspects.

In dealing with bullying situations, the work of supporting the child, whether the bully or the victim, which involves the family, facilitates awareness of the parent-child bond and its importance in reconstruction. This is how the child will be able to reconsider this bond as a resource, a basis of security, support and authority, and thus feel protected, including from himself.

Giving a place to the family would allow the child to situate himself in his different environments and to (re)build a certain coherence and therefore a personal, evolving story that cannot be reduced to his only story of being a bullied or bullying child, nor to his only family history. On the other hand, giving a place to parents in this educational process would position them in a more active role, in the chain of actors of shared concern , beyond guilt or incrimination.

Author Bio: Amira Karray Derivois is a Lecturer-HDR in clinical psychology, LPCPP EA3278 Laboratory at Aix-Marseille University (AMU)