Do Kids Bully Others Over Backpack Keychains and Pins? A Teacher’s Observations and Tips
Last Tuesday, I was standing by the door of my 7th grade homeroom checking planner signatures when I noticed Mia hanging back by the water fountain, yanking her backpack tight against her chest to hide the side facing the hallway. Ten minutes earlier, I’d seen two eighth grade boys walk past her locker, snickering and pointing at the collection of enamel pins and cat-shaped keychain hanging off the zipper. When I asked her what was wrong after the bell rang, she stared at her shoes and mumbled that people had been making fun of her bag for two weeks. Last week, someone flicked one of her pins so hard it popped off and rolled under a radiator, and no one stopped to help her look for it.
I started paying closer attention after that, because I’d brushed off similar comments before as just kid stuff. The week before, Javi, another 7th grader, had mentioned offhand that people called his collection of 90s Nintendo keychains “boomer garbage.” A 6th grader I supervise at lunch told me someone had blacked out the pride flag pin on his bag with a Sharpie during gym. That night when I got home, my own 11-year-old son dumped his backpack on the kitchen counter for after-school snacks, and I noticed all the Minecraft keychains he’d badgered me to buy last summer were gone. When I asked where they were, he shrugged and said “It’s just annoying. People make fun. It’s not worth the hassle.”
That’s when the question that so many parents ask in our school PTA group hit me: do kids really bully each other just over keychains and pins? The answer, from what I’ve seen, is sometimes yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s trivial. For middle schoolers, their backpack is the first thing most people see every day. It’s one of the only things they get to totally customize, no parent or school rule telling them what they can put on it. Those pins and keychains aren’t just plastic and metal. They’re little markers for the stuff they care about: their favorite show, their pet, a concert they went to with their family, a cause they care about. When someone teases them for those decorations, they’re not teasing a keychain. They’re teasing the part of the kid that they chose to share with the world.
A lot of adults (I’ve done it too) brush this off immediately. We say “It’s just a joke, don’t let it get to you” or “Just take the pins off, what’s the big deal?” That’s the worst thing you can do. It tells the kid that the thing bothering them isn’t important, that their feelings don’t matter. Instead, the first concrete step I tell parents to take when their kid brings this up is to open with a simple, specific response: “That was rude, and it makes total sense that you’re upset. No one should bother you over something you love.” It doesn’t solve the problem right away, but it validates how they feel before you talk about next steps.
After that, ask them what they want to do, don’t tell them. Mia told me she wanted me to pull the two boys aside and tell them to stop. My son told me he’d rather move his keychains to his locker at school, where he can see them every day, and no one can tease him about them in the hallway. Some kids want to tell the bully off, some want to add a new pin that matches what the popular kids have, some want to keep all their stuff and just ignore the comments. All of those are okay, as long as it’s what the kid wants. If a kid wants to stand their ground and practice what to say back, you can role play a simple line with them at home: “It’s my backpack, I like it. Leave me alone.” It’s short, it doesn’t start a big fight, and it sets a clear boundary.
As a teacher, I started making one small change in my homeroom after Mia’s situation. Every Monday, we do a 5-minute quick share where anyone who wants to can show one pin or keychain from their bag and say why they have it. It’s not mandatory, so no one has to join if they don’t want to. The first week we did it, Mia went first, showed her custom cat keychain, and by the end three other kids pulled their own hidden pet keychains out of their pencil cases to share. Javi brought his Nintendo keychain, and a kid in the back of the room yelled that he had the same game on his Switch at home. It’s a tiny change, but it normalizes liking different stuff, so it’s harder for kids to call something cringe when they see other people love the same things.
Do I think this solves all the problem? No. Just last week, I heard a group of 8th graders making fun of a kid’s Disney keychain in the hallway. Bullying over small, trivial stuff is never really going to go away, because kids are testing out social power, and picking on something as small as a keychain feels low-stakes to them. They don’t even think it counts as bullying, because “it’s just a joke.” Adults often let them get away with it for the same reason.
This week, Mia walked into homeroom with all her pins back out on display, laughing with the two other girls who’d brought their own pins to share. My son still keeps his keychains on his locker, and he says that’s perfect for him, he doesn’t mind not having them on his backpack. We haven’t had any pins go missing in my homeroom for a month now. It’s not a big, dramatic win. It’s just small, slow work, meeting kids where they are, and not brushing off their problems just because the thing they’re upset about seems tiny to us.
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