My Kid Asked “Am I Gonna Get Bullied In School?” What I Learned As A Mom And Teacher
I was folding Lila’s new cat-print hoodie on her bed last Sunday, three nights before her first day of 7th grade at our new town’s middle school, when I heard her clear her throat from the doorway. She was twisting the strap of her new backpack—still stained with the iced tea I spilled on it during our Target run—staring at her scuffed white sneakers. “Am I gonna get bullied in school?” she asked, not looking up.
I’m a 4th grade teacher, and I’ve heard this question a dozen times from students over the years. But hearing it from my own kid tightened my chest. My first instinct was to blurt out “Of course not! Don’t be silly, everyone will love you.” But I caught myself. I remember asking my mom the same question after we moved when I was 12, and she said that exact line. Then when a group of girls started making fun of my crooked overbite and hand-me-down jeans, I didn’t tell her for three months. I thought I’d done something wrong to make it happen, since she’d promised it wouldn’t.
I sat back on her bed and patted the spot next to her. Instead of dismissing her fear, I said, “That’s such a scary thing to wonder about. It makes total sense to ask that right now, after moving all summer and starting over.” She sat down and told me she’d seen a TikTok the night before where a girl talked about being the new kid and getting excluded for months, and she couldn’t stop replaying it in her head.
I told her I can’t promise no one will ever be mean to her. That’s a lie we tell kids to make ourselves feel better, but it only sets them up to feel alone when bad things do happen. Middle school is full of people figuring out how to be people, and some of them take that confusion out on other people. Sometimes that meanness lands on you, no fault of your own. But I gave her three concrete promises, right then, that we could hold onto.
First, any time something feels off, even if it seems small, you can tell me. I won’t brush it off, I won’t tell you to just ignore it, I won’t make you handle it alone. Second, we have a pre-planned out: if you’re at lunch and no one will sit with you, or someone’s saying stuff that makes your stomach hurt, just text me the pizza emoji. I’ll leave whatever I’m doing, come get you, no lecture, no 20 questions on the drive home. We can just get ice cream and figure it out later. Third, I already talked to your homeroom teacher, and she said you can stop by her room any time between classes or during lunch if you just need a minute to breathe away from everyone.
Last year, I had a 5th grader named Milo who joined my class mid-year after his parents split. He asked me the same question two days before his first day. I worked out the same kind of plan with him: he’d bonded with the tech ed teacher over Legos during his tour, so we agreed that Milo could stop by the tech room any time he needed a break. He didn’t go there often, but he told me at the end of the year just knowing that space was there made it easier to walk into the building every morning.
After I told Lila my promises, she asked what she’s supposed to do if she sees someone else getting bullied. I told her she doesn’t have to be a hero and yell at the person being mean. That’s scary, and it’s not a kid’s job to fix someone else’s bad behavior. There are three small, low-stakes things that matter more: if the person is alone, go sit with them. If you can, pull them away from the situation—say you need help finding the bathroom, or you have to go to the office, anything to get them out. Third, check in with them later, say you saw what happened and that sucks. I told her about my 7th grade year, when I spent a whole lunch period hiding in a bathroom stall crying after the same group of girls called me “metal mouth” for my braces. A girl from my math class named Jenna found me, didn’t make a big deal out of it, just gave me a spearmint Tic Tac and said my volcano science project was the coolest one she’d seen, then walked back to class with me. That was 22 years ago, and I still remember how that felt. No big speech, no confronting the bullies, just one small kind thing.
A lot of parents and new teachers think when a kid asks this question, they need to fix the fear immediately. They rush to promise it won’t happen, or sign their kid up for extra confidence classes, or email the entire admin team to put a special plan in place. But what I’ve found is that what kids actually want isn’t a guarantee it won’t happen. It’s a guarantee they won’t be alone if it does. A lot of kids also think only dramatic, physical abuse counts as bullying, so they brush off the small, constant stuff that makes them hate going to school. The simplest thing any caregiver can do is make it clear that any interaction that leaves your kid feeling bad is worth talking about, no matter how small it seems to you.
Lila’s first three days are done. She came home yesterday talking about a girl named Mia who likes the same folk bands she does, and they’re going to try out for the school’s poetry club next week. She hasn’t texted me the pizza emoji yet. Last night, I went in to turn off her light after she fell asleep, and saw her contact list open on her phone, with my entry labeled “Mom 🍕”. It’s still early. We don’t know what the rest of the year will bring. There will probably be days people are mean, there will be days she’s awkward, there will be days she doesn’t want to go. But for now, that’s enough. The plan is in place, she knows where to find me, and that’s all any of us can really do.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » My Kid Asked “Am I Gonna Get Bullied In School