What I Learned From The Bully I Still Remember From 7th Grade (Parenting Tips For Addressing Everyday Bullying)
Last month, I was volunteering at my elementary school’s fall festival, waiting in line for cotton candy, when I saw a boy in a faded soccer hoodie nudge the smaller kid in front of him hard enough that his pink cotton candy toppled straight into the dirt. The smaller kid’s lip started to quiver, and the parent supervising the station just shrugged and said, “Boys will be boys, right? Just get another one.” And immediately, the name popped into my head: Tyler. That’s the bully from my 7th grade math class. I hadn’t thought about him in years, but I still remember his name clear as day.
I was the new kid that year. We moved from a tiny farm town two hours away, my glasses were thick as bottle bottoms from bad astigmatism, I brought homemade oatmeal raisin cookies in my lunch every week because my mom baked a big batch on Sundays, and I was too scared to raise my hand even when I knew the answer to a question. Tyler sat behind me. He wasn’t the big, menacing bully you see in teen movies. He was just average height, always had a smudge of pencil lead on his blue jeans, and he never once hit me. He did small stuff, every single day. He’d slip my glasses off my desk when I leaned forward to write, and hide them in the trash can under the sink. He’d draw little lopsided mustaches on the cover of my notebook when I got up to get a drink of water. He’d trip me as I walked to the front of the class to turn in my homework, and the whole room would laugh.
I told my homeroom teacher once, after I’d spent 10 minutes digging through the trash for my glasses before class. She sighed and straightened her lesson plan and said, “Tyler’s got a lot going on at home, he doesn’t mean anything by it. Just try not to react—that’s what he wants.” My mom told me the same thing, because that’s what all adults told parents back then. Just ignore it, it’ll get better if you don’t feed into it. I stopped bringing cookies. I started tucking my glasses into my hoodie pocket every time I got up from my desk. I started taking the long way around the school to gym class just to avoid passing Tyler by his locker. By the end of the semester, I was faking stomach aches to stay home once a week.
Now I’m a 4th grade teacher, and I’ve been doing this for 12 years. When people ask me what the biggest mistake adults make around bullying, I think of Tyler. The problem isn’t just the rare, violent incidents that make school board meetings and local news. It’s the small, repeated daily stuff that adults brush off as “just teasing” or “kids being kids” that sticks with you for decades. And the other big mistake we make is that we let the bully’s struggles become the target kid’s problem. It’s true Tyler was going through a lot: his dad left when he was 6, his mom worked two night shifts at the local hospital, he lived with his grandma who could barely keep up with his energy. But that never meant I deserved to walk around with a tight chest every single morning before math class.
What do I do differently now, when a kid comes to my desk upset? First, I never dismiss the small stuff. If a kid says “Miles keeps taking my eraser every day,” I don’t say “it’s just an eraser, get another.” I say “That must be so annoying to have to deal with that every single day. Let’s fix this.” Then, I address both kids, but I don’t prioritize the bully’s feelings over the target’s. Last year, I had a kid named Miles who was doing the exact same thing Tyler did, picking on a quiet new kid named Leo. Miles’ parents were going through a messy divorce, he was sleeping on his grandma’s couch half the week, he carried that anger around with him everywhere he went. I didn’t turn to Leo and say “Miles is just going through a hard time, be nice to him.” Instead, I checked in with Miles first: five minutes every morning before class, we talked about his favorite Minecraft server, that’s all he wanted to talk about. I got him a pass to come to my room during recess if he was feeling too angry to be outside with the other kids. But I also made it clear: every time he messed with Leo’s stuff, he had to make it right right then. If he hid Leo’s reading book, he helped him find it and apologized before he went back to what he was doing. If he tripped him in the hall, he helped pick up his books and we talked through what he was feeling before he left.
For parents who are dealing with this with their own kid, the biggest concrete change you can make is to get specific. If your kid comes to you and says someone is picking on them, write down exactly what’s happening, when, and where. When you reach out to the teacher or principal, don’t just say “my kid is being bullied.” Say “My kid says that every day after lunch, when they’re walking to science class, Alex keeps knocking their books out of their hands. Can you ask the hall monitor to pay extra attention to that stretch of hallway this week? Can we check in again on Friday to see if it’s stopped?” Specificity makes it way harder for adults to brush off your concern, instead of just telling you it’s kid stuff.
A couple of years ago, I saw Tyler on Facebook. He lives in our old hometown, does framing for new construction, has two little girls the same age as my kids. I didn’t send him a friend request. I didn’t message him to ask for an apology. I don’t need one. I know he was a kid too, going through stuff he didn’t know how to handle. But I still remember his name, and I still remember that tight, sick feeling in my stomach before math class every morning. That’s the thing no one tells you: the small, unaddressed cruelties stick longer than any one big fight. I just try to make sure that none of the kids in my class leave elementary school remembering any bully’s name that way, and that I do better than the adults did for me. Some days it works, some days I mess up. It’s still a work in progress.
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