When Your Kid Asks ‘Would I Get Bullied For This At School?’: What I Learned As A Mom And Teacher
Last Tuesday, I was wiping down the kitchen counter after after-school snacks when Milo dropped his backpack at my feet and twisted the wonky tail of a 3D-pen dinosaur he’d spent three nights making. “Would I get bullied for this at school??” he asked, eyes on the scuffed linoleum. Half a granola bar stuck out of his backpack pocket, and I could hear my third grade class’s weekly newsletter pinging in my email on the counter. For half a second, I almost gave the answer I used to give, both to my students and to my own kid: Of course not, it’s so cool, no one will bully you.
But I’ve heard that question enough now to know that it’s not actually a request for a guarantee. It’s a kid laying out the fear they’ve been chewing on all the way home from the bus stop, the same fear I heard from Lila, one of my third graders, last fall when she tucked her threadbare stuffed rabbit in her jacket pocket before show-and-tell and asked me the exact same thing.
I pulled out a chair for Milo and sat down next to him, instead of leaning against the counter. “That’s such a fair thing to worry about,” I said. “Kids can be really dumb about what other people like, right?” He nodded, and told me Jake from recess had said last week that dinosaurs are for first graders. He’d worked for three hours on the dinosaur’s wiggly tail, messed up twice and had to re-print the whole body, and he really wanted to share it for the classroom’s “Share Something You Made” week. But the fear was sitting there, heavy.
What I’ve learned over the years, both standing at the front of a classroom and raising my own kid, is that most of the time when this question comes up, it’s not about a sure thing of bullying. It’s about the risk of being teased, of feeling small, of putting something you care about out there and having people laugh at it. Our first instinct as adults is to eliminate the risk entirely. We say “don’t go, then” or “it’s fine, no one will care” or we immediately jump to calling the teacher or the parent of the kid who said the mean thing. But that doesn’t help the kid learn how to handle the small social risks that are going to come up their whole life.
Instead, I do two small, concrete things that have worked way better than any empty reassurance. First, I help them build a backup plan, so they never feel trapped. For Lila, that was agreeing she could keep the rabbit in her desk the whole time if she changed her mind once show-and-tell started. For Milo, that was saying if he got to school and didn’t want to share it, he could leave it in his backpack all day, and no one would ever know he brought it. No pressure, no all-or-nothing. It takes the edge off the fear when you know you can walk away at any time.
Second, we practice one short, calm line to use if someone says something rude. It doesn’t need to be a snappy comeback, it doesn’t need to start a fight. It just needs to be something easy to remember that doesn’t give the teaser the big reaction they’re looking for. For Lila, we came up with “She’s mine, I’ve had her forever.” For Milo, we landed on “I like making things, it’s just for fun.” We said it out loud once, just enough that it felt familiar, not like a big script. I’ve seen this work over and over in my classroom. When Lila shared her rabbit, a boy in the back did call out that it was a baby toy. Lila just said her line, and then kept talking about how her grandma sewed the ear back on after the dog chewed it. The whole class leaned in to look at the stitched ear, and the teasing just fizzled. No drama, no fight, it just stopped.
Milo brought the dinosaur on Friday. He kept it in his desk for the first 15 minutes of share time, twisting that wiggly tail under the table, before he raised his hand. When he got up to the front, sure enough, a kid called out that it was a baby dinosaur. Milo just said his line, and before he could even explain how the 3D pen worked, another kid asked if he could make one for his little brother, and a third asked if you can really print anything with those pens. He came home grinning, and said no one was that mean after all.
It doesn’t always work out that neatly. Two years ago, I had a fifth grade tutoring student who wanted to bring his original Pokemon cards to lunch, but was terrified people would say it was lame. He practiced his line, brought the cards, and a group of boys did tease him for 10 minutes. He put the cards away, sat with his other friends, and the next day he brought them again. After a week, no one cared anymore. He still brings them, and now a couple other kids play with him at lunch.
I can’t stand here and tell you I have a trick that will stop all bullying, or that every kid will walk away with a new group of friends after sharing their favorite thing. Sometimes kids are mean, sometimes it hurts, and sometimes you have to step in as an adult to fix it. But what I’ve learned is that most of the time, when your kid asks that question, they don’t need you to fix the problem before it even happens. They just need you to take their fear seriously, give them an out, and give them a simple tool to handle it on their own if it goes bad.
Last night, Milo was sitting at the dining table printing a new dragon, his granola crumbs all over the place, and he mentioned he’s bringing it for share time next week. He didn’t ask if he’d get bullied this time. That’s where we are right now. It’s not perfect, and there will be more scary questions down the line. But for now, it’s enough.
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