In the first blog I mentioned that not all children will report bullying to their parents. In fact 2 out of 3 children don’t report bullying to their parents. In this blog we will discuss some ways to spot a potential bullying situation without being told.

So what can you do as a parent if you think your child may be a victim of bullying. As a parent you should be active in your child social life as well as their home life, this is what a parent who cares does.

In this blog I will discuss a few telltale signs that a child may exhibit if they are a victim of bullying.

Firstly, it isn’t wrong to check up on your child. Checking on their friends or online isn’t taking away their freedom, it is keeping them safe.

As a parent you should ask yourself questions once in a while as a checklist on keeping your child safe.

A few signs are as follows:

• Is your child isolating themselves, disconnecting from others. Every child does this at some point in their lives, and everyone knows teenagers are renowned for distancing themselves from family, but they usually draw closer to friends at that stage in their lives.

• Stomach aches and headaches or any other conditions that may interfere with their daily life. Maybe before school or at other certain times or days.

• Difficulty in concentration, schoolwork suffering. Maybe they are thinking of other worries.

• Do they seem listless, unenthusiastic, disinterested in life?

• Extremely nervous? Depressed? Emotionally explosive? Again teenagers can be emotionally explosive and moody but is it something beyond that.

• Is a certain child’s name always being mentioned? Perhaps in a way that they borrow things or caused bruising ‘accidentally’.

Asking yourself questions like these could prevent any bullying getting any worse. The quicker you stop the bullying the easier it is on you and your child.

In a school bullying study, 86% of students said “other kids picking on them, making fun of them or bullying them, motivates them to consider turning to lethal violence in schools”

Bullying is much like a fire; it is easy to put it out while it is just a match, but very hard and dangerous when it is a blazing inferno. So stop bullying before it gets to a worse stage because it always gets worse if you just ignore it.

In the first blog we discussed that children can feel embarrassed or scared to tell you about bullying.

Telling your child on a regular basis that they can tell you anything without embarrassment or fear will give them a clearer safer path to dealing with a bully.