Bullying is an affective word. Most people who hear it have some kind of emotional reaction to it. Many people feel that they have in some way been bullied at least once in their life, and they base some of their personal ideals and decisions on what they did in response. It is still hard for me to admit that I fit into that category.
I immediately expect that if I tell someone I was bullied — they’re imagining what I was like that would have caused it. Was I nerdy? Overweight? Awkward? Overly sensitive? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Part of me is still afraid that since everything people imagine to be true about a bullied person was true about me — that they’ll think I deserved it.
My First Encounter With Bullying
I remember the first time I experienced something like “bullying.” A kid in kindergarten confidently walked up to me and called me fat. Coming from a kind household surrounded by a supportive and kind community, I immediately broke into tears at the newness of it. What did it mean? Was I fat? And clearly — why was this kid happy to make me feel bad?
So I did what any healthy and generally happy kindergartener would do: I went and fetched my best friend. Since we were both among the taller and bigger kids in our class, I was pretty sure she’d know what to do and I was not wrong. Five minutes later, she and I marched out to the little perpetrator with our bellies stuck out, growling about being hungry and threatening to eat him.
I’m sure that does not particularly sound like a kid who was bullied — and you’d be right. Among the moments of my experience in bullying, that one does not make the list. Oddly, I did everything that the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence tells kids not to do in order to prevent bullying. I did not tell a teacher. I did not avoid the situation. I did not ignore the situation or just walk away. I absolutely retaliated in a way that left me rolling on the ground laughing with my friend.
I was still left with the confidence in three things: that I could deal with a would-be bully, that I was not alone, and that life on the whole was pretty fantastic whether someone called me fat or not.
When Things Started to Change
Despite my early “victory,” things went much more poorly for me in my later adolescence. I can still remember the stupid thing I said right before Brad cocked his fist back and punched me. Still remember the nerdy shirt I loved so much right before someone smeared waterproof lipstick all over the back of it. I still remember the crazy hair I had before someone stuck food onto my head and I had to cut it.
Only after a lot of good therapy do I now realize that none of it was my fault. There was nothing inherently “bullyable” about me — even when physical, social, and verbal victimization later became a common part of my life.
When I had the right resources, I was more than capable of resilience, happiness, being socially connected, and pushing back against a would-be bully without too much trouble. When my life took a drastic turn toward isolation and chaos, the opposite became true. This highlights what we know about kids who are bullied: the behavior we see on the surface often makes more sense when we understand the full context of a child’s life.
What Increases or Reduces a Child’s Risk of Being Bullied
The real question is — why was there one time in my life where I was basically bully-proof, and another in which the bullies won and I became a victim instead?
Believe it or not, we have lots of research about what increases a kid’s odds of being bullied or being susceptible to it, and it is a relatively predictable phenomenon. My own story is a brilliant example that proves a single kid is not either bullying material or not — but that bullying has far more to do with a child’s external circumstances than with who they are as a person.
It turns out there are four key factors that influence how likely a child is to be bullied.
1. Satisfaction with Life vs. Psychological Distress
One of the most important protective factors for kids against bullying is how satisfied they feel with life and if they are able to view their own life with positivity. All of the other three factors I will list here play a role in how a child is able to understand their own life.
In my own bullying story, I was a very happy kid when I threatened to eat my would-be-bully. I knew I was loved: I had lots of friends to rely on, including one to go to and ask for help, and I was highly involved in my community.
Later on, my family had moved to a new area, and things went poorly. I did not have any friends or know who to go to for help, and my own parents were stressed out and distant. Things had definitely changed.
Even then, it took a long time for me to stop being the optimistic kid I had been for most of my life — which requires a look at the other factors.
2. Community Support vs. Isolation
A bully-proof kid needs to have strong community support. They need to know where they can go for help and that the help will be effective. Even more importantly, they need to have a sense of belonging and value in the communities they are a part of.
This feeling of belonging and support makes a bullying cycle less likely.
In my own case, my community had clearly disappeared by the time I started dealing with serious bullying — I no longer had people to support me, or the confidence to know where my value came from.
This leads to what we can refer to as the bullying cycle — bullying creates insecurity and a lack of confidence in a kid, which then makes a kid more likely to be bullied. Suddenly, something I once would have worked through quickly — like being called a name — produced crippling self-doubt. I did not know how to make it stop, who to talk to, or that the person saying it was wrong.
3. Resilience vs. Fragility
Resilience is a hard subject for me to discuss around bullying because it inevitably leads to the idea that kids are responsible for their own bullying. As I mentioned in the bullying cycle, a lack of resilience can be created over time in anyone, even people who used to be more confident.
A series of blows to community, satisfaction, and a sense of belonging can create more fragility in a child who did not choose to change any of these circumstances. In this way, an optimistic kid — confident of their own value and goodness — can become a child riddled with self-doubt who wonders if bullying behaviors are really their own fault.
I was always a very sensitive person, and I was constantly told that I would not get bullied as much if I were less sensitive. But between my first bullying encounter and what I experienced years later, my sensitivity was not different. What changed was my ability to respond in a healthy and connected manner.
4. Empowerment vs. Victimization
Victimization is the easy one to understand — how often are bullying behaviors being targeted at the kid in question? Bullying can show up as verbal insults, physical aggression, or social rejection, such as being intentionally left out of activities.
When my family moved, I was dropped into a community where this kind of behavior was almost encouraged, from a local belief that adversity builds tough kids. It is an obvious factor, but interestingly enough, not the most important one.
Empowerment, by contrast, indicates a person who feels strong enough to stand against abuse and wrong behavior — not merely someone living in the absence of it. That looks like coming back with a friend, or reaching inward to knowledge that whatever bully you’re facing is wrong.
📩 Stay Grounded
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What Actually Helps Kids Who Are Being Bullied
I have to be honest. I’m reluctant to write a section giving advice for what bullied kids or their parents should do. When a kid is bullied, the opportunity for shame becomes so high. Even though their intentions may be good, many parents may unconsciously blame their children for being bullyable and push them to solve their bullying issues to make themselves feel better.
I’ve looked at advice online for what kids should do, and honestly I don’t agree with much of it. Most of it is written by administrators hoping to reduce risk and culpability. Very little of it is written to help a child thrive, or to actually gain protection.
So I’m going to walk through the four categories above based on my lived experience of what actually helped.
1. Satisfaction with Life
More than anything, I needed a break from school (and honestly, church). I needed a space where I had my parents’ attention and was away from life as usual. I needed reminders from extended family that I did belong, and time having fun where we were not discussing how bad things were at school.
Nothing I could do at school made me feel satisfaction, and anything I was advised to do felt forced and mostly like lying to myself. I had no interest in pretending to be happy when I wasn’t.
If a kid is being drained by something, more of that thing is not going to fill them. You might not be able to take them away from school, but you can maximize everything else.
Having the attention and encouragement of my distracted parents and out-of-state family did a lot more for me than just trying to be positive at school.
2. Community Support
Community was tough, because I did not have a lot of control over what community was available. I could not rebuild the community I had lost or get my neighbors back.
What did help was my family believing me, spending time with me, and encouraging me that the people at school were wrong. What I did not need was my family suggesting that maybe I’d be bullied less if I had fewer dislikable qualities.
There is absolutely a time for growth and change, but those suggestions are an inappropriate reaction to abuse.
Eventually, the best thing that happened was that I made new friends — equally shy and awkward kids who also needed support. I was able to make friends because there was still a part of me that believed the abuse was wrong, that I was valuable, and that I deserved to be treated well.
I learned to recognize which kids were safe, which kids did not just watch abuse without wanting to help, and which kids valued kindness.
Unfortunately, it was something I had to do by myself. Fortunately, most kids are capable of a lot more than we give them credit for — and when people had confidence in me, it helped so much.
3. Resilience and Emotional Experience
I’ll admit I was not a very tough kid from the beginning. I had always been emotional and sensitive — it had just not been a problem when I lived in a supportive community.
Still, it never helped (not even once, not ever) for people to tell me to grow a thicker skin.
The thicker skin strategy teaches kids to suppress their feelings and to avoid feeling them at all if possible. I know from past experiences as a therapist that this strategy has its limits and produces a lot of harm in the long run (and a lot of large therapy bills).
I developed my own strategy as a child that I think ultimately created more resilience than suppression ever could — I learned to sit with my feelings and to honestly mourn the fact that the world is broken. I learned that there were a lot of people that were unsafe to show my feelings to, but I could still feel them. Even better, I could share them with someone safe later on.
I love the quote from Robert Frost:
“The only way out is through.”
That is what I have learned about hard feelings and hard events. Perseverance comes from facing the honest truth of the world, not learning to avoid thinking about it or feeling it. When we push feelings and bad experiences down, we are only ensuring they will haunt us later.
Emotional maturity and endurance comes from facing and feeling hard things when we encounter them.
4. Victimization and Empowerment in Practice
As for the actual victimization, there are things you can do and things you cannot do. Sometimes telling school administration or going to parents can help. It was certainly helpful to know that my mother would have helped me complain if I asked her to, and once or twice I did.
But here’s the hard part — I needed my parents to teach me how to handle those situations when I was on my own. Knowing my Mom would storm the school office and possibly punch a fellow 11-year-old if I told her the truth did not really making sharing most things a good idea.
I kept a lot to myself because I didn’t want to lose control of the situation. My Mom is a fierce mama bear and I love her for it — but she didn’t ask a lot of questions about what I wanted once the truth was out.
From this personal experience, when my kids are struggling with others at school, I always ask if they want help and what kind of help they would want. There may be exceptions of extreme behavior which would cause me to take control anyway—but it’s rare.
My kids know I will listen, and they know I’m there if they need me. One of the biggest things I needed was to be aware of my own power and competence, and to know other people had faith in my capabilities.
Recognizing the Strength in Our Children
Technically, bullying can only happen when a more powerful person abuses a less powerful one. Mistreatment is always not ok, but there is a particular dynamic involved in bullying that makes it unique.
I look back at my experiences and think all the time, “If I only I had known just how much power I actually had.” There were a lot of things beyond my control, but I did not understand what I had going for me. I was tall for my age, smart, came from an unbroken family that was kind to me with educated parents, and I had a pretty strong sense of identity.
When the bullying began, my parents fixated, as many do, on what I might be lacking that was causing it to happen. They tried to help me by showing me how to adjust my flaws and hide my weaknesses. I appreciate what they were trying to teach me — but what I needed more than anything was for someone to tell me about my strengths.
All kids are powerhouses of unique possibility. Sometimes it takes a particular wisdom to slow down and notice what makes someone truly great — where God has put His particular stamp on who they are.
It is our job as parents to teach our children how to recognize their own value and live from it with confidence. Let us not neglect that task out of anxiety for where they may fail.
Resources
Vargas Jiménez, E., Pérez-Ramos, S. P., & Castro Castañeda, R. (2026). Psychosocial risk and protective factors in school victimization: an explanatory model in adolescents. Psicologia, Reflexão e Crítica, 39(1), 6. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41155-025-00376-9
Written by Andi Anderson, MA, LPCC, MFTC
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