Bullying does not always end when the school day ends and it certainly does not always end when childhood is over. For some people, the bully disappears from their life but remains in their head. The child who was repeatedly told that they were stupid, unattractive, strange, weak or unlikeable may grow into an adult who still questions whether they are good enough. The person who was laughed at whenever they spoke in front of others may become an adult who avoids putting themselves forward at work. Someone who was constantly excluded may spend years looking for reassurance that they are wanted. The original bully may have forgotten the words they used years ago, but the person who heard them may still remember everyone.
That is why the way we deal with bullying matters so much. We are not only dealing with an unpleasant experience that needs to be stopped. We are potentially influencing the way a young person learns to see themselves.
It is easy to think of bullying as a series of cruel comments or acts of intimidation, but the deeper problem is what those actions can make a person believe about themselves. Children are still developing their understanding of who they are. They are discovering their abilities, their personalities, their strengths and weaknesses and their place in the world. They are also extraordinarily sensitive to the opinions of other people.
When somebody repeatedly tells a child that they are stupid, they may eventually stop questioning the statement. When other children laugh at them, they may begin to believe there really is something embarrassing about them. When they are excluded, they may conclude that they are simply not the sort of person other people want around.
The bully may have intended to cause embarrassment, fear or humiliation, but the more lasting damage can occur when the victim begins to internalise the message.
This is something teachers need to understand because the answer is not only to stop the behaviour. Stopping the behaviour is essential, but we should also help the child understand that the behaviour says something about the person doing it - it does not establish the worth of the person receiving it.
A bully is not an authority on who you are. That sounds obvious when we say it about somebody else, but it is much harder for a child to understand when they are hearing the same criticism every day. The job of the adults around them is therefore to help create some distance between what has been said about them and what they believe to be true about themselves.
The danger of telling children to "just ignore it"
One of the most common pieces of advice given to children experiencing bullying is to ignore it. The intention is understandable. We do not want a child to give a bully the reaction they are looking for and in some circumstances refusing to engage may be useful. But "ignore it" can also be a very lonely instruction for a frightened child.
Imagine being ten years old and walking into school knowing that somebody is waiting to humiliate you. Imagine being thirteen and opening your phone to discover another message or photograph designed to embarrass you in front of your classmates. Imagine being sixteen and knowing that every time you walk into a particular room there is a group of people ready to make you feel like an outsider. Telling that child not to care does not make the fear disappear.
It can even create another problem. The child may believe that being upset means they are weak, or that a stronger person would be able to deal with it. They may begin to blame themselves for not being resilient enough. This is where we need to change the way we talk about strength.
Being strong does not mean feeling nothing. A child can be frightened and still be courageous. They can be deeply upset and still take the next step. They can cry, ask for help and admit that something is hurting them without being weak.
In fact, one of the most important lessons we can teach children is that courage does not require fear to disappear. Courage is often the decision to take action while the fear is still there.
Teachers have a crucial role to play
Teachers are in a unique position because they see children in a social environment that parents do not always see. They can notice changes in behaviour, friendships, confidence and participation. A child who once enjoyed answering questions may suddenly stop raising their hand. Someone who was enthusiastic about school may start finding reasons not to attend. A normally sociable child may become withdrawn, while another may become angry and disruptive. None of these things automatically means that bullying is taking place, but they are reasons to pay attention.
Bullying does not always announce itself through a dramatic incident. It can be a pattern of small humiliations that gradually wears away at a child's confidence. It can be the repeated joke that everyone else finds funny, but the child has learned to dread. It can be deliberately leaving somebody out, constantly criticising their appearance, hiding their possessions or creating an online group specifically to exclude them. This is why one of the most useful questions a teacher can ask is not necessarily, "Are you being bullied?" It may be, "What's changed?"
Children do not always have the words to explain what is happening to them. Some are frightened that telling an adult will make things worse. Others feel embarrassed. Some believe that nobody will take them seriously. Others may have reached the point where they think the treatment they are receiving is normal. A child who eventually finds the courage to tell a teacher needs to know that they have done the right thing.
That does not mean every allegation can be accepted without investigation. Teachers have procedures to follow, safeguarding responsibilities and other children to consider. But the first response should communicate that the child's experience matters. "I'm glad you told me” Can be far more powerful than immediately asking what they did to cause the situation.
We must challenge the behaviour without defining the child
There is another side to bullying that is sometimes overlooked. If we are serious about helping children, we also need to understand the child doing the bullying. That does not mean excusing their behaviour. There is an important difference between understanding why somebody behaves in a particular way and allowing that behaviour to continue. A child who intimidates, humiliates or deliberately excludes another child must understand that their actions are unacceptable. But we should also be careful about turning the word "bully" into an identity.
My philosophy about positive thinking is built around the idea that people are not broken. That principle does not disappear when somebody behaves badly. A child may be behaving in a harmful way without being permanently defined by that behaviour.
There may be insecurity behind the need for control. There may be problems at home. There may be a desire for status or acceptance within a peer group. There may be anger that the child has never learned to express in a healthier way. None of this excuses bullying, but understanding it can help adults deal with the cause rather than concentrating only on the symptom.
The message can be both firm and hopeful - what you have done is unacceptable, and you are capable of doing something different. That is very different from telling a child that they are a bad person.
Do not make the victim responsible for the bully's behaviour
We also need to be careful about the language we use with children who are being bullied. Encouraging confidence is valuable. Teaching children how to assert themselves and seek help is important. But none of these things should imply that the victim is responsible for stopping the bullying.
There is a subtle, but important difference between saying, "Here are some things you can do to protect yourself and get support," and saying, "You need to be stronger so they stop doing it." The first gives a child control. The second can give them blame.
A child should never be left believing that the reason they are being bullied is because they are too quiet, too sensitive, too different or insufficiently confident. The responsibility for bullying belongs with the person choosing to bully. Our responsibility as adults is to make sure children understand that.
Perhaps the most important reason to take bullying seriously is that its effects can last much longer than the behaviour itself. Adults sometimes wonder why they lack confidence, why they constantly seek approval or why criticism affects them so deeply. They may struggle to speak in meetings, find it difficult to make decisions or feel uncomfortable when they become the centre of attention. They may believe they are naturally insecure when, in reality, they learned insecurity somewhere along the way.
Not every adult confidence problem can be traced back to childhood bullying, of course. Life is far more complicated than that, but for some people, the connection is unmistakable.
The school bully may have moved on with their life. They may not even remember the incident. The victim may have carried it for decades. This is one of the cruellest things about bullying. The person who caused the wound can forget it while the person who received it continues to live around it.
A child who was repeatedly told that they were not clever enough may grow into an adult who never applies for the promotion they are capable of getting. Someone who was mocked for speaking may avoid expressing their opinion. Someone who was constantly criticised about their appearance may spend years trying to become acceptable to an imaginary audience. At some point, the bully is no longer standing in front of them. The voice is inside them.
Whose voice are you listening to?
This is where I hope that my philosophy becomes particularly powerful. If we think of ourselves as a piece of stone being sculpted throughout our lives, we can begin to understand what bullying can do. Other people make comments about us, place expectations upon us and tell us who they think we should be. Sometimes those opinions are helpful. Sometimes they are loving. Sometimes they are completely wrong.
A child who is repeatedly bullied can begin to chisel themselves according to somebody else's instructions. They become quieter because somebody mocked the way they spoke. They stop trying because somebody laughed when they failed. They avoid attention because somebody embarrassed them. They seek constant approval because rejection once hurt too much.
Over time, they can become an edited version of themselves, but what if the answer is not to build an entirely new person? What if the answer is to remove the things that never belonged there?
This is the central idea behind You Are Not Broken. Positive change does not always come from adding more confidence, more affirmations or more achievements. Sometimes it comes from questioning the beliefs we have accumulated and recognising which ones were never ours to begin with.
If someone told you when you were twelve that you were stupid, does that make it true? If somebody laughed at you when you were thirteen, does that mean you should spend the rest of your life being afraid of ridicule? If somebody excluded you when you were fourteen, does that mean you are destined to be unwanted? Of course not, but knowing that intellectually and believing it emotionally can be two very different things.
Give children the tools to question what they hear
This is one of the most valuable lessons teachers can give their pupils. Rather than telling children that every negative thought is wrong, teach them to examine where the thought came from.
If a child thinks, "Nobody likes me," ask what evidence supports that belief. If they say, "I'm rubbish at everything," help them recognise that one failure cannot possibly describe an entire person. If they say, "Everyone thinks I'm stupid," ask whether that is a fact or the conclusion they have drawn from one painful experience.
This is not about forcing positivity onto children. In fact, it is the opposite. My philosophy does not ask people to pretend everything is wonderful when it is not. It asks them to become more aware of the thoughts they have accepted without questioning them. That is an enormously valuable skill for a child to develop. It is also an enormously valuable skill for an adult.
We should also resist the temptation to imagine that bullying disappears when people leave school. Adults bully too. It may look different, but the underlying behaviour can be remarkably similar. A manager can humiliate an employee in front of colleagues. A group can deliberately exclude someone from important conversations. A partner can use criticism to undermine confidence. Social media can turn public humiliation into entertainment. A colleague can repeatedly make someone the target of jokes and then dismiss their objections by saying they cannot take a joke. The language changes. The consequences often do not.
The adult may still begin to question themselves. They may still become anxious about speaking. They may still believe that keeping quiet is safer than being noticed. That is why teaching children about bullying is also teaching them how to recognise unhealthy behaviour throughout their lives. We should teach them that respect is not something people earn by becoming perfect. They are entitled to be treated with dignity, just as other people are entitled to the same.
The answer is not to become harder
There is a temptation, particularly in discussions about bullying, to suggest that the solution is to become tougher. Don't care what people think. Develop a thick skin. Give as good as you get. Stand up for yourself.
Sometimes assertiveness is exactly what is needed. Sometimes walking away is wiser. Sometimes involving an adult or authority is essential. Sometimes a person needs to establish a firm boundary, but becoming emotionally numb is not the same as becoming resilient.
We do not want children to grow into adults who believe that the only way to survive difficult people is to stop caring altogether. We want them to understand themselves well enough to decide which opinions deserve their attention and which do not. That is a much more powerful form of confidence.
Stopping the bullying is only the beginning. Once a child is safe, we need to think about what happens next. Has their confidence been damaged? Do they still expect people to laugh at them? Are they avoiding situations that remind them of what happened? Have they started believing the things that were said?
These questions matter because removing the bully does not automatically remove the beliefs the bully created. The same is true for adults.
If you were bullied years ago, there may still be moments when an old voice returns. You may hesitate before speaking. You may assume somebody is judging you. You may find yourself seeking approval before trusting your own decision. When that happens, there is a useful question to ask: Whose voice is that?
It may feel like your own voice, but it may belong to somebody who spoke to you years ago. The fact that you have carried a belief for a long time does not necessarily make it true.
No teacher can guarantee that a child will never encounter cruelty. No parent can control every friendship. No adult can remove every difficult person from another person's life, but we can give children something much more valuable than the promise of a life without difficulty.
We can teach them how to think about themselves when difficulty arrives. We can teach them that asking for help is not weakness. We can teach them that fear is not failure. We can teach them that another person's opinion is not a verdict. We can teach them that making mistakes does not make them a failure and that being rejected by one person does not make them unworthy of being loved by another. Most importantly, we can teach them to question the labels that other people place upon them.
Because a child who understands that they are not defined by somebody else's cruelty has been given something that can last far beyond the school gates. They have been given the beginnings of an inner voice of their own and perhaps that is ultimately what we should want for every child.
Not a child who never feels afraid. Not a child who never experiences rejection. Not a child who never gets hurt, but a child who can experience those things without allowing them to decide who they are.
The bully may have a voice. The world may have a voice. Other people's expectations may have a voice, but none of them should be louder than your own understanding of who you are.
The bully does not get to write your story and neither does the worst thing that ever happened to you. You are not what someone said about you. You are not the label someone placed upon you. You are not broken.
FAQs About Bullying, Confidence and Resilience
1. How can teachers help children who are being bullied?
Teachers can help by listening without judgement, taking concerns seriously, identifying patterns of behaviour and following appropriate safeguarding and anti-bullying procedures. Just as importantly, they can help children understand that being bullied does not define who they are.
2. What should a teacher say to a child who is being bullied?
A good starting point is to reassure the child that they have done the right thing by speaking up. Teachers should listen carefully, avoid blaming the child and make it clear that responsibility for bullying lies with the person carrying it out.
3. How does bullying affect a child's self-confidence?
Repeated bullying can cause children to question their abilities, appearance, friendships and sense of belonging. Over time, negative comments can become internalised, making a child believe things about themselves that originated with the bully rather than with reality.
4. Can bullying during childhood affect adults later in life?
Yes. Childhood bullying can sometimes influence confidence, relationships, decision-making and a person's willingness to put themselves forward later in life. An adult may continue to carry beliefs about themselves that began with criticism or humiliation experienced during childhood.
5. How can adults overcome the effects of childhood bullying?
A useful starting point is to question the beliefs created by the experience. Asking, "Is this really my belief, or is it something someone taught me to believe about myself?" can help separate past experiences from present reality.
6. Should children be taught to ignore bullies?
Ignoring a bully can sometimes prevent an unwanted reaction, but it should not be the only advice given. Children also need to know how to report bullying, seek support, establish boundaries and understand that being upset by bullying does not mean they are weak.
7. How can schools build resilience without blaming children for bullying?
Schools can teach resilience by helping children understand their emotions, develop confidence, communicate effectively and seek support when necessary. Resilience should never mean expecting children to tolerate harmful behaviour or suggesting that they are responsible for stopping a bully.
8. Why do some children become bullies?
There is no single explanation for bullying. It can be associated with insecurity, a desire for status or control, difficulties at home, peer pressure or learned behaviour. Understanding the reasons behind bullying does not excuse it, but it can help adults address the behaviour more effectively.
9. How can teachers help children who have lost confidence because of bullying?
Teachers can help by creating opportunities for children to experience success, encouraging them to express themselves and challenging negative beliefs without forcing artificial positivity. The aim is to help the child rediscover their own sense of identity rather than allowing the bully's description of them to become their identity.
10. How can the “You Are Not Broken” philosophy help someone affected by bullying?
The philosophy encourages people to question the labels and beliefs they have accumulated rather than assuming something is fundamentally wrong with them. In the context of bullying, this means recognising that another person's cruelty may have influenced how you see yourself, but it does not determine who you are.
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