Section 8

What Strategies Do Kids Find Most Helpful?

Children who witness or experience bullying often may not know how to respond.

They may have received mixed messages about bullying from adults or they may be worried about how their response will affect their relationship with other students. Often times adults will suggest that children use a predictable strategy or set of strategies when faced with bullying (e.g., ignore it, walk away, tell the person to stop, etc.).

In order to determine the effectiveness of these common strategies, Nixon and Davis24 asked over 12,000 students, including over 1,600 bullied students, what strategies they have used in bullying situations and which of those strategies were most or least effective in making the situation better.

According to the Youth Voice Project, the strategies bullied children identified as most helpful and least helpful are listed below.

Section 8

MOST helpful strategies:

  • Told an adult at home
  • Told a friend
  • Made a joke about it
  • Told an adult at school
  • Reminded myself that it was not my fault

LEAST helpful strategies:

  • Hit or fought back
  • Made a plan to get back at them
  • Told the person to stop
  • Did nothing (ignored it)
  • Told them how I felt

These results suggest that strategies that involve accessing support from others are much more helpful to bullied students than other common strategies. In addition, most bullied children do not benefit from being told to ignore the bullying or make assertive statements. This research underscores the importance of training adults and bystanders to respond effectively to students’ reports of bullying.

Resources

BULLYING PODCAST WITH STAN DAVIS

Youth Voice Project