What is bullying and what it is not.

From National Centre Against Bullying:

Bullying is when an individual or a group of people with more power, repeatedly and intentionally cause hurt or harm to another person or group of people who feel helpless to respond. Bullying can continue over time, is often hidden from adults, and will probably continue if no action is taken.

Bullying is a relationship problem and requires relationship-based solutions. These are best solved in the social environment in which they occur: in a child or young person's life, this is most often the school.

Bullying is not

• single episodes of social rejection or dislike
• single episode acts of nastiness or spite
• random acts of aggression or intimidation
• mutual arguments, disagreements or fights.

These actions can cause great distress. However, they're not examples of bullying unless someone is deliberately and repeatedly doing them.

For information for Parents can be found here

Also adding, there are also resources if you think your child may be the bully or showing some behaviour that could be classified as such:

Talk to your child

• Stay calm. Focus on the behaviour, rather than the child.
• Make sure your child knows bullying behaviour is inappropriate and why.
• Try to understand the reasons why your child has behaved in this way and look for ways to address problems.
• Encourage your child to look at it from the other's perspective, for example, "how would you feel if..."
• Help your child think of alternative paths of action.
• Provide appropriate boundaries for their behaviour.
• Children need to find ways of managing their relationships more positively than dominance, control or exclusion. Teaching conflict resolution and social/emotional skills is important. Take a look here for additional guidance on this.

What if my child is bullying other children?