Notice the moment
Choose a private, unrushed time. A car ride, walk, meal or shared activity may feel easier than a face-to-face interview.
Parent Portal
Practical support for parents facing bullying concerns
A family guide to prevention, communication and working with school
Bullying affects a whole community. Parents can help children feel heard, model respectful behavior and work with schools to respond early. This guide brings together the core advice from ParentingSession.com in one place on ReportBullying.com.
A guide for families
Choose the guidance you need today
You do not have to solve everything in one conversation. Start with the situation in front of you, keep notes and bring in the right adults.
Start with connectionBuild trust, listen and keep everyday conversations open.Respond calmlySupport a child who is targeted and document what happened.Work with schoolUnderstand policy, contact staff and agree on follow-up.Support positive changeRespond constructively when your child may be bullying others.Help bystanders act safelyShow children how to report, support a peer and find an adult.Online safetySave evidence, set family expectations and get help.
If a child faces immediate danger, a serious threat or an urgent safety concern, contact local emergency services and the appropriate school or safety professionals.
Parents are part of the solution
Bullying is a community concern
Children learn from the adults around them. A parent’s response can help a child feel safe enough to share concerns and can reinforce that cruelty, intimidation and exclusion deserve attention. Schools, families and community members each have a role in making expectations clear.
Model the behavior you want children to use
Children notice how adults manage frustration, disagreement and mistakes. Show them how to be direct without insults, how to set a boundary without threatening someone and how to repair harm after an unkind moment. Avoid put-downs, discriminatory language and public shaming, even when you are upset.
The original Parenting Session guide described this as “Kids see—Kids do”: adult behavior at home can shape the way children treat peers at school and in the community. That does not mean a parent is responsible for every choice a child makes. It means adults can demonstrate safer options and help children practice them.
Motivation also grows through trust. Make realistic promises and follow through. Notice effort and progress, explain expectations and use consequences to teach rather than to humiliate. When a child is struggling, ask what support or skill could make a better choice possible.
Listen before fixing
Make it easier for your child to talk
Some children stay quiet because they fear an adult will make a scene, blame them, embarrass them or make the situation worse. A calm response makes a second conversation more likely.
Ask open questions
Try “How has lunch been lately?” or “What happened after class?” Ask one question at a time and give your child room to answer.
Reflect and reassure
Listen for feelings as well as facts. Say what you heard, check that you understood and remind your child they are not alone.
Three useful listening areas
The original guide grouped conversation starters around the child’s own experiences and feelings, other people in the child’s life, and events or objects that can open a conversation. Follow your child’s interests: ask about a friend, a school activity, a game, a story or something they noticed. Reflective listening means checking the meaning behind their words instead of rushing to correct, investigate or lecture.
When your child may be targeted
Respond with care, then make a plan
Stay calm and take the concern seriously. A child may need both emotional support and practical help, even when the full picture is not clear yet.
Thank your child for telling you. Make clear that being targeted is not their fault and that adults can help.
Ask what happened, when and where it occurred, who was involved, whether it has happened before and who may have seen it.
Write down dates, locations, exact words or actions, witnesses, messages and the effect on your child. Keep digital evidence without sharing it publicly.
Avoid telling a child to fight back, dismissing the concern as ordinary teasing or confronting another student. Use the school’s reporting process.
Agree on a simple next step with your child. Check in afterward and follow up if the behavior continues or the response is unclear.
Partner with school staff
Keep communication clear and constructive
The school can explain its policies, gather information and coordinate a response with the people responsible for student safety.
Contact the teacher, counselor, principal or designated staff member, following the school’s reporting procedure. Request a private conversation. Explain what your child shared, provide your notes and describe how the situation is affecting them. Ask what the next steps will be, who will follow up and when you should check back.
Before the meeting, review the school’s written policy and reporting process. If you cannot find them on the school website, ask the school to send the relevant link or a copy. Keep the communication focused on student safety and behavior, not assumptions about a child’s character. Avoid direct confrontation with another student or family; the school can help coordinate a safer response.
After the meeting, write down the agreed actions and follow-up date. If the behavior continues, share the new details and ask about the next step in the school or district process. A cooperative tone does not require minimizing the problem. You can be respectful and persistent at the same time.
When a child does not want you to speak up
Ask what they fear might happen and listen without promising secrecy you cannot keep. Explain that you will share information only with people who need to help, and involve your child in deciding what to say when it is safe and appropriate. If there is a safety risk, tell them clearly that an adult must help protect them.
When your child may be hurting someone
Address behavior without labeling your child
A report that your child bullied another student can be hard to hear. Take time to understand what happened, hold your child accountable and look for the support that will help the behavior change.
Stay calm enough to listen. Ask the school what was reported and what information supports the concern. Hear your child’s account and other relevant perspectives before deciding what happened. Avoid rushing into a confrontation or treating one conversation as the whole story.
If your child did cause harm, be clear that the behavior is unacceptable and needs to stop. Help them understand its impact, repair harm where appropriate and practice alternatives such as respectful disagreement, assertive communication and asking an adult for help. Follow the school’s plan and check whether the behavior changes.
There may be contributing factors such as peer conflict, stress, a need for social acceptance, difficulty managing emotions or behavior modeled elsewhere. These factors do not excuse harm. They can point to skills or support that a child needs. Avoid stereotypes about “bullies”; focus on specific actions, patterns, safety and change.
Aggression and assertiveness are different
Aggression uses pressure, intimidation or disrespect to get a result. Assertiveness expresses a need or boundary directly while respecting the other person. Adults can model the difference by setting clear expectations, listening to a child’s point of view and choosing consequences that teach rather than simply make adult life more convenient.
Peers can help
Give bystanders safe ways to respond
Children who witness bullying can feel pressure to laugh along, stay quiet or join in. Teach practical options that do not put them in danger.
What a bystander can do
- Get a trusted adult and describe where the behavior is happening.
- Check in privately with the targeted student and offer to go with them to find help.
- Refuse to encourage, forward or laugh at humiliating content.
- Speak up or interrupt only when it is safe to do so.
Reporting is not tattling
Children sometimes worry that reporting will get them or a friend in trouble. Explain that telling an adult about repeated harm or a safety concern is a way to get help. Encourage them to share facts rather than rumors, and remind them that adults are responsible for deciding what to do next.
Cyberbullying and online safety
Save evidence and keep the conversation open
Online harassment can move quickly across messages, group chats, games and social platforms. Respond to the behavior and the child’s safety rather than relying on a fixed slang list or assumptions about one app.
Ask your child to show you what happened. Preserve screenshots, dates, usernames and relevant links. Avoid replying in anger, reposting harmful content or deleting evidence before you have recorded it. Use platform block and report tools where suitable, and contact the school when the behavior involves classmates or affects school safety.
Agree on family expectations for devices and accounts: what personal information stays private, how to respond to unwanted contact, which adults to tell, and when a device is used in shared spaces. Review the agreement together as children gain independence. Monitoring tools may be part of a family plan, but they work best alongside conversation, privacy expectations and a clear explanation of how adults will respond.
The original Parenting Session PDFs are represented here as accessible family agreement prompts so the guidance will remain on ReportBullying.com. Their main themes are reporting threatening messages, agreeing on online hours and device times, protecting personal information, deciding which contacts are trusted, setting transparent expectations for adult review, and choosing fair consequences together. The source also encouraged families to involve the child in creating the rules and to make consequences proportionate.
Family digital-use agreement
Use these points as a starting place for a computer or phone agreement at home:
- We keep passwords, home addresses, school details and private images confidential.
- We tell a trusted adult when a message feels threatening, humiliating or unsafe.
- We do not meet an online contact in person without a parent or caregiver arranging a safe plan.
- We save concerning messages and use block or report features with adult support.
- We agree on device times, charging locations and which adults may review safety concerns.
Computer and internet agreement
- We agree on daily online hours and ordinary computer-use times.
- We tell a parent or caregiver about threatening or abusive online messages.
- We discuss personal information before sharing it online.
- We agree which online contacts are known and who may be added to contact lists.
- We discuss, in advance, how a caregiver may review browser or account activity for safety.
- We set clear, proportionate consequences and agree how responsible use can earn privileges.
Cell phone agreement
- We report abusive, threatening or otherwise unsafe messages.
- We agree on appropriate times to receive calls and respond to messages.
- We share the phone number with people we know personally and talk through exceptions.
- We do not use calls, texts or images to threaten, harass or humiliate someone, even as a joke.
- We discuss device limits, any weekly spending budget and fair consequences together.
- The child or teen takes part in creating the rules; adults explain safety limits and follow up.
Child/teen: ____________________ Parent/caregiver: ____________________ Date: __________
Notice patterns and impact
Teasing, taunting and different forms of bullying
A label alone does not tell the whole story. Pay attention to intent, repetition, the impact on the child and whether someone has less power in the situation.
Teasing
Friendly teasing is shared and stops when someone is uncomfortable. People can laugh together, and each person feels able to speak up. Even a joke between friends should stop when it hurts someone; intent does not erase impact.
Taunting and repeated harm
Taunting is meant to humiliate or diminish another person and may continue after the person asks for it to stop. Look for a pattern, a power imbalance and the threat or continuation of harm. Bullying can be physical, verbal, social or online, and can include discriminatory remarks. Ask the school to assess specific behavior against its policy.
Do not assume behavior from gender
The old site compared how boys and girls bully, but those broad claims can obscure what a child is experiencing. Any child can use physical intimidation, insults, exclusion, rumors or digital harassment. Adults should look at what happened and its impact rather than guess based on gender. Bullying can include racist, sexist or anti-LGBTQ remarks, and every student deserves a safe response.
Using evidence responsibly
A note on the old statistics page
The original site included figures attributed to early-2000s surveys and reports, including a 2004 i-SAFE survey. Those numbers are historical and should not be presented as a current estimate. Because the old page did not provide clear dates and citations for every figure, this portal preserves the context—that bullying can affect attendance, well-being and a student’s sense of safety—without repeating outdated numbers as current facts. For a school decision, use recent, clearly sourced data and the school’s own reporting information.
Parenting presentation
Continue with a school parent session
Parenting Session invited families to review its anti-bullying presentation after attending a parent night. Its old video page no longer exposes a playable video, so the video link below goes to ReportBullying.com’s current library.
Bring parents and educators into the conversation
The original parent-night welcome thanked families for attending an anti-bullying keynote and encouraged them to revisit the material. Explore the current video collection or learn about the parent presentation for schools.
Content history
The Parenting Session team
ParentingSession.com presented the original parent education material as a team effort. These names and roles are retained as source attribution.
Jim Jordan
President, co-owner, speaker and author
The original biography described more than 20 years of child-development experience, crisis-intervention training and certifications it attributed to the Department of Health and Human Services, Mental Health Academy and St. John Ambulance. It also listed his books Plug the Tub, Bullying: It’s Time for a Paradigm Shift, Be a Super Hero and Stop Teasing Me!, and local television hosting.
Lucy Jordan
Co-owner, program coordinator and advisor
The original biography described Lucy’s work in program coordination, administration, marketing and advising, along with more than 20 years in customer service and advertising sales.
Kim Clark
Registered social worker and advisor
The original biography described more than 30 years of social-work experience with a specialization in mental-health training.
Biographical details above are reproduced as historical source attribution from ParentingSession.com and have not been independently re-verified for current status.
Common questions
What parents often ask
What should I do first if my child says they are being bullied?
Listen calmly, reassure your child that they deserve help, write down what happened and contact the school when the behavior is repeated, harmful or affecting safety.
Should I contact the other child’s family?
Start with the school when the behavior involves students at school. Ask staff to coordinate next steps so the concern can be handled safely and consistently.
What should my child do about hurtful online messages?
Save screenshots and account details, avoid replying or forwarding the content, block or report the account when appropriate, and tell a trusted adult. Contact emergency services if there is an immediate threat.
Bring practical bullying prevention guidance to your school
Explore the parent presentation or contact ReportBullying.com to discuss a school program.