How to stop a bully 

What Your Child Can Do

Bullies test their environment. They look for targets who will give them the reaction they need without fighting back effectively. Changing your child’s response changes the equation on how to stop a bully.

First, how your child carries themselves matters. Bullies read body language before they read words. A child who walks with their head up, makes eye contact, and carries physical confidence is a harder target. This is not about acting tough. It is about the difference between a child who trusts their body and one who does not. Children who train in physical environments where they face pressure and manage it carry themselves differently. You can see it in how they stand, how they enter a room, how they hold eye contact when challenged.

Second, if a verbal attack happens, your child needs two steps:

Set the boundary, then leave. Look the other person in the eye. Say “stop it, I don’t like it” or “You need to stop. I’m not playing this game.” Then confidently walk away. The order matters. The bully is looking for a reaction. Tears, anger, visible distress, any of these feed the loop. Drawing the line and leaving without giving that reaction takes away the reward. The bully gets nothing, and the behaviour becomes less likely to repeat. At Iron Grip Academy we use “verbal Jiu-Jitsu techniques” teaching a child how to set boundaries effectively as well as navigate repeat verbal attacks. 

Third, if a physical attack happens, your child should be able to defend themselves:

No child should stand helplessly against an onslaught of physical violence. The psychologic damage is often far greater than the physical damage. Self-defense is a constitutional right, allowing the use of reasonable, proportionate force to protect yourself. We don’t want to see kids get hurt, so it’s essential that a child is trained to ‘disarm’ a bully’s physical attack without causing the bully unnecessary harm. 

In the case where the bully may be carrying a weapon

There is one instance in which the advice would be reversed immediately and that is where your child may believe that the other person is carrying a knife, blade, gun or other weapon.

That is not typical bullying; it is a matter of safety.

In this scenario your child does not need to be ‘cool’, prove that they aren’t scared or stand their ground. Your child needs to distance themselves, locate an adult and report it to them as soon as possible.

While a child may need to establish a boundary it must not turn into a confrontation. There is a very fine difference between:

‘I’m not afraid of you.’

And,

‘I’m not going to be involved. I’m leaving.’

The second will always usually be the wiser response in the case where a weapon is suspected.

When the situation potentially involves a weapon, your child must not provoke the bully, snatch the weapon, engage in a fight, use martial arts unless there are no other options available and they are actually being physically attacked. Knife defense is not a movie. Even trained adults get badly hurt.

Martial Arts training may assist in keeping a calm and steady head, being more balanced and able to remain composed under duress. No responsible martial arts trainer should tell a child that they are “knife proof”.

What martial arts can assist with is giving a child the composure not to freeze.

With it they are more likely to remain clear-headed and move away, protect their body, call for help, alert others, and quickly involve adults. This is important because, at times of extreme fear, children tend either to freeze or overreact. Training increases the likelihood of the right choice being made.

It must be absolutely clear to children that carrying a knife to defend themselves actually puts them at risk, and does not remove the threat from a bullying incident, but rather turns it into a weapon incident. This places a child at risk of severe injury and potentially at risk of getting involved in consequences much greater than the initial problem.

If your child tells you that a classmate has a weapon or threatens to use a weapon, do not treat this lightly. Contact the school and put this in writing. Demand to know what will be done to ensure your child’s safety immediately. If your child is threatened, has witnessed a weapon, or is too scared to attend school there may also be a need to involve the SAPS.

The basic principle must be clearly explained to children:

• If it’s a taunt, respond bravely.
• If it’s a bullying act, communicate a boundary, get help and report.
• If it involves a weapon, leave immediately and inform an adult.

This is not being a coward, it is being survivors.

Isolation is the single biggest risk factor.

Bullies target kids who are alone. Having one or two genuine friends changes the calculation entirely. Walking the corridors, sitting in the cafeteria, standing in the playground with even one ally reduces your child’s risk. Human beings have a deep tribal instinct. Other kids join in on bullying partly because they fear being next. A child who is visibly part of a small group is no longer an easy target. [13][14]

The role of bystanders: why the audience matters

A bully rarely performs in an empty room.

Bullying runs on social fuel – the kids who laugh, who record, who forward the message, who say nothing because they are afraid of becoming the next target – most of those children are not cruel. Many know what is happening is wrong. But the fear of becoming the next target keeps them frozen.

That fear is the bully’s actual power source. When the audience stays quiet, the behaviour gets rewarded. When the audience stops rewarding it, the bully loses the thing the performance was for.

This is why the most useful thing you can teach your child is not how to confront a bully, but how to break that loop without putting themselves in the firing line.

They do not have to intervene directly. Walking over to the child being targeted and leaving with them is often enough.

Saying “come, let’s go” or “I’m going to tell someone” changes the social dynamic without requiring a confrontation. So does simply not laughing – not forwarding the message – not adding to the pile. The audience deciding to be boring is one of the most effective things that can happen to a bully.

Teach your child that reporting is part of this. Not because it is the dutiful thing to do, but because some situations are too big for the target to handle alone – and the child who tells an adult is the one who actually changes what happens next. That is not weakness. That is how the situation gets stopped.

What You Can Do – The conversation you need to have at home

The biggest advantage a bully has is silence. Children refuse to tell adults what is happening because they are terrified of being called a snitch or a tattletale. If you want your child to report when something is wrong, you need to teach them the difference between three words.

Tattling is attention-seeking. A child tattles when they report something minor to get an adult’s attention or to get someone else in trouble. “She is not sharing” when the other child has been using the toy for 30 seconds. No one is being harmed.

Snitching is self-interested. A child snitches when they report someone else’s behaviour to protect themselves or shift blame. “He was running in the corridor too” when they got caught doing the same thing. The motive is self-preservation, not concern for others.

Reporting is an act of courage. A child reports when someone is being physically or emotionally harmed and the power imbalance is too large for the victim to handle alone. The child recognises that what is happening is wrong, that the person doing it needs adult intervention, and that speaking up is the right response even though it is uncomfortable.

Teach your child these three definitions. Practice them. Use real examples from their day. When your child understands the difference, the shame around “telling” falls away. They stop seeing reporting as weakness and start seeing it as responsibility.

What to do when your child tells you they are being bullied

Most parents’ first instinct is to fix the problem. Get the facts, find out who did it, call the school. That instinct is reasonable – but if you lead with it, your child stops talking.

A child who finally tells you they are being bullied is taking a risk. They may already feel embarrassed or ashamed. They may be afraid you will overreact and make things worse (maybe you overreacted in the past).

Your first job is to make it safe for them to keep talking.

Start by acknowledging what it took for them to come to you. “Thank you for telling me“, “I’m glad you came to me” and “you are not in trouble” do more work than they sound like they do.

Then ask open questions: what happened, where it happened, who was there, whether it has happened before. Let them tell it in their own order.

Avoid the questions that sound like investigation but land like blame: “Why didn’t you fight back?” or “What did you do to cause it?”

Even if you genuinely want to understand, those questions tell a child they got something wrong. You will have time to probe later. First, they need to feel believed.

Once they have said what they need to say, separate the two parts of your response.

The emotional part comes first: this should not be happening to you, you were right to tell me, we are going to deal with it. Say those things plainly.

The practical part follows: Write down the date, the location, the names of any children involved, what was said or done, and whether any adult was present. If it happened online, take screenshots before anything gets deleted. A single incident is hard for a school to act on. A documented pattern is not – and the record you keep now is what makes the difference between a school that investigates and one that waits to see if it happens again.

When they do report, teach them to use calm, very specific language.

“This is what happened. This is who was involved. This is how it made me feel.”

Clear statements, not accusations. This gives the adult something to act on and teaches your child to process the experience with precision instead of panic.

How to report bullying to the school as a parent without making things worse

Parents tend to make one of two mistakes. Some underreact – a single casual WhatsApp message, then hope. Others overreact —- they arrive angry, accuse everyone in the room, and the school goes defensive before anything gets investigated.

Neither approach gets your child protected.

Put the concern in writing and send it to the class teacher or grade head first. Keep the tone factual and specific:

“My child has told me about a repeated issue involving [name/s]. I am not asking the school to punish anyone without investigating, but I am asking that this be taken seriously and monitored. The incidents we are aware of are: [dates, locations, what happened]. Please confirm what steps will be taken to keep my child safe and prevent this from continuing.”

That message gives the school something to act on. It doesn’t sound panicked and it doesn’t accuse – it asks for a response to specific facts. Most schools will engage with that. A hostile message gives them something to defend against instead.

If the bullying continues after that, escalate to the principal in writing. If the principal does not respond adequately, escalate to the School Governing Body. Keep copies of every communication.

When you do speak to someone at the school, ask specific questions:

Where is this happening – and who is responsible for supervising that area? Has the other child’s parents been contacted? What happens if it repeats? How will my child be kept safe during breaks, transitions, bathrooms, sport, and after school? And who should my child report to immediately if something happens again?

The school is not obligated to share details of another child’s discipline. But they are obligated to tell you what safety measures are in place for yours – and if they can’t answer that clearly, you keep escalating until someone can.

How to handle cyberbullying: when the bullying follows your child home

Bullying no longer ends when the school bell rings.

WhatsApp groups, Instagram, TikTok, gaming chats like Roblox, and anonymous accounts can keep the pressure on a child all evening and through the weekend. That’s often worse than face-to-face bullying – there’s no physical space to retreat to, no moment in the day that feels safe.

Cyberbullying takes forms parents don’t always recognise. It’s not just direct threats. It includes mocking a child in a group chat, sharing humiliating photos or videos, excluding them from online groups as punishment, spreading rumours through private messages, or coordinating others to pile on. And with the addition of A.I capabilities, bullies can now torment victims with image alterations. 

Sometimes Cyberbullying happens in spaces parents aren’t watching – gaming voice chats, anonymous school confession pages, a second WhatsApp group that exists specifically to exclude the class teacher.

When your child shows you something, or you discover it yourself, don’t delete anything.

Screenshot the messages, save voice notes, write down the dates, times, and the names of everyone involved. If it happened on a platform, record the usernames.

That evidence is what the school needs to act on a pattern rather than a single complaint – and in serious cases, it’s what SAPS will ask for under the Cybercrimes Act.

Don’t reply to the other child or contact their parent through the same channels. Don’t post about it publicly. Emotional responses online give the situation more material to spread.

Report it to the school if the children involved are from the same school. Request a meeting rather than a message. If the content constitutes a threat or involves the distribution of images, that is a police matter, not just a school matter.

If it is affecting your child’s friendships, reputation, safety, or willingness to go to school, it is not online drama. It is bullying – and it gets reported and documented the same way.

Where the adults and systems are failing

Putting the entire burden of defense on the victim does not work. Adults need to change the environment.

Bullying happens in the gaps. Hallways during transitions. Stairwells. The far corners of the playground. Bathrooms. Anywhere adults are not present. Research shows that putting adults in these unmonitored spaces during unstructured time reduces bullying rates by a significant margin. [15][16][17] Even the perception that an adult might be watching changes behaviour.

For the children who bully, punishment alone does not work. Suspension, detention, removal of privileges. These approaches assume the child cares about the consequence!

A child whose empathy has gone offline, whose brain has adapted to years of dopamine reward of dominance, does not respond to threat-based discipline.

In many cases, punitive responses mirror what happened at home and reinforce the cycle!

What works is slow, consistent relationship-building with a trusted adult, combined with immediate intervention in the moment. The relationship is the long-term fix. The intervention handles the crisis. [18][19]

Schools also need to watch for something researchers call the healthy context paradox. [20][21] When a school’s anti-bullying programme starts working and overall bullying rates drop, the few remaining victims often get worse, not better.

Because fewer children are being targeted, the remaining victims conclude that the problem must be them. They make the error of thinking there is something fundamentally wrong with who they are. Schools that are reducing their overall numbers need to actively identify and support these remaining targets with direct, individual attention.

What training in Jiu-Jitsu builds, that talking cannot

Every section above comes back to the same three things: composure under pressure, the ability to read a situation, and confidence that comes from experience rather than words.

In our Kids Jiu-Jitsu classes at Iron Grip Martial Arts Academy, every class puts children in situations where they must manage their intensity, re-enter after losing, and stay controlled when challenged. 

When a child’s intensity rises beyond what is safe, we pause the round, reset, and re-enter with a specific constraint. The child learns that losing control has a cost. Staying controlled has a reward. That pattern, repeated over weeks and months, builds self-regulation that transfers directly to the school yard and the classroom. [22][23]

We do not teach children to fight, but we give them a fighter’s spirit (to stand up for themselves). We teach them how to stop a bully by staying composed when someone is trying to unsettle them. We teach them the exact protocol for dealing with physical and verbal bullying in a way that keeps both them and the bully safe from harm, and shifts responsibility back to the adults, effectively navigating the “zero tolerance” policy that most schools are enforcing.

After six months of controlled training, most children carry themselves differently. Parents notice it at home. Teachers notice it at school. The child does not become aggressive. They become composed. The distinction is the entire point. [22][23]