Let’s Talk Bullying With Dr. Sheryl Ziegler

0:00Bullying. I mean this, just saying that word makes my whole stomach drop and it also makes me have this entire replay of my childhood and every single situation when I felt left out and just didn't let me feel like that's left out of my life. left out? What do we do when our kid has other kids who are mean to them? And is there a difference between kids that are mean, feeling left out, and bullying? And do we do different things in different scenarios? This is such an important conversation. And I am so excited to have Dr. Cheryl Ziegler back on the podcast to explore all of these issues together.

0:48I'm Dr. Becky, and this is Good Inside. We'll be back right after this.

1:04so i want to talk about bullying this is a hot topic i get asked about it all the time i know you do too and there's so many different areas around it i want to explore but maybe we could just riff a little when you hear the word bullying let's go like scenario scenario what what kind of situations come to mind that are kind of under that umbrella? What do you hear about? Well, when someone asked me about it, the first thing I ask is let's figure out if this is bullying or mean kid behavior, because that's a big difference. And I think kids overuse the word bullying too. Yes. And to me, the word bullying is so serious that I want to make sure we're on the same page.

1:39So what I'm looking for is, is it repetitive? Was it one time somebody was mean to you? Are they doing this often? The big thing is, is that are they doing the mean thing because they want to feel powerful over you? They want to have power over you. They want to make you feel smaller. They want to be dominant over you. And is it intentional? Do you know for sure that they're doing this on purpose? Or did you not get invited to the sleepover because, you know, you're not that close and they didn't think of you that way or they only had two or three people over? So that's the first place I start is I really want to make sure we know what we're talking about because it's kind of two different paths.

2:18Okay. So then maybe we do this. We're going to start with a little game. I'm going to name scenarios and you're going to have incomplete information. So I know we both like nuance, but let's just play around and give me your instinct. Like, I think this is mean kid behavior or this is bullying. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. My kid comes home and just said, oh, they said I couldn't play four square with them today. Mean. Mean. Okay.

2:45Someone was saying I'm a loser on the group chat. I'd have to ask some follow up questions. How often right i'd have to know how often at one time one time mean okay um they don't want me to play soccer because i'm really not very good at soccer and an intense game of soccer mean this one kid tends to pick me out every day at recess and tell me that i have no friends probably bullying or borderlining on bullying and why because you said every day and intentionality picks me out right so the third aspect i would follow up on is like why do you think you why you right and that would be like the third piece that i'd need to know interesting so and i do think i i i'm hearing what you're saying and i'll have parents come and say something to me like my kid is being bullied and the reason i think the label matters is if the label and i would probably say this is true of any label.

3:44If a label activates us and makes us as a parent kind of lose touch with a grounded, wise mind, that sturdy leader we all have, it's probably not that useful because whether your kid is having mean kid behavior or is being bullied, they probably need something from you. Right. And so I think that's really important, which is, you know, noticing what comes up for you as a parent, when your kid tells you I was left out on one end of the spectrum one time, or, oh, a kid is targeting me every day at recess on the other end of the spectrum. I actually think that's a really important starting point.

4:25So curious what you see talking to parents. We're going to get to the kid stuff, but what tends to come up for parents when they hear or see evidence of either their kid being left out, their kid having mean kid behavior or their kid being kind of repeatedly targeted. Old wounds. They more. Oh, this is this is one of those things that it doesn't matter where you grew up, how long ago that was, whatever your experience was. Most of us have stories from our childhood that they stay with us. We never forget. One time somebody said, you know, you have chicken legs. Never forget it. 30 years later, you don't forget.

5:09Somebody said, you know, your hair is stupid. You don't forget it. You don't forget even the mean things. Right. And then we also, though, have I mean, some numbers are like one in three people reporting feeling bullied. So that means you have a lot of parents walking around the world. Probably this was not addressed. It could have been physical and verbal, and they just kind of had to deal with it. If you watch movies, old movies, the kid being bullied is almost a rite of passage in childhood, especially for boys. Although interestingly today, boys and girls are equally bullied. But in the past, we have, right, we have movie after movie where sort of the schoolyard, bus stop, boys getting physically beat up, and it's a rite of passage.

6:00It's kind of like get home, dust it off. Parents weren't very concerned. They said, clean up and come sit down for dinner. Yeah. And I think that was reflective of the times. So then therefore it's reflective of the stories we come into parenting with. And, and one thing I want to double click on there that's really interesting is I think about parents I've worked with when they come to me around, is my kid being bullied? My kid's being really left out and some of the deeper themes we explore. And it really is so often one of the things you're describing where we do end up getting into these kids picked on me on the bus.

6:33I wasn't even though I was in fifth grade and the fifth graders sit in the back of the bus, the fifth graders in the back of the bus always made me sit in the front of the bus and I'd come home and it was always like, who cares? Moving on. And one of these things I think that can happen is at anyone listening right now, if you think back on your childhood and you think about some version of I wasn't allowed to sit in the back of the bus or these kids were mean to me, that pain is so real, okay? Whether it's mean kid behavior or bullying, just for right now, that pain is so real and so intense, especially in a time of your life when peers mean so much.

7:13And if you grew up in a family that kind of poo-pooed it or it's just like this is a rite of passage, I think something important to know is when you hear about your kid struggling with mean kid behavior, you might be triggered to react to your kid and almost kind of solve the problem so rapidly and quickly, maybe even in a more intense way than your kid felt it, in part because to some degree we're saying to our past, like, I am also defending the fifth grader who wasn't allowed to sit in the back of the bus and nobody heard me out and nobody believed me. And I think those old wounds and triggers where I know for me with my kids, there've been moments of, is this about my son?

8:03Is this about my daughter? Is this something about what happened to me in fourth grade when my friends weren't nice to me in this situation? And how much of what my kid needs am I able to see versus how much is that colored by something that almost has nothing to do with my kids? Absolutely. I mean, I sit across from people who will tell the story and, and sometimes they do have that insight and they'll say, I have to tell you, I'm more fired up than ever about this particular story, you know, or this kid that continues to just harass my kid and they'll get tears in their eyes. And I don't get tears in my eyes that often, but this one gets me too, because to see the, the adults, right.

8:49The 35 year old mom, the 40 year old dad. And I will tell you, dads get to tears just as quickly and see tears in their eyes. And I'm like, I know right now in this moment, you are literally 10 years old. Yes. Yes. You are 10 years old. And now you feel bigger, stronger, more confident. And you want to come in and defend your kid. we want to protect them from that pain that we felt that was unprocessed the pain that was unprocessed and maybe was invalidated and ignored right and i think one of the things i see all the time is right there's a lot between invalidation and minimization on one end of the spectrum and kind of rushing to fix everything on the other end of the spectrum of course there's moments with peer bullying where you've got to call the school, you've got to intervene.

9:38That is definitely needed. But definitely in some of these more nuanced mean kid moments, there might be something more in the moment that more in the middle that your kid needs, that if we're not aware of how that stuff was processed for ourselves, we might not be able to get to that middle ground because, again, we're kind of responding to what we felt we needed, not to the situation our kid is describing. Yes. And then throw on top of it that bullying peaks in middle school. So now you've got a 12, 13, 14 year old that is individuating from you. Yeah. Right. So first of all, is it safe to tell you this?

10:15What are you going to do if I tell you this thing? Second of all, is it OK for you to get involved? Aren't I like a big boy, a big girl now? I'm supposed to do this on my own. Why do I need you? And do you even know what you're talking about. Right. Like and so it's actually peaking at a time where the kid is like, wait, I'm actually stepping away from you. You don't even know my friends anymore. Maybe when I was in second grade, when someone was mean to me, you called their mom. Right. We might not even know who their mom is. At this point, you don't know who their parent is. So true. And you don't know all their teachers.

10:49If they go, if they transition to a middle school, you don't know their their world, really. Yeah. I had a mom just say to me the other day, I don't even know what the cafeteria looks like in my at school because he's a sixth grader. She's never been in it. So these things are happening, peaking actually, during a time where they are separating from you. And like you said, caring so much more about what their friends think. And so what do they do? Do they go to you? And then as the parent, how do you manage that? When do you take the break as a parent to say, hold on is this about me what's my unresolved stuff yep and so I think when parents do take the time though to do that they feel emotions they they haven't felt in so long they were living in there they just didn't feel them yeah they bring them to that consciousness and it can be really emotionally overwhelming.

11:41Yeah.

11:52Okay, so let's look at this whole arc. First of all, there's a situation where your kid comes home and tells you, this is what someone said to me on the bus. No one played with me. This person's repeatedly targeting me. We can go through those. But what I want to start with first is how might you notice some of the stuff is going on in ways that aren't so obvious? Because not every kid, especially those ages, is so verbally direct. Oh, yeah. I think some things, I mean, it's kind of by age, but I'll try to make it like middle-ish, like tweens type of behavior, right? Because younger kids are more likely to say, so-and-so didn't sit with me today.

12:29So-and-so said I wasn't allowed to play groundies. Like the younger kids are more likely, and they don't know that they're reporting something. They're just telling you. But once they start to become a little bit more aware of social dynamics, you're going to look for things like the lunch comes back. It wasn't even touched. Like full lunch. Like, buddy, what's going on here? You didn't even touch your lunch today, right? There's a lot of reasons why that happens. They are saying they have a stomachache in the morning. They don't want to go to school. such a and just a double click on that what what might that be a kid's body's way of saying yeah it's that fight flight or freeze like i it's scary there it feels dangerous to me there so i want to i want to flee from that yeah i don't want to go there and then it manifests in your stomach or your headache and and i know it's so easy to get into a cycle like you're fine Like, oh, come on.

13:23You have a stomach ache again. And it almost can feel when we're in like the rushing mindset of like, I've just got to get my kid out of the house and I have so much to do. It can feel like your kid is trying to trick you or play you. And I think this is so important. Feelings live in our body. And there's a lot of adults who, when they're really nervous about going to a dentist, they don't say to their partner, I'm feeling a little hesitant. I really am. No. They end up saying, oh, I had a lot of traffic. I missed it or they end up acting it out at work. Right. Our body can act things out. So noticing your kids kind of relatively chronic stomach aches before school, it's just so powerful for parents to know that could be my kids way of communicating their feelings.

14:09That's not them lying to me. Yes. And I and I am with you. I think it's so hard for parents that are like they'll call and they'll be like, this is three mornings in a row now. They were fine the night before. And all of a sudden they wake up. They've got this stomach ache. Conveniently, five minutes before we're supposed to be heading out of the house. So they're angry. Now they're triggered. They're activated. And like you said, we as adults wake up with a plan and a routine, right? We do this at 7.05. We're out the door at 7.15, whatever. So I really want to emphasize, though, that when we look at bullying, as is defined by bullying, one of the top two unintended consequences are poor academic functioning, increased absenteeism.

14:57So when I say that, you're going to look for your kids' grades are going down. They don't want to do their homework. They don't care anymore about studying. And they're going to start missing more school. And so if we think about the place of school as being a place that no longer feels safe, you think about it from that perspective. It makes sense that a kid would want to avoid engaging in that place or being at that place. And I think when you think about it that way, it's less likely to feel like in a front or like a trick. And if you think, okay, well, if there was a place I was supposed to go to every day and I actually didn't feel safe there, I would also come up with a lot of reasons to avoid it because I felt like I was just trying to protect myself, right?

15:36And I think when we see it that way, we soften like, oh, okay. Now I can enter into a different conversation with my kid. Absolutely. And think about it even to add on to what you said. I don't feel safe there, but the people that are supposed to be in charge of loving me and keeping me safe, my parents are telling me it's OK. I have to go there. And you have to go. That's right.

16:06The other thing I just want to double click on, because I was talking about this the other day and I think it resonated. When you're saying we have a plan. I got to get out the door. I call that efficiency mode. Like when I'm in efficiency mode, which, by the way, can be rewarded in a lot of places in life. Anything my kid does that's kind of off script, I just see as inefficient. Right. And so any of us can miss signals in that mode. When you shift a little to relationship or connection mode, your kid saying my stomach occurs every morning becomes kind of a way you can pique your curiosity. Like, oh, I wonder, I wonder what that's trying to tell me.

16:44Oh, I wonder what's going on. Can I be curious about that? And then we're probably more likely to hear a longer story. Yeah. You know, as you were saying that I was like getting into my mind around who are the parents that actually do tolerate that pretty well. And you know who it is? It's the parents who go, I remember going through a stage. I had a stomach ache every day I remember going through a stage where I didn't go to school for like a whole week if you can relate to it as a parent you see it more easily sometimes or a lot of times in your kids not all the time but when it comes to this particular issue there's something like a bell goes off and maybe not day one but day three day four where you go oh or if you talk to your parents if they're still alive and you still have a relationship and you say oh my gosh you know, Ava, she's had a headache or a stomachache every morning.

17:35And sometimes it's a grandparent who says, oh, honey, you went through that too. Do you remember those girls? They were being so mean to you at the bus stop. And we eventually we figured out and then the bell goes off. And then sometimes parents feel guilty and we don't need to feel guilty. It's data, it's information. And it helps us to drop in. So if you have that experience, you're probably likely to resonate. If you don't have that experience, you're right. Inefficiency mode. How do we tolerate when your kid's like, I can't do it? And they might just flop on the ground. Yeah. Like they're not going.

18:09Yes. And I want to actually give anyone listening a moment to just pause. Like really thinking back decades ago to days that you didn't want to go to school, to a lunchroom you didn't want to go to because maybe you didn't have a place to sit, or the group you had to walk by tend to kind of make some snarky comment. It's so easy, I think, as we get older to think like that wasn't that big of a deal. When you're in that moment, it is the biggest deal. And I actually think our own memories convince us of that. And so just allowing yourself to time travel and remember the stomach aches you had before school or the lunchroom you avoided or the recess where your heart was racing and you were kind of counting down the minutes.

18:53The bus stop and the bus ride. bus stop and the bus ride. Yeah. You know, our kids world might be much more digitized than ours was, but the feelings are kind of remarkably consistent. Right. And like what we just said, like those places are still places today. And there's also online. Yes. Right. There's just more of them. There's more of them. And sometimes the online part is the part that you're like, I can't escape it. But mom, you don't understand. They're saying these terrible things in this group chat about me. They passed around this picture on Snapchat of me or they put together, you know, some AI deep fake of me and it's going around and I can't escape it at school and I can't escape it at home.

19:42You know, it makes me think that experiences of bullying or mean kid behavior, either way, none of it is new in 2025. But the way it has a megaphone now is completely new. That's what it is. It's like your worst, most embarrassing, ashamed, alone moment that did happen when you, quote, weren't allowed to sit in the back of the bus now is passed around online for a million people even outside of your school to see. I mean, the megaphone impact of that, it would be like somebody getting on a speaker when you were left out and telling the whole world that this was happening to you on the bus. I mean, it's it really is so visceral when you think about it that way.

20:26It really is. And it's it's the fastest growing place where this kind of bullying and, you know, intimidation is kind of happening. and what happens is these kids used to be able to come home and like again for some reason I picture yeah like I picture this old movie right where the kid's running away from the bullies and then he gets in the house and he slams the door and it's like and maybe mom or dad who were in the living room or kitchen not knowing was even somewhat of a relief like oh hi honey how was your day. Oh, it was good. And they just, and they could turn it off or press pause for like 12 hours.

21:06And now they absolutely can't. So interesting where even if you had a parent who knew about it and invalidated it, it wasn't happening live at the same time digitally. It was kind of over. The invalidation definitely didn't feel good, but it wasn't happening in parallel with the activation of your body in real time. It's like this forever bullying, being left out script that's happening now. That's right. And I want to like, I want to bring this back. Let's, let's, yeah, we'll take it to the mean kid part. Okay. So now you've got some mean kid stuff and online, and this is what I want parents to understand.

21:47I remember it was a couple of years ago. I did this, I did a segment called like group chats are the new, like mean kids circles to hang out in. So I want them to understand that. Let's say there's a night and nobody is saying anything mean to you or nothing's happening on a group chat. What that actually means is you've probably been kicked out. And so I want parents to understand that being in there is so repetitively demoralizing. You know, it's just it's an awful feeling. But being kicked out is almost as bad or worse. Because now I don't even know what is being said and what's being planned.

22:25and now I'm out. Yeah. And I don't know who my friends are. I don't know who to trust. Is it like no longer having a seat at the table? At the lunch table? Right. Just like someone takes their butt and slides you right off that little bench that you used to sit on. And it's like, there's no room for you. Yeah. And you have to be way across the room and you don't know what we're talking about. And we're laughing and we're whispering. We're doing all sorts of things. And I think that's right. Where if you think about it as a lunch table, you might not even love being at the table You might not find the conversation terribly enticing, but I think we all know what happens when you're in a corner looking at the lunch table you were previously invited to sit at and watching them all talk to each other.

23:06And just again, how painful and real that is. But now it's digital and you're just completely alone in the dark. Completely with what it feels like no one in your corner. Right. And to your point, the seat at the table. Right. The seat at the metaphorical or literal table. it's like for a kid who's like, let's say in sixth grade, they're 12 years old. Well, at least I got a seat. And to the outside world, like I've got 10 kids I'm sitting with and, and I'm eating, even if I don't say one word, but I'm monitoring what they're talking about. I know that they're being mean or they're not being mean, or they're talking about what they did over the weekend.

23:43And so you're at least one toe in, which for lots of kids feels so much better than you're out. You're out.

24:01so a couple things this makes me think about practically i think it's so easy to hear this and we all think as parents like how do i protect my kids from these situations right and there's definitely things we can do over time that just help our kids build confidence which in some ways is the most important thing to withstand tricky peer moments but i think one of the things also that's realistic, I'm curious if you agree, is we can't fully protect our kids from experience. Like they're going to happen. It's like turbulence on a plane. Like you're never going to have a turbulence kind of flight.

24:33Right. Right. And I think some I think this is where I see a lot of deviation in how parents view it. Some are like, hey, you know, this is part of growing up. I went through it. They're going to go through it. And so there's that. And then there's some who are like, no, I need to protect my kid. They're sensitive or they can't handle this the way maybe other kids can. And like you said, then there's gray in the middle. So we also are parenting a generation of kids pretty differently around this issue. And I think that is problematic because everything from the definition to when to get school involved, when not to, when to be involved, It really varies so much.

25:14And I guess my perspective on that is very similar to other extremes I see. I personally don't find either extreme helpful. Look, my kid's going to go through this. I went through this. I'm fine. I don't think that's helpful because the truth is we probably needed something different than what we received in those moments. And again, because these moments have a megaphone now and the way they didn't, our kids have more needs. But the other end of the spectrum also doesn't feel that helpful. We can't fully protect. our kids from these things, the best thing I think we can do is something in the middle, which is how can I establish myself as a parent who's going to know about these things, who can be supportive to my kid, who can really be a coach and a teammate to help my kid through these situations?

25:57And so I guess one of my questions to you is, are there things we do proactively as a parent, forget just in the moment of mean kid behavior or bullying, that help us establish ourselves as the kind of parent our kid would come to in these situations? I do. I think one of the things that a parent can do proactively is to think to yourself, take 10 minutes out of your day. What was middle school like for me? Who were my friends? Who was nice to me? Who was mean to me? Who was a special person in my life? How did I deal with things? because, and I want you to, and I'm specifically saying think of middle school because some of these things we're talking about are starting in third grade.