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When it’s bullying
For a young person who is being bullied, a parent who thinks their child is, someone who saw it happen, and the family of a child who is doing it. This page passes on, by name, what Nemours KidsHealth, MedlinePlus and the CDC say: what bullying is, what a child can do in the moment, the signs parents miss, what to say when a child tells you, how to bring the school in, what to do when it is online, and where to turn when it is hurting badly. It builds a message to the school from what you tick, and prints a card for writing down what happened. Take only what you need today.
Before anything else
- Someone in danger right now, or badly hurt? Call 911.
- Thinking about suicide or about hurting yourself, or worried that someone else is? Call or text 988, at any hour.
- It is not your fault. MedlinePlus says to assure a child who is bullied that it is not his or her fault. Nemours KidsHealth says it is the one bullying who is behaving badly.
- Tell an adult you trust, and keep telling. KidsHealth says: tell someone about it and keep telling until something is done.
- Don’t hit back. KidsHealth says fighting back is dangerous because someone could get hurt, and you’re also likely to get in trouble.
- Online? KidsHealth says not to respond, and to keep screenshots.
More help
- School: Help at school for your child and Letters to your child’s school.
- Keeping track: the Paper trail.
- Pictures and threats online: If someone is threatening to share your pictures and If someone is stalking you.
- If an adult is the one hurting a child: If a child is being hurt.
- How you feel: When you hurt yourself to cope, When the heaviness won’t lift, When the worry won’t switch off and When you feel alone.
- Right now: Get help now and the Safety plan builder.
- All our free tools.
This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). No counselor, doctor, teacher or lawyer has reviewed it. The facts were read on October 7, 2026 on Nemours KidsHealth: “Helping Kids Deal With Bullies” (for parents), “Dealing With Bullies” (for kids) and “Dealing With Bullying” (for teens), each medically reviewed March 2023, and its two “Cyberbullying” pages, for parents and for teens, each medically reviewed August 2022; on MedlinePlus’s “Bullying and Cyberbullying” page, from the National Library of Medicine; on the CDC’s “About Bullying” (updated October 28, 2024); and on the page of the Justice Department’s Educational Opportunities Section. What is marked “ours” is our own. What we could not read: StopBullying.gov, the federal government’s own site on bullying, and the Education Department’s civil rights pages refuse our server. Nothing here is taken from them except the five warning signs the CDC’s page credits to StopBullying.gov. What we left out on purpose: every statistic (the pages we read give different numbers, and the Spanish and English versions of one page disagree); every state’s law and every district’s policy; when a school’s response breaks federal civil rights law; bullying between adults and at work; hazing; and any helpline we did not read about, so the only numbers here are 911, 988 and the Justice Department’s. We called no number. Our words: we say “the child who bullies” and “the child who is bullied” where the pages we read use shorter labels. This page saves nothing and loads no analytics (privacy); the message builder works in your browser, and nothing you tick is sent anywhere.