For National Bullying Prevention Month; Unity Day falls on Wednesday, October 21
October brings a particular kind of quiet to our homes. The light turns thin and golden in the afternoons, the rain settles in over the valley, and our children come through the door with their hoods up and their backpacks dragging. We ask how the day was. We get “fine.” The bedroom door closes behind them, and we tell ourselves that this is simply what growing up sounds like.
Most of the time, it is.
But October is also National Bullying Prevention Month, and today on the 21st, schools across the country mark Unity Day—a reminder that some of what our children carry home, they carry quietly.
The numbers are worth sitting with. Roughly one in five students reports being bullied at school, and that figure climbs in the middle school years, as about a quarter of students say it’s happened to them. By one national measure, fewer than half of students who are bullied tell a trusted adult. Which means that in a great many homes, on a great many ordinary evenings, a child is managing something heavy on their own, while the people who love them most go about making dinner, unaware.
If that lands hard, let’s say this next part plainly: a child’s silence is almost never a verdict on their parents. It isn’t that they don’t trust us. Instead, It’s that from where they’re standing, the reasons for keeping quiet feel enormously good.
Why They Keep It to Themselves
They want to handle it on their own. Somewhere along the way, most children absorb the idea that telling an adult is what little kids do, and that managing it yourself is what growing up looks like. Asking for help can feel like an admission that they couldn’t.
They’re afraid it will get worse. This fear is not irrational. Children know the social arithmetic of their own hallways far better than we do, and they have usually calculated, correctly, that adult involvement can bring retaliation.
They’re ashamed. Bullying does its damage by convincing a child that something about them invited it. Shame does not want witnesses—not even loving ones. Especially not loving ones.
They’re afraid of what we’ll do. Many children stay quiet because they imagine the phone call to the school, the conversation with the other child’s parents, the whole thing becoming bigger and louder and entirely out of their hands.
They’re afraid of what they’ll lose. If the trouble is happening over text or in a game, a child may weigh telling us against losing the phone, the console, or the group chat—and decide the silence costs less.
They’ve concluded nothing will change. Sometimes a child has already told someone. Sometimes that didn’t help. A child who has tried once and been disappointed is considerably harder to reach the second time.
What to Watch For
Because the telling so often doesn’t come, we’re left reading what we can see:
- Stomachaches, headaches, or vague illness that appears on school mornings and lifts by Saturday.
- Belongings that come home damaged, missing, or unexplained.
- Trouble falling asleep, or nightmares.
- Changes in appetite.
- A friend group that suddenly shifts, or a child who stops wanting to go places they used to love.
- Slipping grades, or a new reluctance about school.
- Speaking about themselves more harshly than they used to.
A word of caution here, because it matters: any one of these, on its own, is usually something ordinary. Children get stomachaches. Friendships rearrange themselves constantly at this age. What’s worth our attention is the cluster and the change—several of these arriving together, in a child who didn’t used to be this way. And it’s equally true that some children being bullied show no outward signs at all.
What Helps
1. Open the door, and leave it open. Direct questions tend to close children up. Sideways conversation opens them—car rides, dishes, the walk to the mailbox, anything where you’re beside them rather than across from them. Our colleague Ivy’s recent post on what to do when your child doesn’t like school has a good rhythm for this kind of conversation.
2. Let your first reaction be a steady one. This is the hardest thing on the list. When a child finally tells us something painful, our alarm is the first thing they read, and it will shape whether they tell us the next thing. We’ve written before about how readily our own distress transfers to our children. Nowhere is that more true than here. Feel it fully—just feel it slightly later.
3. Ask before you act. Since the fear of losing control is one of the main reasons children stay silent, the fastest way to earn a second conversation is to make the plan together. “Here’s what I’m thinking—how does that sit with you?” You keep the authority. They keep their dignity.
4. Bring the school in as a partner. Approach the counselor or teacher with specifics—dates, places, what was said—and ask what they’re seeing from their side. Schools respond far better to a parent arriving to collaborate, rather than complain.
5. Pay attention to what’s left behind. When bullying stops, the effects often don’t. Anxiety, avoidance, and a quieter sense of being unworthy can linger long after the situation itself has resolved. That residue has its own impact, and it deserves its own care.
When It’s Time for More Support
If several weeks have passed and your child is still avoiding school, still sleeping or eating differently, still withdrawn from what used to light them up, or still speaking about themselves with a harshness that didn’t used to be there—that’s the point where outside support is warranted. You don’t need to wait for things to get worse to make the call.
Some signs call for help right away rather than in a few weeks: self-harm, talk of suicide, or a hopelessness that doesn’t lift. If you’re seeing those, contact your pediatrician or call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, today.
In therapy, a child who has been bullied gets something they can rarely get at home: a place to say the whole of it without having to manage a parent’s heartbreak while they do. From there, the work is practical—rebuilding the self-regard that got chipped away, practicing what to say and do the next time, loosening the grip of anxiety and avoidance, and, in family sessions, helping a household find its way back to talking.
At Treehouse, our clinicians work with children through play therapy, with teenagers through adolescent counseling, and with whole families through family counseling. If this October has you wondering about your own child, we’d welcome the conversation. You can reach out here—it starts with a simple phone call, and there’s no obligation in asking.
Unity Day asks us to wear orange and stand together. It’s a good thing to do. But the more lasting work happens in our own kitchens, on a weeknight, when a child finally decides we’re safe to tell—and finds that we are.
