Bully Diary

I have published a series of articles about how to help your children if they are being bullied. In them I share tips on how to handle bullying situations whether they be at school or cyber bullying.

However, I also feel it will be useful to share our very personal experience as we tried to get help for our daughter who was being bullied by someone in her class, so I have published the diary I kept for some of the time.

The Diary (see download link at the end of the page) has not been published in an attempt to get sympathy. It is simply that I hope parents will benefit and take some comfort if they can see that there are others out there who have been through what they are going through.

I know only too well from our dreadful experience that handling a situation like this can be exhausting, distressing and can make you feel that you are turning into a different person.

The UK Government has done a lot to try to address the problem of bullying. There's also legislation in the USA, but this varies depending on the individual State Laws.

Any legislation that clearly defines bullying and harassment ain’t worth a dime if it is not followed by those charged with the responsibility of keeping our children safe during school hours. All UK schools are required by law to have an Anti-Bullying Policy and all schools are required by law to implement these policies.

Sadly, not all schools are following the policy that they themselves wrote and in some cases these Anti-Bullying Policies are not worth the value of the piece of paper they are written on.

Before I started my Bully Diary I had sent TWENTY EIGHT emails and notes into school complaining about the actions of two girls who were targeting my daughter, including the setting up of a “We Hate H Club” - that’s how bad it got.

Keeping a diary is one of the recommendations made by Kidscape, a UK-based organisation that campaigns against bullying and helps children who are being bullied and their parents.

I visited this website many times as I researched our rights and started to develop a strategy to try to get the help and support that my daughter needed from her school. I also spoke to people manning the Kidscape telephone helpline on two occasions.

Kidscape's support helped keep me sane on two particularly bad days.

Keeping a bullying diary helps keep it clear in your mind about what happened to your child, when it happened, where it happened and who was responsible or involved. The diary will also establish exactly when the bullying started, which can be very useful when you tell the school it has been going on for a long time and they refuse to accept it.

So, in March 2007 I started to keep a Diary. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done and there were many days when I cried as I wrote. My beautiful daughter, who was 10 at that time, was being bullied at school and it had been going on for two years.

There were brief respites but no proper resolution. Revisiting this diary is always a painful process and I wonder that I did not have a complete breakdown at the time.

There's nothing worse than trying to get help for your child and being ignored. A diary will give you the facts of the situation by listing times, dates and protagonists and will help strengthen your case while in discussions with the school.

The Diary may also help provide evidence should you need to take the matter to a higher authority.

I am not a violent person. Yes, I yell at my children at times and I am sure my next-door neighbours can hear it on occasion. I do not smack my children but they know what the boundaries are and what the consequences will be if they continually cross those boundaries.

We used to have a “naughty step” where they were sent for time out (they are too old for it now) and privileges, such as Allowances and Activities,  will be withdrawn if they push things too far.

However, during the worst of times it was all I could do not to cross the playground and slap the chief protagonist around the face. That’s how far she pushed me. And as for the parents….

I am saying this because the situation had such a devastating effect on me as a person and both my daughter and I were actually made ill by it. I came very close to sinking into depression. I also developed Otosclerosis.

Anyone who has had a child who has been targeted by persistent bullying will probably identify with how I felt.