Focus on the Family Parenting Podcast

John Fuller: I'm John Fuller here in the studio with Dr. Danny Huerta. He's a counselor and he leads our parenting team here at the ministry. Danny, when our child is bullied, it can leave an emotional scar that lasts years, decades, a lifetime?

Dr. Danny Huerta: Oh yeah, lifetime even. And sometimes it actually could be considered abuse from peers and from others. And so we have to look at the gravity of the word. It can be quite traumatizing to a child where to the point that they feel sick, they won't eat, their stomach hurts, they don't want to go to that to the school. And what's tricky for some parents is they'll have a very highly sensitive child all the way to a child that's not highly sensitive and both could have a huge response to what's happening in the school and could perceive different things as bullying.

So what you want to do first is listen in when your child brings it up. But the impact that this has is it can leave self-doubt, it can leave these voices in a person's head that create a tremendous amount of self-doubt, but also a lack of trust and a lack of self-confidence around people until it's addressed and reprocessed in a new way. That the other person was having a hard time. It wasn't personal to their identity. And so it may create a social apathy to somebody where they go out, you know, I just don't want to be socially connected.

It's all out of self-protection for themselves. And so we want to begin to understand with our children when there is bullying, it has a ripple effect down their development into adulthood where they begin to it begins to take root in the deeper depths of their identity as a person. And they're still in a place of self-protection potentially all the way into their marriage, into their parenting where a child does something or their spouse does something and it triggers the memory of something that happened in fifth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade. And what's fascinating is some people get stuck emotionally, social emotionally.

And they've seen this in in trauma research when they've been bullied in a heavy way, in a big big way, in a in a very intense abusive way in school, sometimes they get stuck socially in that and emotionally. And they deal with future events in their life as if they're still that age until they move past that through through a tremendous amount of healing.

John Fuller: Yeah. Yeah, and that healing is available to you. If you're feeling like, oh, they're talking about something that happened to me, give us a call and connect with one of our caring Christian counselors. The details are in the show notes. Let's turn now to a conversation focused on the family president Jim Daly had with Nancy Rue. She is passionate about helping kids who have been bullied.

Nancy Rue: The most amazing, for lack of a better word, stunning story um I think is what really tuned me into it. I was a theater teacher. So I tended to get the misfits and the kids who didn't fit the fun people, the crazies um who didn't fit in any place else. And so I I made it a point to provide an atmosphere, an environment where they could be who they were and shine and have confidence. So my radar was out for other students who weren't in the program, who didn't seem to have that niche. And there was one student whose name was Jake.

I will never forget him. He wasn't one of my students, but he was best friends with with one of mine um and Ming was Jake's only friend. And I would watch Jake in the hall walking down the hall with a book in front of his face as if he were reading a book as he's going from class to class so we didn't have to interact. Um one day I noticed the book was upside down. So he clearly was not reading it. And I never asked, you know, just what was going on with Jake. I didn't approach him and say, so how you doing?

His junior year he committed suicide.

John Fuller: Yeah.

Nancy Rue: And his friend Ming was absolutely devastated and we all sat down and talked about it. And even at the time I didn't use the word bullying. I said, what what was the deal? What happened to Jake? Was he always just I don't know, strange? Um and it came out over the years that Jake was horribly bullied. When I asked my daughter who was in that group um what happened with Jake, she said, oh my goodness, they were terrible to him, especially the athletes and so forth called him gay and um just made fun of him all the time.

And then when he came out to his father that yes, he was gay, his father kicked him out of the house.

John Fuller: At what age?

Nancy Rue: Uh he was 16 years old.

John Fuller: Yeah.

Nancy Rue: And he hanged himself. And to this day I still get this ache in my chest. Not that I could have saved him, but what if I had just said Jake what can I do for you? How's it going? Invited him to just be part of the theater lunch group. And ever since then it's just bothered me.

John Fuller: You know, looking at it at that high level view, Nancy, um what is it in us as human beings that if you act differently I mean you're a theater teacher and you said it and you know that um area attracts a lot of different thinking people. I had to do theater as a general ed in college and I thought the same thing cuz I was more on the athletic side. I'm thinking, wow, these people don't really people don't fit in with the rest of the world. But but that is okay. God has made us in different ways and people think differently and act differently.

Um but why are we so it's so difficult for us to accept people who act differently and think differently?

Nancy Rue: It's fear. It's fear. And you would not think of a bully as being someone who is afraid, but there is deep down in there a fear of somebody who's different. So they might actually be better than me. Or I don't know how to handle that. Or that calls who I am into question.

John Fuller: So insecurity and fear and

Dr. Danny Huerta: In insecurity and fear. Uh bullying came close to your own family, right? Or it actually impacted your family, your daughter. What happened there?

Nancy Rue: It did. It did. My daughter was 10 years old at the time that bullying came to my attention. And at that time I was writing for a Clubhouse magazine, Brio magazine. Those are all old focus on the family publications starting to write um for that age group. So you would have thought I would have been more aware. I was not. This is something that I learned after the fact. But uh my daughter was a little bit on the tomboyish side. And to this day she dresses more in a bohemian you know kind of style. And so is the big sweatshirts and just kind of brush the hair and go off to school.

And um on the day that she was going to have her picture taken in the sixth grade um she decided she was going to dress up. And so she borrowed something of mine and she did that. I don't know if you remember this, but that hairstyle with the bangs stood straight up, right? And and she borrowed a little bit of my lip gloss. She looked adorable. And she went to school. And um she got there early and the two girls, Heidi and Haley, I'll never forget their names, the Shining Twins, you know what I mean?

And they and they made this big thing about Mary Jean. Do you have any mirrors in your house? You know, Heidi, you have mirrors in your house? Yes. I have mirrors in my house. Do you have mirrors in your house? And finally Mary Jean said, yes, I have mirrors in my house. And they said, well you couldn't possibly have looked in one of them this morning or you wouldn't come to school looking like that.

John Fuller: Oh man.

Nancy Rue: On the day that she did her best to look and that was the beginning of a full-out campaign to make Mary Jean's life miserable

John Fuller: Yeah.

Nancy Rue: for her whole sixth grade year. But she didn't confide that in me. And this is key for parents because she was ashamed. She thought there was something wrong with her that these popular girls would come down

John Fuller: So she kind of hid that from you?

Nancy Rue: She did.

John Fuller: Well Danny, that was a lot of sharing from Nancy who obviously has an eye out for those kids who have been uh affected by a bully. As a parent, what are some signs perhaps that might indicate my child has been bullied? Let's start there.

Nancy Rue: Uh as I talked in in the earlier part of this episode, the apathy or the avoidance of things. And so if a child says, I don't want to go to school and they're very firm and adamant, I don't want to go to school or you see a change in their appetite or change in their emotions in a big way where they become more closed up, more depressed, maybe they start saying, I I have to be wearing this. And it almost seems like a survival want. It's a need that I need to have this. And if not they're very upset.

Like there's an anxiety behind it rather than I just really want it. They may be trying to look a certain way, be a certain way in order to gain an acceptance with certain people. You'll see more secretive behaviors potentially. Sometimes maybe some self-injury. So if you see kids sometimes cutting or uh starving themselves, other things that that are self-abusive uh sometimes those are signs as well that maybe there is some type of bullying at school. The biggest one for elementary kids and junior high kids or middle school kids is an avoidance of just not wanting to go to school.

There's an intense fear, almost a panic having to go to school. And that's where you want to just stop for a moment and say, hey there seems to be something else going on here. I realize you don't maybe you don't want to go there. Help me understand it better. I I want to be in there with you. Is there something that scares you? Is there something that has hurt you that I need to know about? And then just be ready to listen, not fix it. And then from there try to process it with them in a way that where you're validating it and know that it has affected the way they see others, the way they see that environment, the way they see themselves.

John Fuller: So let's add a second layer to this question. Thank you for that. That's really good insight. Um all right, so I found out that several years ago my child was bullied. There was an event. And uh that explains it all now. The past couple of years now makes sense. How do I move forward? How do I respond to that child that was bullied but I didn't know?

Nancy Rue: Yeah.

John Fuller: Cuz I I 'm feeling now like I would have done something if you'd told me.

Nancy Rue: Right. It feels bad. It would feel really bad to to have that happen. And uh there are many parents in that same boat. And I've seen them in my counseling office where they've decided, hey my child needs to speak with a counselor about this and to reprocess it and move through it. So one would be uh call our counseling our consultation line here, focus on the family and get a number to a counselor in your area that could help you guys move through this as a family and help your child uh make sense of what happened.

In the meantime as you and that number is 1-800 the letter A, the word family and that'll be in the show notes in case you forget that. But really it's taking time to validate and and help the child feel like it's normal. It's a very appropriate response to what seemed very hurtful or felt very hurtful and maybe isolating. And just with compassion say, tell me more about what what that experience has been for you. And I know I can't fix that. I can rewind it. What do you need from me? I want to be able to bring truth to potentially destructive lives that have been put into you.

But only when you're ready for those because I know that you're probably going to say, you're my parent. You have to say those things. And what these people have done or said it it's going to be hard to forget. But I want to be able to go in there and battle if I can with you. This must have been tough for you. Once you do that, once you say this must have been tough for you they open up the backpack and they'll say yes or they'll uh you'll see maybe an angry reaction you know if you weren't so busy or they may start blaming.

Don't take it personally. Just say, yeah we're here now. Let's figure this out. Let's figure out how you can get through this. And if it's still something that potentially could happen in the environment they're in come up with a plan as to how to advocate for the the safety that that child's needing to continue to grow in that environment.

John Fuller: That's good. Well you've heard Danny's heart. You know our heart. We want to be here for you. So call that 800 number and ask for a counseling callback. That phone call is free. That consultation is about 20 25 minutes long. They'll listen, they'll pray with you, they'll guide you as Danny said to somebody in your area that you can have an ongoing conversation with. And they can point to resources. Now one thing that I'm going to uh just tell you about is our special audio collection about helping your child deal with bullies. It's a free collection of conversations with Dr.

Kathy Cook, Dr. Kevin Lehman, and the entire conversation that uh we've only played a clip from featuring Nancy Rue. Uh that audio collection is free. Sign up for it in the show notes. Next time we'll have Dr. Kevin Lehman here talking about performance and how you can avoid being uh too performance-oriented with your kids. For now on behalf of Dr. Danny Huerta and the entire team, I'm John Fuller and thanks for listening to the Focus on the Family Parenting Podcast.