Yes, it’s ok to kick him.

How I’m teaching my daughter to be embodied while being bullied.

My daughter comes home from school, almost daily, and says she’s bullied. She’s felt bullied in two different schools, by multiple different children and it’s started to become her why when she feels sad, angry, tired, hesitant. She’s a very sensitive child (which I consider one of her super powers), and while the bullying seems mild to my thick adult skin, I can see it dents her beautiful gentle spirit.

I’ve gone through different phases of trying to help her through it.

“Tell him, nicely, to stop.”

“Tell him, firmly, to stop.”

“Tell the teacher.”

“Walk away.”

“Put your hand up and yell STOP. Yes, it’s ok to yell.”

“If he touches you and you don’t want to be touched, it’s ok to hit or kick him away if he won’t listen to your words.” (yes, yes, yes, I’m telling her it’s ok to hit and kick.)

Essentially, I’ve tried to verbally teach her that she has some options (fight or flight).

But her pattern is to freeze, just like mine used to be.

It’s really easy to give our kids tips about conflict resolution. It’s easy to try to solve their problems by dolling out advice, even if it’s advice that’s worked for us. It’s harder to teach them to understand their own internal responses and to explore how their bodies want to respond to a situation.

In short, to teach them to track their nervous system’s response to threat and then give them tools for how to follow through on their responses.

In this case, my daughter’s nervous system is registering bullying as a threat and by freezing, her body isn’t completing the cycle (our nervous systems move through cycles of higher activation, or sympathetic arousal, and then move back down to a less activated state, or a parasympathetic state. A healthy nervous system can move through both rather than be stuck in one or the other). So when she comes home, she seeks activities that will help her complete the cycle and take her out of freeze. Most of the time that looks like fighting with me or her sister (fight), or spending time alone in her room (flight).

All of the frozen energy that she contained in that moment of conflict at school is coming out of her like wildfire in the safety of her home.

And while her home is, of course, a safe place to unleash these emotions, I know from experience that it’s not particularly functional to freeze in every conflict. Nor is it very pleasant for us at home to be on the receiving end of the emotional wildfire.

So I’m on a new path now of helping her track how her body feels with some guidance and modeling from myself along the way. We role play being the bully and being the victim.

When I’m the victim I tell her the sensations in my body and do any movements that feel like they need to help move that energy out. For example: “when you call me that name, I feel a ball of red, fiery energy in my belly and it wants to travel up my throat and out my mouth and growl.” Then I tell her how my body wants to move that energy, “I’m going to growl and claw at the bedding now because that’s what I feel like doing with that ball of energy.”

Then we flip the script and I’m the bully and then invite her to follow her sensations in her body and do any movements that would feel good.

Do I expect her to growl, hit, or yell? No, I don’t expect she will in this scenario. But she will be able to communicate how it feels to the other child, somatically track that experience in her body, and let the energy of the experience dissipate so that it’s not suppressed inside of her, or unleashed in her other relationships. I also hope that if a situation ever did arise where the threat was higher than cruel words, she would be equipped with tools to defend herself, and not just freeze.

You may think it all sounds a little strange but, verbally teaching children how to respond doesn’t help that information land in the knowing of their nervous system. In their deeper wisdom. In their internal power, and spirit, and fire. (Think back to how many times your parents gave you advice. Did you learn the lesson from their advice, or from the experience of going through the turmoil yourself.)

I’m giving her tools to move out of freeze. I’m giving her tools to have options for how she responds. I’m giving her tools of expression and a felt sense of her boundaries.

She’ll be equipped to say how she feels and what she needs.

Read that line again.

Most of us are still learning how to do that.