The technique to get a bully to stop is easy to teach. What isn’t easy? Making sure you repeat it enough times to make the bullying actually stop.
So – the way to get a bully to stop is to stop rewarding their behavior. This is done with little tweaks. Words said in a bored tone of voice. It’s pretty easy to do and most anti-bullying programs teach this skill. What should you say to a bully.
The thing is, knowing what to say isn’t enough. Words don’t have magic powers. You can’t say your planned response to a bully and have them stop. It doesn’t work like that.
What does work is consistent repetition.
Here’s how this works. To get a bully to stop, you have to stop rewarding their behavior. You generally do this by using words in a calm tone of voice while making eye contact. Bullies respond to this by escalating. Increasing their obnoxious behavior towards in in an attempt to get you to back down.
Here is why the consistent repetition is so important. When the bully escalates, you repeat your non-reward statement and you may want to report them. Repeat and report.
The bully will respond to you and try to continue to hassle you. Repeat and report. They try different tactics. Repeat and report. It really doesn’t matter what tactics they try, if they are mean, repeat your go to phrase of non-reward/response and report.
Repeat and Report and eventually they will give up.
There are a whole host of reasons why this works (and I do go into that in the book – which I recommend since understanding HOW and WHY this works will help you stick with it when the bully really starts to get obnoxious). For now understand that repeating a standard phrase in a calm bored tone of voice makes you boring to bully. When you consistently report them, they also learn that the cost of bullying is too high for too little reward.
If you want a bully to stop – have something you can say and repeat it and report them until they stop.
PS – more detailed information on how to do this is in my book. I also encourage you to join the website to take advantage of all the free learning material I provide.