your child could be getting bullied and never tell you. here’s why.

By Luke Mihail, Lumi Counselling - Geelong

One of the uncomfortable things about bullying is that parents are often the last to know.

Your child can be having a horrible time at school, walk through the front door and answer “fine” when you ask how their day was. Then they lose it because their brother touched their charger. Or they refuse school the next morning because they have a stomach ache. Or somebody’s name that used to come up constantly suddenly stops being mentioned.

None of those things automatically mean bullying. Kids have bad days. Friendships change. Teenagers can be moody.

But when a kid starts seeming less like themselves, I think it is worth paying attention.

bullying in 2026 can be hard to spot

We still tend to picture bullying as the obvious stuff. A kid being shoved, threatened in the playground or openly picked on.

That still happens, but some of the nastiest stuff kids deal with now is much quieter.

Being the only one left out of the group chat. Finding out everyone was invited except you. Having a photo shared around. Being kept in the friendship group, but always being the joke. Watching people go quiet when you walk over. Getting messages at night from kids who act completely normal around you at school the next morning.

It gets even messier because sometimes the kids doing the hurting are also their friends.

Adults can look at that and think, “Why would you even want to be friends with these people?”
Your child may be thinking exactly the same thing. They may also desperately want to be invited on Saturday.

Both can be true.

so why wouldn’t they just tell you?

There are heaps of reasons.

They think you will call the school immediately. They think it will get worse if anyone finds out. They don’t want to be called a snitch. They are embarrassed. They are worried you will take their phone away. Sometimes they are not even sure whether what is happening “counts” as bullying.

And sometimes they just do not know how to explain it.

Imagine trying to explain to an adult why being removed from a group chat for an hour was humiliating, or why a joke that sounds harmless when repeated was actually brutal because of who said it, who laughed and what had been happening for the previous three months. Context matters.

That is partly why “just tell an adult” is much simpler advice than it sounds.

when they do tell you, don’t go from 0 to 100

This is hard. If one of my kids told me somebody had been treating them badly, my instinct would be to fix it.
Who was it? What happened? How long has this been happening? Do I need to call the school?

That protective instinct makes complete sense, but your child might have spent weeks working up the courage just to tell you one small part of it. If suddenly the whole house is mobilising, they can regret saying anything.

There are absolutely times when adults need to step in quickly. You just don’t have to solve everything in the first five minutes.

One question I really like is:

“What are you worried will happen if adults get involved?”

Because while you are thinking, “We need to make this stop,” they might be thinking, “I still have to sit next to these people tomorrow.”

sometimes you see it at home first

A kid can hold themselves together all day at school and then completely fall apart at home. They argue about everything. Snap at siblings. Seem angry with you. Hide in their room. Overreact to something tiny.

It is easy for the behaviour at home to become the whole problem. But sometimes the argument about the school bag on the floor has almost nothing to do with the school bag.

Something happened six hours earlier and you are seeing the fallout.
I wouldn’t interrogate every grumpy kid about bullying. I would notice patterns.

“You’ve seemed really over school lately.”

“You don’t really talk about that group anymore.”

“You seem pretty flat after you’ve been on that chat.”

Then leave some space.

Kids often tell us important things at the least convenient possible time. In the car. While kicking a footy. While making toast. At 10:30 at night when you were just about to go to bed.

Take the opening when it comes.

please don’t make the whole answer “be more resilient”

Yes, I want kids to be resilient. I want them to learn boundaries, handle conflict and know that not everyone is going to like them.

But I think we’ve got it backwards if the main response to bullying becomes teaching the kid being targeted how to cope better with being treated badly. Sometimes they do need help with confidence or assertiveness.

Sometimes the environment around them also needs to change. Parents have a role. Schools have a role. Coaches have a role. Those of us working professionally with kids have a role too.

A twelve-year-old should not carry the entire responsibility for fixing a social situation they did not create.

professionals can be the first to notice

A teacher might notice a friendship group changing. A speech pathologist might hear a child talking differently about school. An OT might see anxiety increasing. A support worker might hear the one comment a young person has not said to anybody else.

You don’t need to turn every change in behaviour into a bullying investigation.

Just don’t dismiss the small stuff too quickly either.

Sometimes “those guys are annoying” means a lot more than it sounds like.

If a young person does tell you what is happening, you may not completely understand why it hurt so much.

That’s okay.

You don’t need to understand every group chat, friendship rule or social dynamic they are navigating. You just need to understand that it mattered to them.

Start there.

If your child has become more withdrawn, angry, anxious or reluctant to go to school and you have that nagging feeling that something else might be going on, Lumi Counselling works with kids and teenagers across Geelong to make sense of what is happening and figure out a way forward.

You can book a free Meet & Greet if you’d like to see whether Lumi might be a good fit.