We know that school bullying has lasting effects on our children, and that there are many kinds of bullying.

In fact, a study recently showed that a certain type of bullying does the most long-term damage to teens’ mental health and academic futures. It’s called ‘relational bullying,’ and as the name implies, it’s when bullying targets the victim’s relationships with others.

But what exactly is relational bullying? Some specific examples follow, along with a few tips for helping your child get through it.

Exclusion Is The Center Of Relational Bullying

Your child sits at the lunch table alongside the same girls she’s been eating with for years. The ones nearest her edge away a little. Then, they lean across the table to talk to each other. When she tries to join the conversation, her friends take turns talking over her and ignoring her.

Then they start talking about prom, the football game, or a sleepover. When she expresses her own excitement, they make excuses—”Oh, Mom said I could only invite three girls, so sorry,” or “I don’t think you’d enjoy it.”

She’s left wondering why she’s not in the top three or what makes this special event suitable for all the girls she’s always spent her time with but not for her.

Exclusion Isn’t Always So Overt, Though

Exclusion can be as open and transparent as one teen telling another, “We don’t want to hang out with you.” It could also mean agreeing to plans but not showing up or “forgetting” to mention a change in plans to the person being excluded.

Your child may find herself confused about why her friends aren’t answering their phones on Friday night or why the birthday party they all RSVPed to ended up with so many empty chairs. She might be the one who is always left without a partner in gym class when there is an odd number in the friend group or the one who always seems to be on the outer edge of the group.

Relational Bullying Often Targets Other Relationships

So far, we’ve talked about a friend group breaking their relationship with the victim. However, sometimes they’ll also target her ability to maintain friendships with others outside the friend group by gossiping or spreading rumors.

They may paint the victim as untrustworthy or spread rumors about her dating life and choices or about her family. They may claim she is dirty or has an infectious disease. All of these are targeted to make other students willing to shun her.

Relational Bullying Can Be All About The Rules & Standards

If you think back to the 2004 movie Mean Girls, you’ll encounter some types of ‘rules,’ often arbitrary, that cliques utilize to exclude others. In that movie, the rules centered around dressing alike — a girl who didn’t know to wear pink on Wednesday would automatically be excluded, and only someone who had been clued in would know that wearing a ponytail twice in the same week was deemed a valid excuse for rejection.

In other cases, the ‘rule’ might be about a hobby that the entire friend group, except for the girl being excluded, shares, or about the summer camp the others all attended, or about being on the cheer team or in the same English class. A determined group of bullies can always find something they have in common that the excluded teen doesn’t share.

Relational Bullying Will Often Spread To Social Media

If you’re keeping up with your child’s social media, you may see signs of relational bullying there even before your child tells you anything is going on.

This could take the form of laugh reactions on photos, a suddenly diminishing friend list, accusations of ‘stealing’ content on her TikTok videos or tagging her in posts intended to be embarrassing, such as about acne meds or weight loss.

It might even involve taking photos or videos of her to post with insulting or hurtful commentary.

You may also notice your child avoiding her social media pages or getting upset when she does access them.

How To Broach The Subject With Your Child

Tell your teen you’ve noticed some changes in her social circle.

Talk to her about relational bullying, and make sure she knows that it is a longstanding tactic of bullies. An important point here is that this is not happening to her because of something she has done wrong or isn’t doing right. It’s happening to her because bullies have chosen to bully.

Ensure she understands these behaviors are about bullies vying for social status, not about anything she ‘deserves’ or ‘earned.’ The JEM Foundation has a list of reasons that social bullies engage in these behaviors, including peer pressure, their own low self-esteem, behaviors they see modeled in their own homes, or simple excitement at the power of hurting someone else.

Your part in the response can be considered three-pronged: support, intervention, and finding alternative support and community.

Support Your Child In Standing Up For Herself

Support is always a necessary step.

Tell your child that her worth as a person does not depend on what this group thinks of her, and make sure you’re providing an environment that tells her she’s valued and loved.

Offer her information for handling bullies herself. The Girls Guide To End Bullying has some great tips, including a step-by-step plan for confronting bullies about their behavior and standing up for themselves.

Let her tell you as much as she wants to, and listen without interrupting.

Most importantly, your role as a supporter is to let your child decide what appropriate actions and support her choice.

When It’s Time For Intervention

Intervention can be a serious step, so make sure your child knows before you contact her school.

Ideally, it’s best not to intervene until your child has taken the steps she’s comfortable with to deal with it herself and agrees that you should step in. There are cases where a parent will find it necessary to override the child’s preferences, which depends on what you as a parent are seeing and whether you think there’s a high risk without intervention.

At this point, you can contact a teacher if the bullying is localized to one class or the school principal or counselor otherwise. The counselor may be able to facilitate conversations between the students or make the other kids see the seriousness of the situation.

While no one can force a student into a friendship she’s no longer interested in, schools don’t have to tolerate cruelty or gossip.

Look For Community & Support Outside This Group

If your daughter has been friends with this group for years, losing them may feel like losing her entire community.

Now, it may be time to build a new community. Enroll your daughter in classes or clubs where she’ll meet others with shared interests. These may be extracurriculars offered by the school, or she may prefer to seek outside activities where she’ll meet people who don’t attend school.

Ideally, at least some of these activities are in-person, but your child may also find that she can access larger communities that share her interests online.

She may even find that joining a volunteer group to feed hungry people, clean up in the community, or collect supplies for disaster victims brings her close to others who share her ideals and values.

You and your daughter can also discuss whether counseling or therapy would help her get through the current situation.