When Your Child Is Being Bullied and You Don't Know How to Help

He said, Brian, I knew something was wrong with my daughter before I knew what it even was.

He told me she had always talked to him.

Not about everything, of course.

I mean, she was a teenager.

But she had always told him about her friends, something funny that happened at school, a teacher who irritated her, or maybe whatever teenager drama happened to be unfolding for that week.

But then she got quiet.

He said, I would ask her how school was and she'd say, fine.

I'd ask, well, what did she do that day? And she said, nothing.

Then she'd go upstairs and close her bedroom door.

And at first I thought she was just being a teenager.

I didn't want to be the helicopter parent who kept prying until she finally opened up.

I wanted her to have some independence, but I was scared.

No, I was actually terrified.

But then he started noticing other things.

Things like she didn't want to go to school in the morning, or there were headaches and stomach aches that seemed to disappear on weekends.

She stopped mentioning certain friends.

Her phone, of course, as you know, a teenager and their phone.

Her phone, something that used to make her laugh, could suddenly change her entire mood.

He would see her looking at the screen, and within seconds, her face would change.

Sometimes she'd just put the phone face down and walk away.

Then he said something that stayed with me.

And what he said to me was, I could see my daughter disappearing right in front of me, but I didn't know where she was going.

And one night, he found her crying in her bedroom.

He didn't know what to do, so he just sat down beside her and he asked, what was wrong? At first, she gave him the same answer she'd been given for weeks.

Nothing.