Things weren’t always rosy at our house, but I have a wealth of experience to help me in bringing up my kids and I saw signs – especially signs of the effects of bullying and acted on them.

Dani adored her kid brother, we’ve already got that straight in our heads… so when she started picking on him, I stepped in immediately.

Rather than belting her, sending her to her room and the stuff I got as punishment when I picked on my little brother and sister, I asked her who was picking on her.

My intuition was spot-on. She was getting picked on.

At that time, she attended a privately-run school and I went in to the teacher and had a word. Of course, because the parents are their clients, the teachers treat complaints immediately and take them seriously. As it happened, the kid picking on Dani was also picking on most of the rest of the class too.

Because it was coming up to Dani’s birthday, I devised a suitable punishment for the bully – with the teacher’s blessing.

We had a party right after school. The place we held it at was a short walk and therefore easy to transport a class of well-behaved kids there in one go.

All the kids in Dani’s class received an invite to her party, except one – the bully herself.

The day of Dani’s birthday, all the kids had a change of clothes and before the end of lessons, they were all told to get changed.

The bully sat there bemused because she didn’t know why everyone had a change of clothes and she didn’t.

When I got there, all the kids but one had their party clothes on. Their school clothes were packed into bags and carried to the party with them and off we went.

Dani in the purple dress, Haydn in the Garfield T Shirt to her side

The kid missed out on a lovely party and she knew exactly why…

That kid left the school soon after but I believe the kids all realised they weren’t alone and it helped more than just Dani.

Another kid wasn’t so easy to sort out. Because we had Haydn coming up to school age, we couldn’t afford to send them both to private school and so both had to go to the local school.

Dani knew what to do when she got bullied and she told us immediately.

I went up to school and quickly became frustrated by the policy of ‘No bullies’ in the school.

You’d think ‘No Bullies' would be a good thing… but no. Their ‘no bullies’ policy meant that they didn’t acknowledge any bullying.

I spoke to the head teacher. “We don’t have bullying here at my school,” he said.

And basically, that was that, end of discussion. So I had to sort it out for myself.

The kid in question had befriended Dani and she’d been invited over for tea. They had a lovely afternoon playing and then I took her home.

The very next day, the bullying started. We tried to sort it out with the school, as I mentioned but no luck.

I waited outside school for Dani and she pointed out the girl. I couldn’t believe it was that girl that had been invited for tea. Little bitch!

She went to her dad who was meeting her to take her home.

“Is this your daughter?” I asked. He nodded yes. “Can you have a word with her please? She’s hitting my little girl and I’d like it to stop.”

“You have a word with her,” he said.

OK then…

I crouched down to the girl and I said in a quiet voice: “You know how you keep hitting Dani?”

She nodded.

“Well, if you keep doing that to her, I’m going to come to your house and do the same to your dad. Is that a deal?”

She nodded again.

“Good.”

Dani didn’t get bullied again by that girl. Either the girl believed me that I’d go to her house, or her dad did. Either way, sometimes, shock-tactics work.

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