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Very few child-related subjects are as sensitive and opinion-based as what to teach children as to how they should react if they’re in a threatening situation initiated by another child.

Teach your Child to Fight Back

Here we are discussing exclusively scenarios they may encounter with other children of roughly their age in situations such as play. This is related to children under 6, where systemic bullying and aggression are very rarely serious

issues and almost all events are minor flare-ups of spontaneous aggression.

This is largely opinion and there are no absolute right or wrong answers here. Each parent or care provider will need to form their own judgement.

Children will scrap

Most responsible parents and all professional schools and preschool day-care centres will do everything possible to try and encourage children not to engage in quarrels that turn physical.

However, such eventualities are inevitable.

This may easily start in the home where a child has siblings and physical squabbling may be commonplace. It’s also perfectly normal for children to experiment with being physical, as part of their discovery of the world around them and their own body’s capabilities.

Therefore, children will at times be engaged in mildly aggressive physical exchanges with other children. This is routine and part of their learning to control their own emotions. It is usually a passing phase.
A child’s reaction

If a younger child under the age of around 6 is pushed, pulled or hit by another child, they’ll typically react in one of three ways, usually after an initial shock reaction:

• start crying and seek help and redress from an adult nearby;
• ignore the problem in the hope it won’t repeat;
• hit (push/pull) back in an entirely instinctive reaction, which may be a mixture of self-defence and a desire for ‘payback’.

It is impossible to predict how a child will respond in a given situation. Much will depend upon the size/age of the other child, the availability of adult help nearby and the extent to which the struck child has a history of dealing with aggression in their home with other siblings etc.

The parental dilemma

Some parents may have very strong values that demand they discourage their child from retaliating. Others might feel that such an approach is too idealistic and that in practical terms, their children should be encouraged to defend themselves and thereby disincentivise other children from ‘picking on them’ in future.

Experts’ views

Unsurprisingly, there is no absolute consensus on this point.

Some experts suggest that encouraging your child not to fight back and to always seek an adult’s intervention, risks them developing a ‘victim mentality’ and also being perceived by other children as being a potential victim too.

However, other professionals argue to the contrary, stating that a ‘strike back’ culture simply risks escalating minor incidents into full fights for no reason, should a child retaliate to what might have been a relatively minor incident.

What can be done?

The ability of parents to influence their children here may be limited. Some children may simply have hotter tempers than others and will strike back whatever a parent might counsel. Other children may be more naturally passive and will virtually never fight back.

There is though consensus that parents should:

• discuss potential fights and squabbles with children from the earliest ages;
• develop a culture whereby the child always feels it can openly discuss matters with parents, including stating that another child has hit them. Pre-school centres will also work hard to encourage children to openly bring such things to their attention;
• hitting and fighting should be discussed with children as being babyish and silly. This though will need to be accompanied by explaining to children that much of what they might see even on children’s TV and in videos, where play violence is relatively commonplace, isn’t real and can’t be applied to the real world;
• the potential for adults, whether parents or teachers, to intervene to resolve situations where another child has been aggressive should be stressed and stated to be the generally preferred route to avoid violence. It is imperative though that where violence or a squabble has been reported, adults are seen to deal with it rather than simply ignoring it. If not, the child will quickly form the view that they’re on their own.

None of these tips answers the basic question of what to teach your children about fighting back or not. Ultimately, that must be a decision for all parents to make with their own children.