The Onion Theory: Why Bullying Isn’t Just About the Bully
By Sonja C. Farmer for The Mix commissioned for The Mix’s anti-bullying newsletter, out in november
I’ve been on both sides of bullying. I was the quiet kid in the corner, invisible at my parents’ corporate work events, the one who learned early that speaking up didn’t change anything. And I was also the nursery-aged child who acted out — the one teachers labelled a “bad kid” instead of asking what was wrong.
It took me years to understand that those two versions of me were connected. And it took me even longer to realise that bullying isn’t a simple story with a villain and a victim. It’s an onion.
The Onion Theory
Here’s what I mean: bullying doesn’t start in the playground. It starts in the home, in the hospital waiting room, in the family dynamics that no one talks about. Every layer of that onion is a root cause — and if you only peel back the surface, you’ll never reach the core.
Research backs this up. Studies show that parenting behaviours and family environment are directly linked to bullying behaviour. Programmes that include a family component are consistently more effective at preventing bullying than those that don’t. And there’s strong evidence that childhood family abuse doesn’t just influence behaviour — it actively predicts whether a child becomes an aggressor with their peers. Research from King’s College London found that children who have been maltreated at home are twice as likely to become bully-victims at school.
That’s not an excuse. It’s an explanation. And explanations matter because they tell us where to aim the solution.
When I was four, I was the kid who bullied. I didn’t have the words to say, “I’m scared, I’m overwhelmed, and I don’t know how to ask for help.” So I acted out instead. The teachers didn’t investigate. They just labelled me. If someone had looked past the behaviour and asked what was underneath, they’d have found a child who needed support, not punishment.
And here’s the part that keeps me up at night: where were my parents in all of this? My mum and dad were drowning. They had no tools, no support system, no one to tell them it was okay to struggle. They were doing their best with nothing to work with. The system failed them, and that failure rippled down to me.
The Library Memory: Why “Speak Up” Isn’t Enough
I remember being in the school library once, watching something happen — I don’t even remember what now — and knowing I should say something. But I didn’t have the words. No one had ever taught me the specific phrases you use when you see someone being hurt. No one had handed me a script.
That’s the thing about “speak up” campaigns. They assume you already know what to say. But if you’ve never heard someone model the words — “That’s not okay,” “Stop that,” “I’ll sit with you” — then telling you to speak up is like handing someone a piano and telling them to play Chopin.
I had the sight. I could see what was happening. But I didn’t have the script.
The Mix’s own resources talk about the importance of giving young people tools they can actually use — not just encouragement, but practical skills. That’s what I needed. That’s what every kid in that library needed.
The Peer Pressure Memory
It wasn’t a crush, rather a crutch.
I was in year 3. There was a boy.
A boy —
In short, we both ended up hurt. The girls who peer pressured me to kiss him — I couldn’t stop them because I didn’t have the courage to say ‘no.’ One of the most powerful words in the dictionary.
I hold my hand up. I take accountability. His older brother was right in reminding me of how wrong I was to have done that. But the teachers…
They shouldn’t have punished me the same way as the girls who peer pressured me. Had they actually sat down with me… who knows what life would look like right now?
That memory is another layer of the onion — a nine-year-old held to the same standard as the ones applying the pressure, with no adult asking what she was actually struggling with. The system punished the outcome without investigating the dynamics. It’s exactly the layer we keep skipping: the child caught in the middle, who doesn’t have the courage or the words to push back, gets treated the same as the child orchestrating the pressure. No one stopped to ask why I couldn’t say no. No one taught me how.
So it’s not entirely bullying — but it’s related.
Someone who doesn’t have the tools can harm someone, intentionally or unintentionally. And it is the job of anyone who works with children and young adults to provide them with those tools.
What Would Actually Work
So if the onion theory is right — if bullying is layered, systemic, and rooted in what happens before the child ever sets foot in a classroom — then the solutions have to be layered too.
- Teach specific phrases, not just values.
Schools spend a lot of time telling kids to be kind. They spend almost no time teaching them what to say when they see cruelty. We need to normalise intervention scripts — short, simple sentences that anyone can use, regardless of confidence level.
- “Are you okay? I’m here.”
- “That wasn’t fair.”
- “Let’s go get a drink.”
- “I don’t think that’s funny.”
These aren’t complicated. But they have to be taught, modelled, and practised — the same way we teach maths facts or grammar rules.
- Anonymous reporting portals that work.
Some schools already use systems like “Spill the Tea” or anonymous online forms where students can report bullying without naming themselves. But the key is making them accessible and trusted. Research from the Anti-Bullying Alliance shows that young people often don’t report because they fear their concerns won’t be taken seriously, or that speaking up will make things worse.
A good anonymous reporting system needs three things: Date, Location, and Time. That’s it. No names required. Just enough information for a wellbeing coordinator to notice a pattern and intervene before any one child has to carry the weight of being “the one who told.”
- Support for parents — before the crisis.
Here’s the layer we almost never talk about: parents need emotional support too. My mum could have used someone trusted to talk to — someone who wouldn’t make her feel like she was failing or that she’d be reported to social services just for admitting she was struggling.
Imagine if every school and every hospital had a designated person whose job was to support parents emotionally. Not to police them, not to judge them — just to be there. To say, “This is hard. You’re not alone. Here are some tools.”
The evidence is clear: programmes with parental involvement have greater positive impact on behavioural issues. A meta-analysis of school-based anti-bullying programmes found that those including a family component consistently showed stronger effects. Nurture groups in schools — now over 2,000 across the UK — show what’s possible when you support the whole system around a child, with evidence linking them to improved attendance, behaviour, and reduced exclusions. But we need to go further. We need to support parents before the behaviour becomes a crisis.
The Core of It
I’m writing this because I believe bullying is preventable. Not through punishment, not through zero-tolerance policies that push problems underground, but through honest, layered work that addresses every ring of the onion.
The child who bullies was often a child who was hurt first. The parent who seems checked out was often a parent who never got support. The school that can’t seem to fix the problem was often a school that was never given the right tools.
We can change that. But it starts with being honest about how deep the roots go.
If you’re reading this and something in it sounds familiar — whether you’ve been bullied, been the bully, been the one who couldn’t say no, or been the parent caught in the middle — you’re not alone. The Mix has support groups, one-to-one peer chats, and discussion boards where you can talk about this stuff without judgment. Because the first step to breaking the cycle is naming it.
And the second step is handing each other the words.
Sonja C. Farmer is a writer, poet, and youth worker in training. She writes about safeguarding, cycle-breaking, and the systems that fail the children who need them most.
Leave a Reply