When a child bullies another child, our first instinct is often to focus on the behavior itself. The name-calling. The exclusion. The aggression. We want it stopped, and rightfully so.

But what if we asked a different question first? What if, before we addressed what the child did, we asked what the child was feeling and whether they even had the words to tell us?

Marcelle Waldman, certified teacher, founder of FeelLinks, and Teen Wise coach, joined the DaliTalks Podcast this week and said something that stopped me in my tracks. When kids cannot name what they are feeling, they act it out instead.

That one sentence reframes everything.

Emotional illiteracy and bullying

Bullying behaviors do not appear out of nowhere. They grow in environments where emotions go unnamed, unvalidated, and unprocessed. A child who has never been taught to identify frustration, fear, jealousy, or shame does not suddenly find healthy ways to express those feelings when they show up at full force on a Tu...