'I found out that my kid is the school bully. This is what it's really like.'

For many of us, it's easy to remember being the target of a school bully. Wondering what you had done for someone to single you out and make your life hell.

It's a situation that no parent ever wants their child to endure.

But what about the families on the other side? The parents whose kids are doing the bullying.

Mum Tanya* is facing that reality right now. She found out early on her daughter was bullying other children at daycare.

"She's always been really articulate, and she would try and talk things through with the other children, and they were not quite there yet… It would result in some physical altercations," Tanya tells Mamamia's twice-daily news podcast, The Quicky.

Daycare would send home incident reports complaining of biting and hitting involving her daughter. This behaviour continued into primary school, with the 10-year-old still struggling with her peers.

"Now she's older, she's getting into that tween age, it's a lot of words. The bullying is sort of changing. She's not only receiving the bullying herself, but she's giving it back," Tanya said.

"For the most part, when she does have issues, she doesn't realise what she's done wrong and why she's getting in trouble."

Tanya says that these situations result in a lot of meltdowns, and feeling like the other children just aren't listening to her.

Listen to Tanya talk about being the parent of a bully on The Quicky. Post continues below.

Tanya believes it comes from a place of frustration and might be related to her daughter being an only child.

"She has a strong sense of justice and wants to make everything right and have everyone do the right thing. When they don't, that's when she's getting upset," Tanya said.

"She's around adults all of her life outside of school. She's not really had a whole lot of kid time. She's just learning that social side of things as well."

The bullying breaks Tanya's heart. She just wants her daughter to get along with the other kids.

"We have felt a lot of guilt over the years, but we understand where she's coming from with her frustrations," she said.

"I think it's hard for us to see she's not invited to birthday parties, and we create birthday parties for her and no children come. We do feel the effects of this for her as well. It's not easy.

"She's 10 years old and her biggest goal is still to be invited to a sleepover."

Watch: Quaden Bayles is the victim of daily bullying. Post continues below.

Why do kids bully?

Eighty per cent of Aussie kids believe bullying is an issue at their school. Research shows that out of all the OECD countries, Australia comes in second for rates of bullying for teenagers, with only Latvia reporting higher levels.

Child psychologist Deirdre Brandner said most of the reasons children bully are to become more popular and fit in.

"It's a way that they believe they're going to achieve respect, they're going to have influence and they're going to have some sort of leadership over their peers," she tells The Quicky. "But sadly, that's at the expense of other children."

Sometimes it's a reflection of what children are observing at home.

"A lot of our children who become bullies have learned inappropriate interactions from the home environment," Deirdre said. "Sometimes as adults and parents, we need to reflect on our own behaviour."

In other cases, kids who are bullied can go on to become bullies themselves.

"It often means you're being excluded from a friendship group and become an outlier. In an effort to try and reassert yourself, to get back to a place of feeling good, you start to mimic the same behaviour that's being projected towards you," Deirdre said.

It doesn't always result in more peer-to-peer bullying, but could be towards younger children or siblings at home.

Eighty per cent of Aussie kids believe bullying is an issue at their school.

What to do if your kid is a bully?

Deirdre said it's common for parents to blame themselves when things like this happen.

"When we get negative information about our child, innately we think... I've mucked up as a parent. It comes back to the guilt of, 'What am I doing wrong? How did it end up like this'," she tells The Quicky.

"This is not about blaming, responding in an overt emotional way, it's about taking the information you've been given and looking at working and problem-solving through this."

For Tanya, this means working with her daughter's teachers to keep tabs on things.

"We have regular meetings with them to make sure we're both on the same page and that's super important," she said.

She says she's seeing positive changes in her daughter, but the challenges are changing too.

"I hope she learns that empathy as she grows, and it becomes second nature to her. That we don't have to keep pointing out what she's done wrong and why it's wrong. That she'll know and get better control of herself," she said.

Tanya feels the flow-on affects with other parents, too.

"Sometimes they're quite understanding in the beginning and then they get tired of it after a while," she said.

She hopes other parents realise that bullies are not always kids from a bad home situation, and the parents are usually trying their best.

*Name has been changed for privacy reasons.

Feature image: Getty.