Bullying Incident Log: What Parents Should Document Each Time

A useful bullying incident log is not the longest one. It is the one that records the same facts every time.

Use the free Bullying Incident & School Response Evidence Tracker to keep incidents, school reports, promised follow-ups and evidence in one private local record.

Record the same nine fields

For each incident, capture:

1. date;
2. approximate time;
3. location;
4. type of conduct;
5. people involved;
6. witnesses;
7. what happened in observable terms;
8. who at school was told;
9. what response or follow-up was promised.

If there is a screenshot, photo, document or message, keep the original file and index it beside the incident.

Write facts before labels

“Bullying again” is a conclusion. A better entry is:

At lunch, the same three students took the student’s backpack and passed it between tables after the student asked for it back. Two classmates and a lunch monitor were present.

You can still categorize the incident. The factual description is what makes the record useful later.

Location patterns matter

A repeated problem in one place may point to supervision or transition issues. Common patterns include:

• bus;
• locker room;
• cafeteria;
• hallway between specific periods;
• playground / recess;
• group chat after school;
• one class or activity.

The tracker surfaces repeated locations and repeated people automatically.

Keep the school response in the same chronology

For each report, write:

• who received it;
• date reported;
• what the school said it would do;
• follow-up date promised;
• whether that follow-up happened.

That prevents the school-response history from becoming a separate email archaeology project.

Preserve evidence without losing context

A screenshot called IMG_4812.png means very little six months later. Attach or index it beside the incident and note what it shows.

The GentleTools tracker supports drag-and-drop local evidence storage in the browser through IndexedDB. Keep the original files somewhere you control as well; the tool is not a cloud backup service.

Bring a summary, not the whole emotional history

Before a meeting, print:

• incident count;
• repeated locations;
• repeated people/groups;
• overdue follow-ups;
• a chronological list;
• evidence index.

That gives the team a pattern it can respond to.

Definitions and school duties vary by state and district, so the tool does not decide whether conduct legally qualifies as bullying. It keeps the record accurate enough for that question to be addressed by the right people.

Start with the Bullying Incident & School Response Evidence Tracker, and use the School Communication Log when the follow-up itself becomes a separate paper trail.