From victim to advocate: Palmwoods mum’s mission to help bullied kids

Kim Conicella: “My qualifications come from my experience. I was bullied and I came out the other side.”

by Janine Hill

KIM Conicella has risen above the brutal effects of being bullied as a child. Now the mum of two, business owner and former teacher is on a mission to help other kids do the same.

Kim, of Palmwoods, is the founder of “The Social Child”, a business offering resources and one-on-one help to assist victims of bullying. 

Her motivation is to stop other children from going through what she went through.

“I was bullied as a child when I was in primary school. I was bullied by five of my really close friends and this lasted for 12 months,” she said. “On top of this, my cousins would call me fat and all the neighbourhood kids in my area were bullying me. There were three different groups.

“It was 12 months of being isolated. No-one at school would come near me because if they did, they’d get picked on. Looking back, I don’t know how I survived. I guess I did but there was this whole level of trauma moving forward. 

“As a result of all that, I stopped trusting people. Through my school years, I’d make friends but as soon as there was any sign of affection, I’d walk out.”

At university, Kim fell into a deep depression which resulted in her seeing a psychologist and working through issues stemming from the bullying she had endured 10 years earlier. 

She had studied journalism but instead became a teacher with a view to helping children suffering from bullying.

Kim was already offering anti-bullying tips and advice online before covid but re-evaluated during the pandemic and decided to opt out of teaching to focus on “The Social Child”.

She has published two journals – “Bounce Back from Bullying” and “Bounce Back from Cyber Bullying” – to help kids understand bullying and how to develop strengths and strategies to deal with it. She has also developed conversation cards to encourage discussion about the problem.

“When I had my son, Avery, I went searching for resources because I wanted to build him up in case he ever encountered something like this in the future but there was very little out there,” she said.

Kim said the resources drew on psychology techniques she learnt after seeking help and working on herself to overcome the effects of bullying.” “Sometimes I get asked about my qualifications. My qualifications come from my experience. I was bullied and I came out the other side.”

Between The Social Child, raising Avery, 6, and Lenny, 1, and helping her husband, Paul, run Small Change Espresso at Nambour, Kim has also found time to write a fictional book about bullying for the Bully Zero foundation. The book is expected to be published later this year.