My children's school principal: Go to hell and burn. Slowly.

The BBQ Pit
1

Where I live, bullying in school “is high up on the agenda”. Politicians write manifestos against school bullying. Schools make questionnaires. “Here, little, guy. Fill this out. Are someone bullying you?”. And when the questionnaires all have small tick marks in the “no” boxes, everything is fine. And the kids sing cute little songs about how good they should be to each other before they keep on harassing the guy who’s not as cool as the rest.

As a parent, you’re told nothing. Nada. Zilch. Naturally, 'cause when the poor guy has enough problems with just staying alive, he ain’t gonna spend the few safe hours of the day talking about how he hates life. He wants to escape hell for a few precious hours.

Finally, after years of bullying, you find out what’s going on. Not because you’re told, but because the bastards have escalated the “fun” to the point that your child comes home totally wasted from having been beaten up. But the welts and the blue eye are just the top of the tip of the iceberg. You can’t see the mental scarring from all those small needlepricks he gets. Every. Fucking. Day. Of. His. Young. Life. You talk to the bastards’ parents. Nooo, my child never does things like that, and besides, I’m sure your little brat had to see it coming. I mean, he once even told my little angel to fuck off, so he’s no better. And boys will be boys, right?

You take it to the principal. The principal is vewwy, vewwy concerned. But really, you see, children aren’t mean. Children can never be bad. Children are just natural angels, and we should really, really just talk to them. They’ll surely understand, right? And the principal talks to the [del]damn[/del] little [del]bastards[/del] angels. Everybody is happy. The principal is happy because the [del]damn[/del] little [del]bastards[/del] angels will never do such things again, and really, they didn’t understand the consequences. Right? The [del]damn[/del] little [del]bastards[/del] angels are happy, because they’re let off easy. Everybody is happy. Except your child. Because hell hasn’t ended. It has just become less visible. And boys will always be boys, right?

At the end of the term, the principal gives a speech. We’re all a happy family. Except your little child who is, even in elementary school, quietly and quite seriously considering suicide.

Damn you to hell, principal. Go and die slowly in a fire. Take those [del]damn[/del] little [del]bastards[/del] angels with you, and their [del]lame-ass fucking[/del] velly velly concerned parents as well. Or, if you are just as good in finding a decent fire as you are finding your ass with own hands in full daylight or accepting that you actually have a real responsibility for the children attending your fucking lame-ass petty excuse that masks as a school, just die. Slowly. Fuck you to hell and back again. If you owed me money and were on fire, and I’d just drunk a sixpack, I wouldn’t even piss on you, you lame, naive good-for-nothing fucking do-gooder!

2

I’m sorry for what you and your child are going through.

Can you move your kid to a different school?

3

As someone who was bullied extensively at school and whose parents did very little - and to make it worse, I was bigger so I was seen as the aggressor - please remove your child from this environment until he can cope.

4

The child is already removed from the environment. My issue right now is that the parents, despite active and conscientious involvement in the child’s daily life, never learned the full story until quite a while after it happened. Rather typical.

While I’m at it, I’d like to pit any parent who doesn’t realize that no child, not even your own, basically is a being completely devoid of empathy. Empathy is something that must be learned. Even your precious angel is capable of the most horrendous actions

5

I hear ya 2square4u.
When my son was in third grade he had a little folder he took home from school every Friday and returned Monday. It had his school work, notes from the teacher, etc. There was also a Comments piece of paper for parents to put feedback on.

From August until March, I’d write little notes like, “Little LTFT enjoys math.” or “Little LTFT had trouble with spelling, but he’s getting better.” And from August until March his teacher responded with little up beat notes like: :wink:

Then, in March, she tells me that he’s very disruptive in class, can’t sit still, and she believes he has ADD. After months and months of nothing but :wink: feedback from her. Not one SINGLE indication that there might be a problem.

Skull fucking would be too good if you ask me.

6

Well, yeah, but actually fixing problems is haaaaaard. Can’t we just go back to pretending there aren’t any? Why do you have to rock the boat and be such a buzzkill?

7

Tell your kid to start punching noses and kicking balls. Sure, he might get suspended, but at least he’ll have a story to be proud of for the rest of his life.

8

Document, Document, Document. Every Goddamned thing.
Every time little 2squarejr comes home with a new welt or bruise.
Everything the kid tells you about what happened.
Dates and times of every single conversation with the School staff.
EXACT words of what they said.

If necessary, check this list and if you’re in a one party consent state, go to Best Buy and get a digital audio recording device to record meetings. Not necessary for them to know you have it, as that will change how the react. Just turn it on and shove it in your shirt pocket.

http://www.aapsonline.org/judicial/telephone.htm

Then start talking to your school board, your state education department, and possibly an attorney.

9

At least in Ohio, any citizen can file charges against a kid or adult, provided the prosecutor finds probable cause. If the kids are old enough (10 or up) you may want to file charges yourself if the school refuses to do anything. What they did isn’t bullying, it’s assault. Call your local prosecutor’s office.

10

So the school won’t help. Sorry to hear that, and it means the kid needs to learn escape evasion techniques. I learned to never leave the school through the same entrance two days running, and never take the same route home two days running.

Then again, I walked to and from school to home, so I don’t really know if this advice is relevant. But I learned to move like a fugitive. The good news is that thugs are generally not real smart, so it wasn’t all that difficult to keep out of their range.

11

Fill a supersoaker with mineral spirits and attach a pizoelectric sparker to the end.
Find the guilty parties and hose them down as you ask" What the fuck, did you think you could fuck with me and mine and not pay?"
This is the pit, right?

12

In the best scenario, teachers and faculty don’t help because their hands are tied. In the worst scenario, they don’t help because they’re little more than bullies themselves. In any realistic scenario, it’s a bit of both. I’m in my early twenties, school wasn’t that long ago for me and can’t be much different from how it is now.

Teach your child to take different routes to/from class. Teach him to blend in with the environment around them and not to ‘act different.’ Yeah, it sounds fucked up, but it’s true. Young kids are twisted little sociopaths and can smell out ‘different’ from a mile away, but they’re also stupid as fuck and easily fooled. Like zebra. But most importantly, teach your kid how to kick some other kid’s ass. Because the odd man out might be lonely, but he wont be picked on when he isn’t afraid to fight back.

Honestly, I got suspended a lot as a kid, up until high school at least. And childhood wasn’t much fun for me. But on the up-side, there were always other kids who had it worse because they wouldn’t fight back, kick-boxing kept me in great shape and made the ladies like me later on, and I cultivated an outsider image that actually made me a lot of friends in high school. Plus, I had the courage to stand my ground and stand for my convictions, because years of after-school fights taught me to be proud of myself and to not give a fuck about what anyone else thought of me.

Oddly enough, getting bullied as a kid might’ve been the best thing that ever happened to me in a I’d-rather-kill-myself-than-go-through-that-again sort of way.

That’s my $0.02, at least. Do what you will with it.

13

You really just said that?

14

This, basically, with the caveat that you should also teach your kid when to fight and when not to, that is, not to start fights but to finish them.

15

I couldn’t agree more with you and Bryan Eckers. No one gets any lasting scars from losing a fight, but from not fighting back and sticking up for yourself.

16

I took his statement to mean that he and the other kids were being bullied by unidentified others, and he was contrasting his own response of fighting back to the other kids’, who just took it.

But at first, I too, parsed it the other way.

17

Thankfully my kids have not been bullied but if this were to happen I would

  1. talk to a lawyer and and least get him to make some formal escalations
  2. start your child in martial arts. When I was a Kenpo brown belt, I assisted/tought the beginner class. Every.fucking.class had one kid who was there because he/she was getting bullied. I told every one of them that "kenpo was not an easy answer, but I guaranteed that if they stuck with karate that one day the bullying would stop. Either the “target” vibe would go away as they got more experienced, or one day the training would trigger and they would be able to take care of themselves.

All that said, hope you and your child are coping ok

18

I can’t stress enough how important it is to instill a sense of confidence in your children. Bullies can sense low confidence from a mile away (just like females can. Take notes here.) Make sure your kid has up-to-date haircuts, wears deodorant if he has hit puberty, has clean clothes that are at least SOMEWHAT in style, etc. I know some people will say “these things make my little snowflake who he is”, and that is awesome in theory - I totally agree with the sentiment - but in reality it can get your little snowflake’s ass kicked during those tough years. I’m not saying I like it, I’m just saying how it is. When I think back to the kids who got bullied, they were almost all milquetoast, and most of them were a hot mess appearance-wise. The only conclusion I can draw is that their parents just didn’t give a fuck, or were themselves whimpering puddles who couldn’t impart self-esteem on anyone else because they didn’t have any.

Oh, and seriously . . . teach the kid a right-straight and have him fire it into the nose of the next little shithead who fucks with him. Worst case scenario: the bully kicks your kid’s ass for it (which is already happening anyway so big whoop) and your kid earns respect. Best case: the bully’s nose bleeds, he can’t see, he cries, and your kid is now a total badass (with a 10-day vacation from school, or whatever you get for fighting these days).

I am a total pacifist and would normally do anything to avoid a fight, but fighting back just happens to be extremely effective in these situations, and don’t let any Stepford Wife schoolboard member or clueless self-help author cashing in on the anti-bullying craze tell you otherwise.

19

Fuck, yeah. The kid will remember the day he fought back as a moment of intense satisfaction, whereas if he doesn’t fight back ever, he’ll regret it and in his adult years wish futilely for the power to reach back in time and strike back at his juvenile tormentors but it’ll be decades too late. Heck, even seeking out the bullies as adults and beating them to death won’t scratch that itch.
Not that I would, uh, know about that sort of thing. And nobody can prove I do.

20

I hate to rain on anyone’s macho parade, but fighting back can bite you back. Bullies have followers(that is a major reason they do what they do), and they will join in to kick the shit out of your child and/or they will testify that your child struck without provocation.