I was bullied a little bit in 5th grade when I switched to a different school. Prior to that, I had been a bully, and a really horrific one at that, being sent to the office constantly for hitting other kids. Well I guess I got some payback at the start of 5th grade. A much larger kid named Josh bullied me. I picked up a chair and hit him with it. The metal leg of the chair bloodied his nose immediately and he began to scream. The teacher sent us both to the office. On the way to the office, this other kid apparently got very afraid of being in trouble, and he started apologizing to me for having pissed me off and insisted that we “make up” officially, so we could say to the principal that we had already forgiven each other. It worked, and we didn’t get in trouble.
This was the last time I was bullied, until freshman year of high school when a big, hard-assed farm kid (a breed I had previously never had to deal with) started ragging me at wrestling practice. For a while, I just sucked it up and considered it unavoidable hazing, but one day I couldn’t stand it anymore and I officially challenged him to a fight. We fought in the wrestling room with the rest of the team watching.
Well, he put me in a chokehold after a while, and I had no choice but to “tap out.” Nevertheless despite losing, I was commended for putting up a fight by the other guys and that was never again bullied for the rest of high school. But, then again, once you play contact sports, I think that kind of exempts you from the category of people who would be bullied, to begin with.
Update: my husband and I met with the teacher on Monday to discuss the whole thing. On the positive side: the teacher is going to talk directly with our son as well as the other of the two boys, and discuss the general topic with the entire class. Should anything else happen from this point on, it will be dealt with firmly. The teacher is now aware of what’s been going on and will be on the outlook for any problems. The seating order has been switched around, so that the bullies have been moved across the room instead of sitting right beside our son.
On the not so much positive side: the first bully admitted to poking our son sometimes, but said that he had sometimes been provoked first. The teacher said that he needed to get a fuller picture from all involved because these things are always a 2-way street and never as simple as abuser/victim and our son should think about ways that he might have contributed to the problem and learn how to act and talk in different ways that will lead to his not being picked on. He also said that we should be careful when talking with our son not to make this bigger than it is. We brought up our son’s friend who is also being bullied and he said that that was a bit more difficult because that boy had been known to hit other kids in the class last year (this is true. He doesn’t have much attention from his parents at home as they are deeply involved in their restaurant. He is left at home mostly with an older brother and sister, and his brother hits him. He’s getting bullied at school. How extremely beyond comprehension that he lashes out at times.).
So … my husband asked what the school’s policy about bullying is and didn’t get a clear answer. I asked directly what our son should do to defend himself without causing a problem for himself with the school and didn’t get a clear answer. I am left with the impression that the school hasn’t provided the teachers with much if any training about bullying and that their version of not tolerating it means that they really, really frown on bullying and sincerely desire for it not to take place. Useful.
My husband and I have a difference of opinion about how to proceed from here. I like the idea of sitting with our son and brainstorming possible responses to different situations. I’m taking to heart what several posters have said about this being one of the first big and difficult problems in life that no one else can fundamentally solve for you, and I’d like to give our son some help in thinking up a range of possible solutions, weighing the costs and benefits of each, and choosing what’s likely to be the most effective at the lowest cost to him. Surely this is a process that can only help him get through all the other complex situations he will face in life. My husband believes it is our responsibility as parents to present him with the answer, and not involve him in the process of coming up with it because that would throw too much responsibility onto him.
I’ve told my son that if anything, anything happens from now on, he should please tell me that same day. We’ve got an appointment to talk to a woman who has, among other things, done some work on bullying.
You are overthinking everything. And having the WHOLE CLASS discuss it is the exact wrong thing to do. This is not going to help and it will make things worse. Your son needs to fight this bully, plain and simple. That’s better advice in one simple sentence than all of the counselors and teachers and developmental psychologists in the world will give you.
Oh, dear. I can see this is going to be a sticking point between us, because if Aaron comes home crying I am going to tell him to knock the guy the fuck out, and I won’t lose any sleep over it. If he gets suspended for it I’ll be perfectly OK with that.
The bully’s victim can certainly give consequences. Preferably those that leave lasting reminders of what happens when you fuck with the wrong person. I have never, not once, seen a social interaction between children that improves when they get parents involved. So-called “tattle-tales” get it worst of all because they are perceived as people who can’t handle it themselves. He fights back, I guarantee you that he’ll never be thought of again as someone who can’t handle it.
That said, if he becomes a bully (God forbid) I would expect no less from the kids that he’s bullying. I’ll tell them to their face that they need to put him in his place. In that case my “unique snowflake” will learn very rapidly how the world really works. Better he learns it in school where he gets no worse than a suspension than on the street later in life when the penalties are much more severe and some guy simply cuts him to pieces.
Not to be all Kumbayah and all, but my son is not a violent person and I think the consequences of urging him to punch the daylights out of the bullies would be to get his ass kicked (remember there are two bullies here), get himself suspended from school and labeled by the school as violent, and rip him up inside. He isn’t likely to put his heart into a blow, and a half-hearted, tentative tap would just provoke boys who have shown themselves comfortable with laying hands on a classmate.
The whole class will be discussing not this particular situation but the general topic of bullying (it’s called mobbing here). I’ve been reading as much as I can about mobbing in the last week; the consensus of professional opinion seems to be that what makes an actual difference is when the environment changes to make bullying an unacceptable option, partly through education of administrators, teachers, students, and parents. A classwide discussion can’t hurt.
However, if there isn’t a schoolwide focus on this, it likely won’t really help. I suppose time will tell in this case.
A number of people have suggested fighting back, and I hope you will understand that I am truly grateful for all the responses and all the suggestions, and find the personal stories especially moving, but I need to ask this: how many are saying that because they were harmed by their own painful experiences and would feel vicarious vindication by at least one bully in the world getting his nose punched? Because it’s my son who would be the one in the eye of the storm of official condemnation, and he’s been through enough already.
Filing charges is a non-starter. I’ve talked to my husband and friends, and all agree that the police in Germany simply don’t get involved in cases like this, between 12-year-old kids, with pinches and smacks.
Been there, done that. In my case it’s not “vicarious”. I took 3 Saturday detentions for fighting back. After a few years of bloody noses and and a broken collarbone (intentionally inflicted in gym class, thus not provable as assault), I had enough. I took on a football player and inflicted some damage while simultaneously getting the beating of my life. Guess what? The bullying stopped right then and there.
As a kid I was forbidden from fighting, because “fighting never solves anything”, in the words of my mother. Yeah, right. Sometimes it’s a necessary evil. It was worth every second of the punishment I got, both at home and at school. I will never forbid my son from standing up for himself.
Of course, that’s just me. I would never think that it is my right to speak for you or to your circumstances.
Argent Towers, when you were a kid, you hit a kid with a chair leg, bloodying his nose, and you didn’t get in trouble for it. Your experience may have been formative for you, and very important in other ways besides, but it’s so completely different than anything that could happen in a public school today that I’m afraid to say your advice is mostly irrelevant.
He doesn’t have to hit the kid with a chair, he just has to shove him, or even just stare the bully down and not flinch. And if the bully hits him, well, then he’s got to defend himself. And if he gets in trouble for fighting the bully, then he gets in trouble. What’s the worst that could happen to him? He’s not going to be expelled just for fighting back against a bully who hit him first. A visit to the principal’s office or a suspension is a lesser punishment than having to put up with a bully for a whole year.
This is the best advice. Nobody likes a snitch. This is going to make his life harder, not easier. Certainly nobody likes a kid whose parents make the whole rest of the class listen to some lecture about bullying that they’ll probably know was ultimately because the bullied kid’s parents made the teachers do it.
But whatever, it’s your decision. And hell, if the bullying continues, this kid is either going to take matters into his own hands and stand up for himself despite what others tell him to do, or he won’t. He has free will, after all.
May I just point out again that this is taking place in Germany, not in the US?
The notion of discussing it in the context of the whole class is just what I would expect of the Dutch also, because they are all about social control in a way Americans simply are not. It does actually work, I have seen it work, but indeed it is premised on the notion that both the bully and the victim usually need to change their behavior. The ability to defuse a situation involving verbal aggression rather than escalate it is highly valued here. Bullying also takes place more often in groups rather than the one on one situation people seem to be envisioning – and with which I was more familiar from my own youth.
A child who knocked the bully the fuck out would here likely find himself more ostracized than lionized – it would likely be looked upon as a form of vigilantism which is here most strongly disapproved of.
To the OP, I would certainly try to talk to my kid about any solutions he came up with, if only to avoid problems and dead ends, but the truth is that my kid though up his own solution after the brainstorming and so on and went ahead and did it without talking to me. And his way did work (he took a video camera to school and taped the bully group picking on other kids, which called to him the attention of the whole class, and the other kids having sen the video then went over and made the bullies stop. He came up with it from a book we have called Brundibar, which is abotu getting other peole to help you when you need it).
He was happy for the support but in the end decided what to do himself.
As one of the “fight back” advisors, I said it because it worked for me, and I always was the quiet, fighting never solves anything, bookish nerd kid. And then one day I just got so fed up with stupid responses from adult authority figures (“You must have done something to provoke it, little Billy Bullet-head said so” and “Bullies only bully because they’re jealous/have low self-esteem/are pretty unique snowflakes”) and no actual help that, after more or less three-four years of continuous bullying in elementary school, I just decided that it was time to kick the ass of one of the bullies. Served several things:
the kid in question no longer saw me as an easy target, because I bloodied his nose and threw him in a mud puddle, both of which are bad no matter who “won” the fight–I hit him in a way that’d hurt him immediately so even if I couldn’t beat him in the fight I’d still have inflicted damage.
the kid’s parent no longer could pretend her kid wasn’t involved because there was no physical evidence of it–fortunately for all involved, she actually started parenting him more after that (unfairly to her, I always thought her motivations were his ruined nice clothes more than anything else)
the kind of teachers who saw fighting as boys-will-be-boys took my side more often, since there was now evidence I was no longer a sissy crybaby. (hey, rural elementary school, what do you expect?)
As I said, kept me from being bullied until a new school in 7th grade, at which point I had to nail an upperclassman in the junk when he and his brother attemped to grab my ankles and drag me on either side of a support pole in the bus waiting area (this was a popular hazing method at my high school). Admittedly, few things in life before or since matched the visceral satisfaction of seeing a high school junior go down sobbing from a pudgy 7th-grader’s unexpected counterattack, and his sophomore brother’s indecision as to whether or not he should retaliate or help his brother out. =P
So I don’t need to have vicarious revenge fantasies through your kid, Shantih, I have real-world revenge memories to keep me warm at night.
And man, when a kid is a not a violent person (and I wasn’t–I wasn’t necessarily morally opposed but it wasn’t my first choice), acquiring by whatever means the will to engage in violence in a certain controlled but decisive manner and having it actually work far better than the platitudes of adults was a HUGE boost to my self-esteem in a way that academic honors never were–probably because the latter always came easy, and the former never came at all until I decided I damn well could. I am still a pudgy nerd-boy, but it turned out pudgy nerd-boys can lift enough weights to do a credible job at linebacker at the intramural/junior varsity/rec league level.
I was getting the impression from the discussion that German culture might be inclined to regard it as “boys will be boys”, in the context of ineffectual administrative responses and perceived police disinterest.
I recommended a physical response because that is what seemed to work for my son, after every possible non-violent response we could come up with failed. In retrospect, I truly wish I had advised my son to physically defend himself far earlier than 7th or 8th grade when he finally did. I was never personally bullied, nor did I bully anyone.
Having said that, I don’t think a physical response need result in someone ending up in a hospital. In my experience most altercations between kids or adults do not reach that level.
Regarding the teacher’s comment about needing to get both sides, alas, that is also true from my experience. I can remember more than once having my kid tell me something happened, and responding loaded for bear - only to learn that my kid hadn’t exactly told me the entire story. At least consider the possibility that your kid might be doing something that might antagonize or attract these bullies. I believe my kid realized he was far smarter than some of the bullies, and he would find ways to taunt them with that. Not attractive.
Does your son have friends there? Having friends of your own can be very protective against bullying, at least in my personal experience. I dealt with bullies, as many of us have, and nothing really worked to stop it until I found a group of my own friends and started “running in my own pack,” so to speak. I am not sure it is actually having the friends per se that helps, but maybe something about that situation lends itself to self-confidence, which makes you look less like a target? I am not sure. But I do know that my bullies lost interest in me after I started hanging out with a large group of friends.
I know it’s not easy to make friends, either.
I never tried hitting my bullies, but there were more of them than there were of me, and frankly I just don’t think I had the capacity for physical violence in me. I can’t even imagine my high school self hitting someone with a chair leg, or punching them in the nose, or doing some of the other things people in this thread have described. Being a parent, I can now totally imagine doing that to someone who hurt my kids, but back then I don’t think I could have followed through.
I’ve been thinking, and if I was out of line with my comment, I apologize. Clearly, a physical response to bullying has worked very well indeed for some, and I tip my hat to them. I’m just … well, I hate to whine.
That’s a total lie. If ever whining was called for, it’s now. The stomachaches kept my son out of school last week and drove us to the doctor on Thursday, where blood was taken. He called us an hour later saying that one value was higher than before the antibiotic (my son had a bad internal infection in summer and took an antibiotic for it, and then we found out two months later that it was still raging, so he took a second one), which in connection with his other symptoms might mean acute appendicitis, so we should go to the hospital to have it checked out RIGHT NOW. We did, and my boy ended up spending two nights in the hospital having fun tests done, and the end result was: not acute appendicitus. No word on what it might be, but who doesn’t love a mystery? As soon as we got him home on Saturday, my son realized that his guinea pig was gravely ill, and he died in my arms on Sunday. My son has just had close to the worst week of his life, and I’m feeling helpless and frustrated and overwhelmed and at the extreme outer edge of my rope and I would love to know what sort of cosmic joke it is to give responsibility for two innocent and precious souls to me, the goober who was unable to fill her gas tank yesterday because the latch was stuck, and nothing that I did to try to pry it open worked, and only when I got home did I realize that when the car is locked, the gas latch locks, too. :smack:
And this on top of everything else … I spoke with my son a little while ago, and he said the two boys haven’t said or done anything to him so far this week. I asked him again to please tell me the same day if anything happens from here on in.
It would help tremendously if my husband and I saw eye to eye on this, but we don’t, so that will make for some lighthearted conversations between us.
And on a positive note, at least no one has hit my son or me in the head with a ruddy frying pan so far today, so that’s something.
If it’s any consolation, I never would have figured that out, and instead would have pryed the thing open, filled up the tank, and then driven to a garage to have it repaired, and then if the mechanic did not explain it to me, I would do it again. Be glad that you are one of the smart ones.
I think that may be taking us farther than the evidence allows, but thanks!
Ach, we’ll get through this, I know, and with luck, in a way that makes my son stronger in dealing with the next tough situation. Everything I’m reading here and elsewhere leads me to conclude that the name of the game is knowing how to defend yourself and defuse tricky situations. Whether that defense comes from reading social signals well, flip and funny comments, mustering up a group to give yourself protection through numbers, knowing how to handle yourself physically so as not to be intimidated, or punching an aggressor in the nose, the key is to have a way to stand up for yourself that doesn’t bring a greater cost down on your head.
I’m looking around for a self-defense course for kids that addresses bullying issues, and I casually asked my son today if he’d like to take a class in some manner of martial arts, maybe with a friend. He didn’t shoot down the idea, so I’m going to check out the possibilities there, too. He does have one very good and one good friend in the class, but maybe we can encourage him to develop a closer connection to more kids.
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. I hope.
