“No violence whatsoever” is a good rule for the school to have. Unfortunately, it sounds like they haven’t been enforcing it, or your kid would never have had to fight back against the bully. The problem is that the school is enforcing the rule selectively. This is what you need to take up with the school administration: That your son had no choice but to stand up for himself, because they weren’t.
Again, that’s an inaccurate comparison. If a 35-year-old man did that to you on the street you’d call the cops and he’d get busted for sexual assault. Would you call the cops on a 1st grader who did that and have him hauled in for the very same? I don’t mean to imply that either scenario is ok, but that it isn’t always accurate to draw comparisons between different incidents with different contexts.
Would it be fair to suspend the girl in question? Of course not. I think I would probably separate them, ask the girl if she was ok, ask if she’d like to let her parents know about the incident, then explain to the boy firmly that that kind of behavior is unacceptable and that although policy states such-and-such I feel that the girl was justified in her response. I’d sternly warn him to never do it again. Then I’d write up the incident and send it to the office for them to deal with the punishment, while afterwards keeping a close eye on those two kids.
Now, I assume we’re talking about elementary school kids here, because if something like that happened among jr. or high school kids I’d get the school police involved immediately.
Perhaps playing a little devil’s advocate, but were your son’s actions exactly “defending himself”? As with most words, “defense” can be defined many ways. But in at least one interpretation, your son’s (re)action could be viewed as retaliation after-the-fact.
It just seems to me that many posters here are ignoring this distinction. If a kid is trying to hurt your son, then yes, he clearly ought to use physical force to make the aggressor stop his attack. But once that threat has ended, I think it becomes much more cloudy as to what might constitute permissable “defense.” Heck, you even stretch things to justify “anticipatory/pre-emptive defense.”
Another possible complication is the extent to which the reaction is proportionate. Someone (not I) could say the other boy was just exuberant, perhaps a little rough within the confines of the game. Whereas an unmistakable punch separated from the action is vastly different to explain away.
If your son was roughed up during a soccer game, would it be “defense” for him to hit the other kid with a rock the next day? The situation could be exaggerated far more - one kid insults the other, so the insulted kid brings a gun to school. I believe at some point most people would agree that a certain reaction would be inappropriate to the particular provocation. Does a shove/tackle merit a punch? A choke out? I don’t know. And one problem is, generally someone other than you will be standing in judgment.
Dinsdale,
I understand what you are saying, but this was not the case this time. He was repeatedly, intentionally thrown to the ground using a maneuver that can only be used to trip somebody. One hand on the neck, leg in front of his feet, then a push forward on the neck to knock him on the ground. My son put up with this a few times, and he told me the kid was doing it to at least one other person. There was no intervention by any adult. I have been trying to teach him that he has to stand up for himself for the last two years and he finally did. What pisses me off is that he did the right thing and is being punished for it.
You have to understand the demographics of where I live also, alot of rough and tumble country bumpkins. I am not sure of how it is today, but up until at about 10 years ago we had a country wide reputation of being fighters and being tough. This mentality lives on strong here and you would have to see it to believe it. This reminds me of a joke about our women…