Suggestions for dealing with school insults

In My Humble Opinion
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Former victim here (and there were two ways I usually ever dealt with bullies. One was physical confrontation, which rarely worked, and the other was to ignore them, which never worked). I don’t know how much help this will be, but I can’t very well just sit and watch this thread and think “Gee, I hope these guys get everything worked out”…

Is Jr. somewhat isolated from the other people in his class when John starts shit? I know one thing that made me a very easy target was that I was usually off by myself (and the teachers weren’t watching anything but the food in front of them, but I digress).

Otherwise, what the counselor said. Ignoring the guy is rarely, rarely, rarely going to work. The kid doesn’t seem to have much of anything better to do than start shit with your kid, and one-upping him verbally is just going to tell John “Hey, I could learn an insult or two from this kid”. Physical reaction is just going to tell John he’s found someone he can play with, if that makes any sense.

I actually have to wonder about that comment you made that John’s father might get along better with his (John’s) brothers, and make fun of John at home to the tune specifically of what John is saying to your son. It is possible that John has learned that this, as well as whatever roughhousing John’s brothers and their father do, as a means of getting closer to people. Unless, of course, I have missed something really huge here, in which case hand me the clue stick for a minute or two and I’ll “repair” my brain:)

Now … how to say this? I ask because this is one thing my parents never did, or at least not that I can remember. Jr. is aware that none of this is his fault, that the stuff has no merit and that y’all still love him and all, right? When I was growing up, the stuff I heard never got refuted or anything like that, so if I didn’t know outright that something wasn’t true, I had no reason to believe it wasn’t.

And this, friends, is why today my self-esteem is the size of the smallest violin in the world, etc. It’s not universally true, but if you get a kid young enough or whatever and tell said kid lots o f stuff enough (or all) of the time, s/he’s gonna start believing it. And if it keeps getting reinforced, you turn out like me. And while I’m sure I’m lovely and all that crap, it ain’t all that fun to hear “you’re a waste of semen” for three years. Especially with adults around you not bothering to do anything about it.

Bitter? Me? Why, er, … look at that bright shiny thing far away from me!

:: poof ::

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Yes. Jr.'s self esteem/self image/confidence/etc. was our first and remains our prime concern. Sorry your p’s let you down in that dept.

Re: your question of Jr. being an easy target - as far as I can gather, John is pretty much an equal opportunity insulter - tho when he gets ANY type of reaction from someone, that person becomes more of a prime target. I guess he was tossing some racial insults at one kid, who swore back at him. The next day those two got in a fight.

And I guess one reason Jr. is somewhat of a preferred target, is because over the past year, Jr. actually tried to interact with John. Tried to be his friend, to try to give him a reason not to be so unpleasant. In Jr.'s words, John’s polite response was to tell him to “Fuck off and die.”

A sad situation all around. But definitely one that will stick with Jr. all his life. You don’t forget such things. And we want to try to encourage him to learn favorable lessons that will help him deal with difficult people, and be sympathetic of other people later in life. Trying to manufacture something positive out of a huge honking negative.

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Glad to hear this, Dinsdale!