Your kid is being Bullied on the bus - Pop him in the nose or talk it out?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’d like to re-visit the age old question of being bullied…

Peter Brady taught us in the 70’s that if you are bullied you can sock the bully in the eye and he will submit and be your friend.

Columbine in the 90’s taught us that kids being bullied can and sometimes will take it to extremes and go on a shooting rampage.

Where is the median ground? When is enough enough? I have a nephew who is being bullied - he’s a reletively small kid and I’m not wholly convinced he knows what to do. I am on the fence whether or not to tell him to belt the kid doing the bullying or to have mom (my sister) go to the school and have the district take care of the issue by stiffer penalties to the parents and child.

Apparently the bully’s parents have already been contacted and still the sh*t continues on the bus. We all know bullys have learned the behavior from some where - and that somewhere could be from the parents. Parents can be bullys too.

Anecdotes would be greatly appreciated…

What does the latest and greatest news say about bullying? Is the intellectual approach better than the physical one always?

Let’s hear it -

BTW - The nephew is in Karate and has been for 1 year…would talking to the sensei be a good idea?

2

The problem is that a kid might in fact be unable to physically defend himself. I’m begging the question, because I have to figure that fighting back is an option you are considering.

Nothing is more important than getting the kid to understand that he is a hero for DOING THE RIGHT THING. Exhalt that, and focus on how tough he is to have to deal with this bully THE RIGHT WAY – and you know what that is. Stick to the proper procedure, with the school/bus company/whoever.

Even if fighting is the thing you think is somehow right, fact is, people come in all shapes and sizes, and develop at different rates.

My kid started off as a bully, and we didn’t know. The other parents did the right thing. Luckilly, we are responsible and responded properly. It might take some effort to get unreasonable parents to react right, but eventually they will succumb, because in this day and age of expulsions and lawsuits, they should be able to get the message.

Do the right thing.

3

Philster, would you mind sharing what you did when you discovered your son was being a bully? Honestly, I’m not sure what I would do as a parent on either side of this equation.

Also, you mention “the right thing” twice, but you don’t say what you think that is. Intervene? Tell the kid to ignore it? Drive him to school yourself?

4

I was bullied as a kid in junior high. I listened to my parents when they told me “turn around and walk away and they will get tired of you”.

Pure PC bullshit.

It went on for most of 5th and 6th grade and only stopped when I got fed up and broke the bully’s nose. I’m a short guy and he was a good two feet taller than me and out weighed me by a good bit.

I got suspended for fighting, but the bullying stopped the day I got back in school.

Don’t get me wrong, fighting is not the answer to every conflict. It’s just a last resort when all other options have been exhausted. Teach your nephew to stand up for his dignity.

5

I had a friend that was being bullied. then, one day, he cheap shotted the bully and grabbed his hair and punched, and punched, and kept punching. He then threatened to kill the bully if he ever did that again.
The bully stopped his bullying…then apologized, after he had his face patched up.

food for thought.

hh

6

The school district is responsible (I assume this is a school bus and not a city bus). Remind them that it’s their responsibility to protect your nephew and if they don’t the wrath will rain down on them. I’m against advising violence except to protect one’s self. It shouldn’t get to that, but if it does, your neph has the right to fight back. the next step is to sue the bully’s parents.

7

I agree with dmatsch. I spent years as a kid with my parents pursuing a solution through the usual channels. They would even visit with parents of bullies to explain the situation and ask the parents to put a stop to it. The bullying didn’t stop until I started sticking up for myself.

To give you an idea of how the PC crowd tries to solve things, when I was consistently bullied by a kid in my grade, the school psychologist arranged for the two of us to beat on one another in the gym with foam rubber “boppers” until we had supposedly exhausted our aggression. Think that one worked? Ridiculous…

8

The rules at my kids’ high school:

  1. Tell somebody about it. If it’s happening right now, yell and attract as much attention as possible.

  2. If you can get away, run towards a group of people you know, preferably adults.

  3. If you can’t get away, stand there and get the snot kicked out of you.

  4. Prepare to be suspended anyway.

Or, in my son’s case:

  1. Get grabbed by an older kid on the first day of the last week of school and get slammed into a locker, almost losing an eye in the process.

  2. Turn around.

  3. Front snap kick to the solar plexus, launching the older kid across the hall. End of fight. Older kid never bothers son again.

  4. Get suspended any way, which was the older kids’ plan all along.

  5. Watch as Mom rips the principal several new ones about their absolutely stoopid rules, pointing out that Mom has been teaching several girls in 7th grade how to fight for the past several years, and they’re going to be freshman next year, and very much do not have a victim mentality.

9

I don’t think anyone really knows what the right answer is, or at least won’t admit it. Because frankly, while it may get the kid in trouble for fighting, a good swift punch might be the best way to get the other kid to back off. He needs to not play the victim here and that’s a hard thing to do, especially in the era of trying to solve everything peacefully, and doubly so at a young age. While I normally wouldn’t suggest violence, I have to agree with dmatch on this one.

10

Well, I don’t have a tale of gradeschool heroics to share. I fought the bully. I got my ass kicked. The bullying stopped. I eventually had to fight a few other guys, who fought about as well as I did. So I didn’t get to be the boss, but I avoided the special hell that awaited boys who opted out of the process.

11

Problem is, this really only works if you are a kid capable of damage. When I was about 13 I decided I’d had enough of ‘turning the other cheek’, etc. and whacked the guy who was picking on me that day. After looking at me in amazement for a second, he pretty much beat me to a bloody pulp while his friends looked on and laughed… At least by taking the higher moral ground I didn’t get the added humiliation of giving up on my principles and still losing…

12

Interesting, saoirse. It’s all well and good if the victim can bring down a mighty storm of whoop-ass on the bully, but I was wondering how the story turns out if your kid fights back and loses…

13

How old are the kids in question?

My thinking on this has changed quite a bit. My son was bullied quite a bit in grade school. I initially adamantly said he should not respond with violence. If you cared to search, I’m sure I posted as much on these forums. But I don’t think anything stopped the bullying until one time in 7th grade when he hit back. That fight led to a suspension. We wrote the school the letter below. In retrospect, I would have written such a letter earlier, documenting that we had informed the school of the situation, and told my son to fight back.

One HUGE problem, tho, is IME, grade school kids are horribly unreliable witnesses, for any number of reasons. There were several instances in grade school when my kids would tell me one thing, and as I sprang into action I would learn that the actual events were quite different.

Here’s the letter. I ran across it on my computer the other day. It might have some language you might find useful:

*Dear Mr. K:

We are in receipt of your letter dated ***, documenting that Dinsdale Jr. received a one day suspension to be served on ***, for inappropriate behavior. At present we do not wish to appeal the suspension, as we acknowledge that Dinsdale Jr. should not have responded physically when provoked. We do desire, however, that any records of this incident be accompanied by documentation of the facts surrounding this incident, establishing that Dinsdale Jr. was provoked, and was not the sole instigator…

Your letter states that Dinsdale Jr. was “fighting with another student in PE locker room” and that he “pushed student into a locker and hit him in the head with a book.” Dinsdale Jr. was suspended for engaging in “inappropriate behavior, including fighting, and profanity.” We believe accuracy and fairness requires that extenuating and mitigating circumstances must be reflected in any record of this incident.

Dinsdale Jr. has been regularly harassed by this particular boy on an ongoing basis. In the 2001-02 school year, Dinsdale Jr. asked his PE teacher that he not be required to be on teams with this boy during gym classes. That same year, Mrs. Dinsdale informed Mr. L, your predecessor as Assistant Principal, of this boy’s behavior.

Dinsdale Jr. has tried to avoid this student, but he has not been able to because he is required to be in gym class with him. This boy’s harassment of Dinsdale Jr. has continued into this school year, with the boy verbally insulting Dinsdale Jr.on nearly a daily basis, calling him various insulting names which are generally considered vulgarities.

Dinsdale Jr. was not an unprovoked instigator of the incident that led to his suspension. Dinsdale Jr. pushed this boy, after he called Dinsdale Jr.’s mother “a dildo, a whore, and a homosexual.” Dinsdale Jr. did not hit the child with a book, until after the boy kicked Dinsdale Jr. in the chest hard enough to knock the wind out of him.

We note that Dinsdale Jr. immediately removed himself from the locker room, to end the altercation. We further note that the other boy immediately thereafter instigated another confrontation with another boy, which resulted in that boy having an injured finger placed in a splint. It is our understanding that this version of the situation was corroborated by several witnesses. In fact, all of the witnesses presented a similar version of the events, with the exception of the instigator. Please inform us if this differs from what you have learned of this event.

We question the extent to which this event was the result of inadequate supervision in the school, and inadequate discipline of this individual, despite having been notified of his behavior. There was no adult present in the locker room on the morning of ***, when this child verbally assaulted several boys, and instigated physical conflicts with two of them. Nor are we aware of any school personnel having taken steps to prevent this child from verbally harassing my son and other children on a regular and ongoing basis. We urge the school to take appropriate steps to supervise its students in the future, to ensure that our children will not face the need to protect themselves against an ongoing and escalating series of verbal assaults.

As we stated above, we are not requesting appeal of this suspension so long as a copy of this letter is included within Dinsdale Jr.’s records. If the school is unwilling to accommodate this request, please inform us immediately so that we may evaluate our options, including potential appeal of the suspension.*

14

War may not be the answer but a good short and violent fight sure as hell is. IMHO.

15

Let me run this by y’all and see what kinds of holes you can poke into it. It may or may not help the OP.

In our house, there is no “no-hitting” rule. There is a process by which you are expected to handle conflict, however. It sounds complicated when articulated, but in practice, it’s pretty easy. I stole it from a mother of two girls who are 11 months apart, and for whom sibling rivalry is an understatement.

Obviously, if any step resolves the problem, you stop the process.

  1. Verbal request. “Hey, stop doing that, please. I don’t like it!”
  2. Remove yourself from the offender. Walk away.
  3. Request adult intervention or peer counseling.
  4. Repeat verbal request, and add a warning. “Please stop doing that. If you don’t, I will slug you.”
  5. Slug.

The teaching of a safe and proper punch must accompany this, of course. There’s no sense throwing a wimpy or force-less or dangerous (trachea) punch at a bully, as **martiju **found out.

I think it’s the best I’ve seen balancing peaceful resolution with not being a victim. The offending party has been given ample opportunity to stop offending before physical force is resorted to.

I also suspect that if I were being bullied, knowing that I had a safe and allowable procedure to follow would make me not feel so powerless. I might still get in trouble with school, but if I followed the procedure, I’d know my parents would back me up, and that’s what’s important.

As a parent, I’d support my kid if he followed the procedure, even if it means he gets suspended or expelled. I’d be less likely to support him if he hauled off and starting hitting without trying to resolve it peacefully first.

16

Being a quiet, shy, nonconfrontational kid, I dealt with a few bullies in middle school and high school. The only fight I ever got in was in 7th grade, where this guy was hassling me and talking shit and pushing me in the bathroom. After a few days of trying to ignore him and laugh it off, I got fed up, punched him, and pushed him forcefully into a floor-length urinal, holding him and flushing quickly a few times with the hand lever, drenching the front of his clothes with water. Nobody got in trouble – the band director heard there was a “water fight” in the bathroom (what the hell would that involve, kids splashing each other?) and told our class to quit water-fighting or there would be hell to pay. The kid stopped busting my chops, and we later became acquaintances, although never friends. The incident was never mentioned again.

In high school, luckily bullies were more interested in humiliating and making their victims feel small, at least in my case. When real fights broke out in my high school, people ended up hospitalized, like one poor kid who got piledrivered head-first into the pavement by a bully and ended up with irreversible brain damage. A guy I knew got beaten up by a jock-type who was on metal crutches at the time, and used them as a weapon to hit my friend repeatedly. Often a bunch of people would jump in and take cheap shots on the victim. The worst thing that ever happened to me was waiting to be picked up after school one day when four huge weightlifters (all school football players) pushed me down, grabbed my saxophone case out of my hands, and ran away with it. They stood around on the outer steps where I could see them, tossing it to each other and laughing hysterically, and there was no way I could have overpowered any of them to get it back. I was more concerned about the cost of my instrument at the time, and what would happen if they smashed it or just decided to steal it, but the whole incident was terrifying and humiliating, and even thinking back about it makes my stomach feel queasy.

17

I think one of the most pernicious bits of nonsense to have entered our culture is the idea that the bully is actually a big pussy and will crumple up and start crying as soon as he is hit.
I would really admire bullies if that were the case. That kind of bluff would take a real pair of stones.

18

This is a difficult situation. That is exactly why I posted it here… There seems to be quite a bit of info on the subject and I thank everyone for sharing.

The nephew is riding a school bus not a city bus. And I am not condoning hitting the bully - but I am conserned that PC Bullshit will adversly affect the young lad. The middle ground is what I am looking for, and I believe if he speaks with his Karate teacher and say’s something like… “I don’t want to learn how to kick the bully’s ass, I just want to be able to defend myself with dignity…” I think he will learn very well… Anyone agree?

19

Yeah, I think that image is definitely BS, but my WAG is that there is some truth to the idea that - like many/most predators - bullies prefer easier victims. It might be worth 1 grade school tussle, in order to lessen the likelihood of continual hassles.

20

The nephew is 7 years old.
I’m worried he will become tormented and this bullying will follow him for the rest of his life ad nauseam.