to get DP to go round to a bully's house, get his dad out and...

[Parentbeater]

A HORRIBLE boy is bullying my nephew. Making his life a misery. Dp is no thug but he's hard. Is it wrong for my DP to go round his house, make the boy get his dad and tell the boy infront of his dad:

'Everytime you hit my nephew, I'm going to come round here and hit your dad.'

I very much doubt the kid will hit my nephew again, so no need for adult violence overall..

...so how wrong is this.. on a scale of 1-10.

10 being absolutely disgraceful

1 being the best bloody solution you've ever heared and you think you're going to try it yourself lol

[VictorianSqualor]

LOL
10, sorry., but you knew this didn't you

BTW, all children think their daddy/brother/uncle is superman, the boy would just think his Daddy would leather your DH, so it wouldn't stop anything.

[theSuburbanDryad]

I think it goes all the way up to 11.

11 being Fuck off Troll. lol

[Parentbeater]

Oh I'm not a troll, I am a regular, just name changed to hide such a shameful fantasy lol

We do all secretly want to do this to bullys though don't we?

[theSuburbanDryad]

No. Not really. I'd just like to get them to see the Error of their ways.

[ImnotOK]

trip trap

[KatieDD]

What ?
No because we are civilised

[Parentbeater]

I was joking...

...I thought it was obvious...

...obviously not v.funny eh

[Ivegotaheadache]

1

[squilly]

I love the idea. But we all know it's wrong. How many of us have thought it though???

And my dad, in his day, was definitely bigger than your dad (well, if not bigger, harder...he was like rock!).

Sadly, dd wouldn't come out of this so well. Maybe that's why she's so nice to other kids though. She knows she wouldn't dare be bad to other kids as their dads could beat up her dad.

Perhaps it's a good incentive to encourage kids to behave?? the my dad'll beat up your dad if you do something bad to me

[Hecate]

to do it - 10
to want to do it - 0


Most people do want to do horrible horrible things to those who hurt their kids, it's called loving them" , don't fret.

[colacubes]

I have done it, my ds was bullied by 2 boys for years, they were absolutley disgusting, their mums were two cant be arsed kinda mums, no matter how I tried to ask for help they were more interested in, Mum No 1 robbing the old folk at the post office, (true), the 2nd her turkish bf.

In the end i would go around there guns blazing and say exactly that...

Didnt work, they didnt care about their kids so def didnt care about what I did!

[LittleBella]

Hmm I'm not sure about wanting to do it tbh. Most bullies are that way because they are themselves being bullied at home, by their parents or because they are going through a horrible time emotionally (such as their parent's break-up, grandmother's death etc. etc.) and haven't got the emotional maturity to express their rage/ grief etc. by any means other than being farking horrible to other kids.

I can't bring myself to feel that much anger and fury with a child and always find it disturbing when adults express such inappropriate anger (sorry, but I do, I think we should be more mature than children). But with their parents... ooh yes there are times I have felt incandescent, quite possibly unjustly in some cases but I know in others, quite justly.

[Heated]

My FIL was exactly this kind of father. Lived in a tough mining village and on a couple of occasions intervened, once on dh's behalf when a lad & once on behalf of a boy without a dad. He was never physical but you don't want to get on the wrong side of my FIL - and he's about my height!

[FrodosGirl]

We did it and it worked !
Well DP went to the bullys house with DS to explain and ask for help, not to threaten, and the parents were actually understanding and punished the bully. <br /> When the bully still did not stop, DP and DS went there again and the bullys mother even gave DS her mobile no for DS to call her if he was bullied again, then it stopped.

Worth a go, gave ds some self esteem back again too.

[squilly]

LittleBella, the OP wasn't talking about hurting the child. She was talking about her DP going round the child's house and threatening the bully's father with physical pain if the kid hurt her nephew again.

I think that would address the bullying child having a horrible time at home, if that was the case, by ensuring his dad knows just how it feels to be physically threatened/intimidated too!

I also think it's too easy to make excuses for children who hurt others. When do you stop making excuses for them and make them take responsibility for their actions? Are they old enough at 6 to understand it's wrong to hurt others? Or should we wait til they're 16? or 18? Surely if they're not taught young, they don't ever learn.

I'm not saying I have any answers, but surely, at some point the inappropriately angry child has to be made to face the music, or they become inappropriately angry young adults. And then you end up with stabbings in the street...

It's a tough one to address and no mistake but I, for one, am not fond of excusing kids who hurt others.

[LittleBella]

I'm not excusing kids who hurt others, Squilly, and I'm perfectly aware that the OP is not talking about hurting the child and also that she is initiating a discussion rather than proposing a serious solution.

I just think expressions of primal rage against children are rather frightening and not very constructive, however understandable.

I am also astonished by your lack of insight into bullies when you assert that threatening a bullying adult with violence would stop him bullying his child. Er, no, it would make him punish him even more. And so the child might stop bullying your child (hurrah!) but he would go on to bully someone else's (boo!)

I really don't know where you can get from my post that I want to excuse bullying. I just don't think the way to stop it is by counter-bullying.

[LittleBella]

And I am the mother of a child who has been bullied btw, so am very familiar with the old primal rage.

[FrodosGirl]

Would like to add, the child that was bullying DS, was not from a bad home and the punishments he got from parents were not violent. Also his two brothers were nice to ds. Not all bullyies come from bad backgrounds.

[LittleBella]

Oh totally agree FG, it would be simplistic to assert that. But I didn't. I was careful to say "most", not "all".
Depending on age, some bullying is about normal kid's power play and flexing muscles. Which if not reined in, goes too far. Which is why the supervising adults really need to be aware of the different dynamics.

What always troubles me, is how rife bullying is in schools, how many anti-bullying (lip-service) policies schools have, and yet how ineffective they seem to be in so many schools. IMO it really isn't generally dealt with or pre-empted effectively and yet there's been an awareness of the problem as a real problem, not just a "stand up for yerself, boy" thing, for at least 20 years. Most schools still haven't got a handle on it to my mind and I suspect there's something in the way we organise our institutions that encourages it. (After all, workplace bullying is only now being acknowledged as a real phenomenon and problem.)

[squilly]

I was bullied as a child pretty relentlessly from the age of 13 onwards. Made me suicidal, so I know bullying from the receiving side of the equation. Hence my desire not to excuse bullies in any way, which your initial post certainly seemed to do. If that wasn't the intent, then perhaps that's my misunderstanding. It was perhaps the statement that most bullies are just reacting to being bullied at home. This isn't always the case...but then perhaps our experiences in this regard have been very different.

In terms of expressions of primal rage against children, I never expressed any rage at any child. I do, however, think that the parents of the child in the OP need to be made aware of and responsible for the situation. That way, perhaps there's some chance of resolution.

I had assumed, as had most of the other people on this post, I'm sure, that the the OP was kidding when she said about her DP going round and threatening the bully's dad.

And it's an urge I certainly understand having endured 3 years of pushing and shoving that finally ended when I got pushed down the stairs by several of my class mates.

These children were not from bad homes. As Frodosgirl points out...not all bullies are. They were just arrogant, stuck up and got caught up in thuggish, gang-type behaviour.

I was the one from a rough background, laced with physical abuse, but I, strangely enough, felt no need to bully others. And these children were all 'well to do'...from the nice/privately owned houses. Hence their 'unexpressable rage' at my doing well and taking the valuable top class place of their equally well to do, but unfortunately somewhat dim, friends!

The results, regardless of any intent, was almost fatal. Regardless of this, I have no rage, but just rather well grounded dislike for bullies.

I hope, by the way, that you managed to sort out the problem with your own child. It's the most unpleasant situation to be in and I can truly empathise...

[Quattrocento]

I think that being bullied can damage and hurt children more than we realise. DH still bears the literal and metaphorical scars from childhood bullying.

Do I think you should address the parents with the issue? Yes, but probably not with fists first.

[squilly]

I think the psychological scars are the ones that don't ever heal really.

Having said that, I think that being bullied made me much stronger in my late teens. It made me more bloody minded and a bit more resillient perhaps. I still, however, have a deep seated fear that people don't like me (and I come on Mumsnet...how perverse is that!?! ).

Seriously, though, despite a very confident persona in most aspects of life, I often have phases where I don't think people like me much. And I do think I could have achieved more, had I not been bullied. My confidence wasn't great anyway thanks to treatment at home and a short period of abuse by a neighbour, but you get to a stage where you either get on with life or give up.

I hope that the OP's nephew manages to get through this in one piece (which lets face it, is the most worrying aspect of bullying in todays society) and that the situation gets resolved somehow.

[LittleBella]

TBH I don't think it's worth addressing the issues with the parents first Quattrocento. Most of the bullies I've come across would have parents who would say things along the lines of "boys will be boys" "gotta stand up for themselves" "sort it out among themselves" etc. Which of course is right when it's just normal childhood disagreement, but these particular people simply don't understand when the line is crossed into bullying. And often if they do, their response is to bully their children more, not to work towards solving the problem.

Squilly you don't have some kind of gateway to the truth about this issue just because you were bullied as a child. So was I, so was my brother (who I can genuinely say has had his whole bloody life affected by it, I honestly don't think it's overstating the case to believe that the horrific bullying he endured in his teens played a part in his subsequent depression and alcoholism) but I still don't think expressing rage at a child (which I never accused you of doing btw so I don't know why you're bothering to refute it), is a constructive adult response.

As for your well-grounded dislike of bullies, I don't really know what you mean by that. All of us, in different circumstances, can either be bullies or victims of bullies. I hope I've never been the former (I have definitely been the latter, both at school and in the workplace), but I don't cut them off as some kind of "other". Given the right circumstances, even decent, nice people can become bullies / part of the mob. I don't think it's helpful to pretend they have different instincts/ behaviour to normal people. As you rightly point out, in some instances they are normal people. Ringleaders OTOH, usually have extra "ishoos" though not always, of course, I agree with you there.

I still haven't got to the bottom of what is going on with DS tbh and it's an almost impossible task to get information out of him or the school. It seems to have been ongoing for some time and everyone is in denial about it. But anyway, that's another thread maybe some day.

[LittleBella]

Although I hope it's not another thread, I'm hoping the problem is solved when he goes back in September.

Which btw OP, is another straw to cling to? Things can change an awful lot during school holidays.