AIBU to think 'hit them back' is inappropriate to tell a 5 year old?

But in your situation, with no one being hit in the first place, it seems pointless to even be discussing it. If he was being hit then you might have a discussion about how to physically protect himself as well as the importance of reporting it to teachers, playground assistants. But introducing the idea of hitting as a response to non-physical bullying isn't very smart of your DH and is just confusing, for a NT child too.

We've told DD1 (5) that if someone is about to hit or hurt her, that she can push them away from her if she needs to. So not hitting back as that feels more like tit for tat, but I do think it's important that children feel they can defend themselves physically from being hurt/struck in the first place rather than just letting it happen and then going to find a teacher. Obviously she knows all the other stuff too: communication, telling a teacher.

What happens when the bully comes back with his big brother?

You teach what I set out in my first post. You do teach a child to hit. Comparing an adult to a child tells me loads.

We see it very differently then.

why should a child be repeatedly/ frequently assaulted by anyone and not defend themselves? Are you saying you’d allow yourself to be hit and not defend yourself? Would you tell others to accept it?

I doubt it.

No you gave your child a pass for violence. HTH.

As a former autistic child and now autistic adult, I wish adults hadn’t told me ‘you must never hit back’ because that’s what my literal brain told me as the punches rained down on me on many occasions. Who benefited out of that?

I remember my now husband pummelling a guy in a pub who tried to glass him completely unprovoked when we were students and I just remember thinking ‘I would have died in that situation because I didn’t stick up for myself’. I was amazed he had time confidence to actually put this other guy in his place, because I wouldn’t have been able to do that.

I logged back into my MN account to write this because even as a 34 year old it sticks with me. Give your children permission to stick up for themselves. Some kids need a good slap back and they won’t try it again, and it’s easier to practice on a fellow gobby 8 year old shite than to have to do it the first time on a grown man.

Some people don’t understand that some people will push and push at boundaries until they feel the consequences. That’s a useful lesson for any kid to learn.

I think a lot of the ‘never hit back’ crowd have never been properly beaten up in their lives tbh.

My child defended himself against another child assaulting him. HTH.

@forgotmypassagain so you can't see that your child has now assaulted another child?
Exactly how, now he has parental approval are you expecting him to differentiate the next time he has a run in. What if it is a younger child with Sen? with a peer name calling?

Because this is the problem you have created a child who now equates violence with problem solving. Congratulations

Well thankfully my son has not had hands laid on him again (incident happened over a year ago) and I put this down to standing up for himself so whilst what you’ve mentioned is your experience I’m grateful it’s not been mine! When i say he put him on his backside I mean it. I was quite shocked that he had it in him as he is mild mannered and had never been involved in any sort of fight (other than being hit by this child on previous occasions) but I guess people snap.

i will say that the school was not impressed that DS had flattened the kid but my DH and I backed our son to the hilt and we made it clear he’d do it again if the child assaulted him again and we wouldn’t be reprimanding him as there were numerous witnesses including playground staff who saw the whole incident.

Nobody should ever tell a child to hit. Honestly what is wrong with people. They look and complain about the increase of violence and ironically can't see the correlation.

Self defense isn't able hitting back. The first step is get away get help. The second stage of defence is about blocking, get away get help. Finally if trapped then and only then you use defence movements.

Telling a child who has communication challenges and expectation of insight beyond their age is very unfair.

I see this on here a lot, but I have never seen it in real life , actually working with kids.

What I have seen is proper , constant fights that keep going on and on.

Fights starting over a comment , or a look , or an accidental touch.

Kids crying for being in trouble because they escalated a situation.

Kids crying because they actually hurt someone over something stupid.

Boys, mainly, struggling with being a pretty decent kid and the "advice" from home to stand up for themselves, be a man , hit them back.

I've never , ever seen in 10 years, at various schools, an incident of punched once and nothing ever happened again.

I don't think it's ever appropriate to tell a child to do this (unless they were older and mugged or something)

I’m at the opposite end of a similar situation at my youngest’s primary. There is a child with possible sen who hits, shouts at, and snatches things from him - he was told constantly to walk away / ignore him but I was told nothing. A few weeks ago my son had a few bad ‘falls’ - nose bleeds, scraped knees. School said he was running and banged into someone. DS told me that the boy kept pushed him and so he tried to run away as fast as he could. We’ve seen discovered this was going on since preschool and neither set of parents was informed and actually the other boy’s parents were about to make a bullying complaint against my son / other kids running away from him.

So if I were you I would demand a meeting with the teacher to discuss exactly what’s going on. There needs to be better supervision in the playground but don’t immediately assume your child is innocent because the teachers didn’t notice.

I wasn't telling anyone to do anything. Just saying what I told my kids.

It's terrible advice, especially for an autistic child who may not always know what other people's intentions are.

If bullies know that they can provoke him into hitting them, it's extremely easy for them to make sure the teacher doesn't see the provocation but does see the reaction, with the end result that DS gets in trouble and the bully walks away with a mild bruise at worst.

Or, in the case of my nephew after SIL told him to do this, he couldn't tell the difference between on purpose and by accident, so within a few months he'd punched several children who accidentally jostled him in the line, one who stepped on his hand when walking across the carpet, and bitten his TA who knocked his hand whilst helping him with pencil grip.

I teach mine that if someone hits you then you hit them back.

there’s a boy in my younger son’s class who can be very violent (they’re 8) and unpredictable. He’s hit a lot of the boys in the class including my son a few times who had a burst lip and a bruised cheek on separate occasions. Other kids have had similar. Strangely enough he’s never hit my son again since he clocked my DS in the face out of the blue in the playground my DS put him on his backside with a pretty explosive retaliation.

Fair enough but please don’t tell people to do that.
The world has changed so much since even mine just adults were born.
We really need parents to start backing school and school rules. It is having a massive impact on education.

They're 23 and 27 now. Popular, happy, working. They're good thanks.

Your DH was being stupid. Even more so when your son has ASD, is only 5 AND wasn't being hit to begin with.

He sees that now, but it's too little too late.

On the friendship side, talk to the teacher again . Make it clear he does NOT want to be alone and would like to make some friends. Are there no other quieter boys in the class that have varied interests? Could you arrange some playdates with them?

What's the issue with the girls? Is it because the other boys will laugh at him/call him names if he plays with them? If yes, then bring that up with the school as well.

Does the school do anything to support the social side ? Like small groups of colouring/lego/board games etc.

But no ones hit him... that's the point.

Just to add - I have occasionally taught children who genuinely wanted to be alone. Those children politely refuse to interact when invited to play and tell the adults at school that they want to play alone or read. Parents seem to find that upsetting. But it doesn't seem to be the case for your son. I am really just addressing the fact that some pp think the teacher is wrong to suggest that he might like being alone - it does happen.

I think you should talk to the teacher again. They need to find out why the boys are running away.

If ds does or says something that upsets them then the teacher can put things in place to support his social skills and communication.

If the boys are being unkind then that also obviously should be dealt with.

I would also ask the teacher to encourage some friendships with the people who do enjoy interacting with him, and then encourage those friendships yourself too.

Would a social story help him to understand that friendships should be with kind people regardless of gender.

There is really a lot that can be done to encourage friendship. In lots of years of teaching I have never been unable to help a child to make at least one friendship.

It’s wrong to encourage him to be violent. Perhaps it’s better to try to get the staff involved - it’s quite likely that they have strategies to deal with the other boys’ behaviour, which sounds to be bullying.

I would also not be happy at all with the school for saying maybe he likes being alone, that is absolute bullshit and a cop out.

Most schools now have buddy systems and things in place to help children struggling with friendship issues, they need to do more for him. I'd be arranging to speak with the teacher to find out what they are going to to do help, try and understand more about what exactly he is struggling with with friendships, why these boys are behaving this way towards him etc.

They know the children better than anyone, there will be kids in the class/school he will no doubt get on better with, he just needs help finding them.