Vile text

Children have ended their lives over messages like this. If the school knows they can take steps to address it, maybe by doing a school assembly on online safety for instance, looking at their rules, and checking on the welfare of the children involved.

Because it is a safeguarding issue. I work in a school and children and parents are encouraged to report these things. If you RTFT there are a lot of teachers and safeguarding staff here saying the same thing.

What on earth has it to do with the school? Can't believe the number of people on here who think it has anything to do with it. People shoving responsibility onto others.

Not judging your decision at all - but it is possible that the message is a copy & paste job from elsewhere on the web.

Please report this to the safeguarding team at school. This child may need some help.

I doubt this is an isolated incident.

So, the child writing messages about other students … and the head responds that your child shouldn’t have a phone and is part to blame.

What about the kids who are being called names on “class chat” that don’t have phones. They are not at fault because they don’t have phones but vile child is still calling them names and others can see it?

The head, blaming you and your child for having a phone is a shitty response to online abuse being perpetrated by another student.

Head is still shitty. The vile child lost a lot of friends once one of the other parents shared his abusive chats with the class parents on WhatsApp. That mum might have handled it more sensitively if the head didn’t also told her it was her fault for allowing her child a phone.

Definitely tell school, this is a major safeguarding issue which they need to be aware of.

I'd suggest you raise it with the safeguarding lead at the school, just in case there is something happening to the boy that sent it, that triggered this.
And it's very unlikely that your son is the only child that has received an inappropriate message from this boy.

I'm a bit conflicted due to the young age but I'd also ask the safeguarding lead whether you should report it to the police as technically this is cyberbullying - maybe the local police could do a talk at the school on it?

@JustWondering222 how are you going to proceed? Did the mum give any explanation or……….something? Anything?

I admit I’d have a hard time trusting him again. That was slightly more than stupidity.

The school needs to know because it actually raises a safeguarding concern that this child has awareness of phrases such as ‘eat pussy’. Where the hell has he learnt that from?

Definitely raise this with school.

But sadly this is what will happen if you let kids who are far too young have unsupervised access to the internet and WhatsApp. If he plays out and needs it, fine, but surely a brick phone which sends text messages would suffice- there’s just no need for a smart phone at all at 10 years old.

My school would definitely want to know, and in a similar recent situation took the opportunity to have a year group assembly on social media use.

i agree with the school 10 is too young for a phone and certainly for social media. I am not saying that the other child was right or it was ok to send a message like that or that he should not have been punished but no phone and this would not have happened.

I don’t like parents that complain to teachers and when given a completely logical suggestion decide it’s a “shitty” head as the answer is not liked !

@JustWondering222 I would absolutely 100% contact the school. This messages was NOT acceptable, and the boy needs to understand the severity of sending a message like that. Given his age, then he is no doubt repeating words he has heard and hopefully doesn't know the meaning of them, but if he was a few years older then it's likely the police would have been called.

PS - 10 year olds having phones on them has shown to be the opposite of safe. Near misses with cars when crossing roads, targets for theft etc... If it was for safety it would be in a bag, not on show and ideally not a smart phone!

Hoping OP isn’t replying because she’s getting this nightmare sorted.

Hopefully the other mum isn’t a deluded parent

I think this is a different poster who said she saw it immediately, or a name change fail?

The school 100 percent needs to know. They might take the view that it’s “outside” school but still need to know.

Also be prepared for the lecture about phone use etc.

We experienced similar - shitty school head took view it was outside of school, and child too young for phone/“social media” & so my fault?,completely ignoring the vile things sent by other child. It was violation of their own school policy!!! I said I was going to police to make a report (the child mum was a PC which made this more awful as didn’t know how it would be handled)
School did “punish” the other child. But said mine was to blame as well for defending himself by saying “please stop, I’m am not ..”. My DC first say anything rude. Other child parents avoided me for next few years. This boy had said a lot of awful things about other kids too.

Yes I would raise it with school. They should have a cyber bullying policy that sits alongside the regular behaviour / bullying policy. Maybe take a look at these if you get chance.

The whole issue is about whether she has seen it or not, I would not rely on a text message either voice or face to face that is the best way to solve most issues. Sending messages is easy and if it works great if it works use another form of communication, to suggest getting the police involved before you have spoken to other parent because they may not have received your chosen form of communication is stupid !

also she has said the child is 10 the age of criminal responsibility is 12 what do you think the police can or will do ?

No, I don’t, but speaking for myself if I got a message with evidence my child had sent an email like that to another child, my first reaction would be to contact the other parent ASAP to assure them that I’m dealing with it - not least to try to prevent them escalating to the school, or, given that it’s an offence, to the police. So either she hasn’t seen it, or isn’t concerned enough to respond. As the parent of the recipient I would also be screen shotting the message before it’s deleted.