Vile text

Tell the school as they are both at the school and have to see each other every day. The school needs to know so they can keep an eye on the situation.

You may find the mother is very very protective of her son, and may want to minimise it and you need the school to mediate. Otherwise can come across as you telling the other mother off.

Its not about vilifying the other boy, but the school getting to the bottom of why he did it and making sure he understands why it was wrong. In Year 6, they need guidance. You also need the school to make sure that your son's reporting of it is not resented.

I'd wait until I heard back from the mum. One of mine received a similar (though not so vile) text from a friend and it turned out they had been dared to send that message to everyone in their contacts and had done so. That was Y6 too. The mother was mortified and handled the situation herself; so reporting it to the school would have added an extra layer of stress in that case.

DSs school actively want to know about incidents like this. There are a lot of safeguarding issues for both your DS and the other boy.

The actions of the sender are a criminal offence with a punishment of up to 5 years in prison - the OP should take this to the police.

The OPs son is 'lucky' - many children have taken their own lives in similar circumstances.

Emails have this handy feature where you can open them when it suits you.
Sending it now would mean for sure the Head will see it as soon as (s)he gets to work tomorrow.

I mean I disagree with kids having smartphones too but this comment doesn't help the kid is a vile shit and could easily have sent that over text or said it to ops son's face. Not having WhatsApp wouldn't of stopped it

the message could have been sent by regular text. It having been sent on WhatsApp is irrelevant.

I wouldn’t tell my kids’ school. What for? I don’t have all the information and I don’t know what the repercussions would be for the text sender. I’m totally against schools replacing parents, and becoming “hubs” for the raising of children.

I would raise it directly with both parents, not just the one I know more.

10yo boys are pushing all sorts of boundaries imo, really testing to see what they can get away with, how emboldened they can get away with being, and trying to assert themselves (which, given they have nothing to assert at 10yo, often manifests as hollow bravado). The rare one who does have something to assert (the ones who are exceptional at something) tend not to behave like this. But generally speaking this is quite age appropriate, even if it’s shocking to us because of the language used (you can’t walk down a street these days without hearing some form of swearing, it seems).

I didn’t allow my DC tech at that age, but it seems you have a healthy approach to it as a family so I don’t think there’s anything to address there. WhatsApp was just the medium by which the sending boy expressed something. It could just as well have been playground chat.

See what the mother says and take it from there. It may not have been her child who sent the message from that phone. And certainly no, I wouldn’t be telling the school.

Irrelevant. The message could have been sent on paper.

I'd definitely tell the school and if I was parent of the child who sent this, I'd be extremely concerned too.

This is how serious this text was - encouraging someone to 'self harm' (ie as far as to kill themselves in this case) is punishable by up to 5 years in jail whether the victim self harms or not. They didnt pass this law because these actions had no devasting consequences.....

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/trolls-who-encourage-serious-self-harm-to-face-jail

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/about-us/news-opinion/2023/2023-09-19-the-online-safety-bill-has-been-passed-in-a-momentous-day-for-children/

WhatsApp is far more likely to be used by young people at least 3 years older than the OP's son, which is why some posters have been critical of it. We don't know for sure if the friends did sent the WhatsApp message, or if someone else influenced him. As a pp said, WhatsApp is seen very differently be teenagers than traditional texting

There isn’t any reason at all to not share this information with the school. Don’t keep quiet about it. Silence is a form of collusion, your son who received this text, and the boy that sent it, needs to see that this type of behaviour is taken seriously.

I am a primary teacher. Absolutely tell school, and ask for a meeting with the safeguarding lead rather than just trying to catch the class teacher. They will want to know and this may add to a pattern of evidence about something going on with that child about which you are not aware. He may be being abused or bullied by older children or exposed to inappropriate things.
I'd also take WhatsApp off your child's phone.

It's good to keep checking his phone too.

When I taught Y6 in London we had an absolutely horrendous outbreak of cyberbullying and had to get the police involved. Not to mention Y6 girls in nightwear Facetiming adult men when their parents assumed they were asleep. Take your child's devices out of their rooms at night!!!

How do you know someone else hasn't got the phone and don't it. Dosent mean the actual friend did it.
I'd hope to get some sort of response from the mum and block his number in the meantime.

The message would have been sent by text if there was no WhatsApp. It’s not social media in the sense you mean. It’s no different from traditional messaging (which can be done on a ‘dumb’ phone too).

This has reminded me of a tragedy I read about. A teenage girl was told to kill herself by bullies in school. She did.

Teacher here (obv).

I can tell you that this sort of incident happens every single year without fail in probably every Y6 class up and down the country.

The staff can teach eSafety lessons until they're blue in the face, telling kids that this is unacceptable, blah blah blah and the kids instantly forget everything they know when at home on apps like WhatsApp, TikTok, etc. It's such a grey area as schools have absolutely no power in removing devices or access at home. That's 100% on the parents. School should be aware of it though.

And it IS different from writing something horrible on paper. Namely as it can be shared numerous times and never reliably deleted.

Be prepared for the mother to deny her child had any part in it - the amount of times parents have insisted their kids don't even KNOW those horrible words even when presented with a screenshot is mind-boggling...

It’s not social media. It’s a messaging app. Same as text messages - just sometimes cheaper.

It’s literally just messaging. The OP has limited that to just friends.

I would email the school headteacher today so it's on the radar first thing in the morning. But I would send the email before the mum replies because I wouldn't want to be discouraged from doing so in an apologetic text. You have to protect your child and you have a duty to report safeguarding concerns for the other child.

That is nasty.

I'd be thankful that that isn't the act of me or any of my children

Please mention it to the school. There could be many other things that this child has done and it could be another piece of the jigsaw. If he’s using foul language he will be hearing it from somewhere and school may already have concerns. I can promise you that they will take you seriously (but may not say much!). Ask for the safeguarding lead.

The swearing would annoy me but the sexual language I would definitely raise with the school.

100% mention it to school, apart from anything else (safeguarding etc as others have said), your son is likely to feel quite sensitive tomorrow so they need to keep an eye on the situation.

Make sure you tell him to hold his head up high in this situation, he absolutely did the right thing in telling you but as others have said if he’d prefer to blame you for checking his friend let his teacher know he would rather this be the narrative.