Do you teach your child to hit back?

I'm surprised by all the posters who seem to see hitting back and defending = a continued assault on the bully!
Every poster who advocates hit back is saying the same, a good punch/kick to get them off you, not a barrage of violence!

I taught both my daughters a thumb hold that causes severe pain and can even break the bone.
Only my youngest ever broke her assailants thumb.

Viewers in Scotland get
-are you sure they hit you?
-you really need to move when you think they're going to hit you.
'Why aren't you moving out of their way? You know you're going to be hit...sigh'
School only acknowledged there was an issue when bully walked up to a child in the class, pushed them off their chair and started hitting them for no reason, although they still tried the 'all behaviour is communication' schtick.. 'they MUST have done something to upset him' ...

I just worry that telling Tristan to hit back is fine, presuming he's strong enough. If he's ineffectual, it gives bully a 'reason' to beat the shit out of him..
Taking to self-defense classes is good for confidence but ineffective practically unless very well practised, which takes time. years
I knew a kid who started karate, tried brazening it out with a bully, and ended up in A&E because he thought telling them would make them leave him alone..🤔

Yes I do.
In fact, a girl hit my Dd only last week. Dd hit her back and said "don't ever do that to me again" and the girl went off. Hopefully that's put an end to any nonsense.

My ds' have always been taught to hit back too and it's given them the confidence to intervene when they've seen bullying going on.

I don't teach them to strike back - I leave that to my boys' martial arts instructors, who teach skills such as de-escalation to avoid the fight, self-defence and ground defence alongside how to strike effectively and use of various weapons. They do a decent amount of sparring which I hope will help my boys to maintain cooler heads and make good decisions if/when a fight is for real.

Definitely not, the likelihood is that if they hit back the fight will get bigger and they will end up getting more hurt. We don't use our hands to solve our problems. I teach my child to walk away and tell an adult.
If they grow up thinking it's alright to hit back they'll probably end up getting arrested at some point in life.

We've practiced the 1-2-3's since nursery:

1. If another child is bullying you, tell them to stop.
2. If that child doesn't stop, get an adult to intervene.
3. If the adult doesn't intervene and the child does it again, then game on!

Both my children have gotten into scraps, but so long as they follow the 1-2-3's, they haven't gotten into too much trouble after candid discussions with SLT. If an adult doesn't intervene, it becomes a safeguarding issue for my children. One child got detention once, but the bully got it much worse (after my child floored the bully after the bully pulled the first punch).

Oh get over yourself

Bullying is everywhere from state schools to the poshest most expensive private schools

You must live in a bizarre bubble

YANBU - but I warned them that it was a last case scenario and if they hit first they would get punished by me as well as the school.

But bullies can be smart, and teachers either don't always see what's going on, have to tip toe around 'rules' or don't give a fuck.

I warned one teacher that if the other child's behaviour continued (low level bullying but still hurting DS) then my DS was likely to hit him back and he said "fair enough" because he was limited in what he could do against the behaviour.

I also told my DSs that I would want them to talk to me about any situation so that if it was a 'build up' situation we could try to work out a way of diffusing the situation.

Yes I always have done.

No, I taught her to ask them to stop, or try and get away from them. Worst case scenario, roll up into a ball and put your hands over your head. Oh, and make a lot of noise to attract attention.

I encounter workplace violence on an infrequent basis (public transport) so I know the consequences of escalating a physical argument.

Yes because if someone hit me I would most certainly hit them back so I won’t take that right away from my child. If they were hit in school and they retaliated they wouldn’t be in any trouble from me, regardless of what school said.

Hit back, not first though.

Good luck with reporting little Johnny to the police.

You really do live in la la land.

Of course you can teach kids that hitting is wrong as well as if you have to and they haven't suddenly socialised to become violent!

What an overly simplist and one dimensional view of the world.

I'm glad I credit my child with being able to cope with a sophisticated understanding of life rather than little more than caveman.

I've always stood up against bullies and taught my children to. Bullies are cowards and usually back off if you refuse to be victimised and fight back. To this day I still do.

My experience is that Police Scotland are even more hands off when a Looked After Child is involved. One attacked a young probationer in my department. The pupil was twice the size of the teacher.

I told my Depute that if he didn't call the police then I would. Police came in and interviewed us. "We'll leave it in the hands of the school."

The pupil concerned was to do their work for our department in The [Pastoral] Base and was warned to stay away from the teacher. I had to intervene when they came back to the teacher's classroom.

I mentioned upthread that a boy at my school held a screwdriver to a girl's throat. This happened in an actual classroom after he objected to a retort that the girl had made.

Said boy was said to have difficulties because of ND and a physical problem affecting his appearance and causing low self-esteem. Nothing was done.

In fact his parent gave him a mini computer game to "keep him calm". Yes, he kept bringing it out in class, but that's another tale.

"Except for viewers in Scotland."

Unfortunately, not all parents can manage to move their children.

I was taught to "just ignore them". So I did, and they punched me, slapped me and bullied me, constantly and consistently for years, and I have lifelong trauma that causes me to disassociate when I'm scared.

So my advice is: if someone hits you, you put them on on the floor, no question.

Yes, but not to hit first, if someone hits you hit them hard and show them you won't be bullied. Don't let anyone walk over you, they will use it as a weakness and use it against you.

Not everywhere is England.
The Scottish government made a commitment to end exclusions entirely by 2024, especially in the case of “looked after” children or children who have experienced care. They are not excluded. I think they have to commit serious sexual assault or stab someone to be removed from a school.

My son’s bully went through the care system and is adopted. There is absolutely zero percent chance that he will ever be excluded unless he stabbed my son, and even then I suspect he would only be removed if he was locked up. Zero percent.

I’ve been through it all. The school complaint process, the local authority process and the police. Nothing has been done. My son has been choked out several times, violently attacked. A straight kick to the spine out of nowhere. Over and over. Absolutely nothing is done other than talking to, out of class for the day, kept in at lunch and break for a few days, and one occasion of a “restorative justice” meeting where they had my son sit in a meeting with this boy and the head of their house so they could “talk it out.”

Police won’t act. They do nothing unless it is a serious knife crime or sexual assault and even then, if the kids are under 16, they most often want to “leave it for the school to sort internally.”

I just wish someone people would actually listen when the parents going through it say that nothing is being done, nothing will be done and we have been left with absolutely no help and our kids are not safe. The only choice we had was to enroll my son in jiujitsu and tell him to fight back.

I've always taught my DC to walk away.

They didn't always heed my advice, and there were times when they hit back. The bully always got the message and backed off. On one occasion when DS2 punched someone who had tormented him for quite a while he received an immediate apology, much to DSs surprise.

However, I did lightheartedly explain to my my DC how to punch properly, just because it's a "skill" I have.