Do you teach your child to hit back?

@Marblesbackagain Thank you, but some posters were discussing how being taught to hit back and defend yourself as a child affected you as an adult. Also, the perpetrator may be a child but so is the victim.

So glad you and your family live in a nice area and never reported any bullies.

thinks is, I also live in a nice area. So nice, people flock here on holiday and even buy second homes!

keep polishing those rose tinted spex

Your post is sad and I am sorry to hear what you have been through.

But respectfully this situation is a child the perpetrator is a child. It isn't comparable

@Whatalife88 Well said!

The cleverest bullies are the ones who get other children to do their dirty work and then sit back looking innocent when trouble erupts . This sort of bullying is usually mental bullying. And of course it could not possibly be that child at the bottom of it all according to the teachers .

@Marblesbackagain Well, if any "Researcher" had ever contacted me then I'd have told them that if I hadn't been brought up not to accept abuse from anyone and to defend myself, then I wouldn't have grown up into the type of woman who walked away immediately from my ex husband the very first time he hit me. I was 24 and newly married and because I'd been brought up to defend myself and stand up to bullies, I left him straight away, saving myself from years of possible abuse. I'd been brought up to know I was no bully's victim, add that to your research!

My dds have been taught to hit back but only when they follow the rules

1st time don't hit back tell an adult

2nd time don't hit back tell an adult and insist they stop the other child hurting them

3rd time hit back

They have been taught how to hit and where to aim

Funnily enough the only two kids dd1 has ever had to hit due to them bullying her are now very close friends with her

Because you can't avoid bullies. If a bully targets you, how do you avoid them? Tell me what you'd do and I'll see if its worth telling my children to do the same. My eldest has been relentlessly bullied and the school were spoken to more times than I can count, the only thing that stopped the bullies was him fighting back, my dad was bullied, he fought back, it stopped, I was bullied, I fought, it stopped, in my adult life, I stand up for myself and they back off. I'd rather my kids go down fighting than not having confidence to stand up for themselves. Most bullies are not carrying knives and are just weak cowards who get off on making others scared of them.

You searched self defense. The algorithm is set to determine the most common use . The most common search of the phrase is used in the case of someone trying to distinguish if an assault between adults involved in possibly an assault.

The definition appropriate here is what is the first principle of first defence. I have confidence you can search this yourself.

You are welcome

I don't, because I think it's an unhealthy and dangerous way of solving conflict or bullying, but my bullied child wouldn't have done it anyway. My approach was to spend five years riding the school leadership like a fucking donkey, citing the equality act and insisting that they fulfill the bare minimum of their duty of care. We did withdraw our child from PE when the school point blank refused to engage with the idea of preventing him from being beaten up in the changing rooms. We also got a member of staff disciplined for lying about witnessing a punch in the face during a lesson (unfortunately for the teacher, the bully had already admitted it).

I don't judge how other parents choose to deal with bullying, because I know how devastating it is to have your child's mental health completely collapse because they are being tortured at school. But teaching them to hit back wouldn't have worked for us or our child.

This is almost word for word the traditional response a huge number of parents over the last 50 years would say.

Can't you see that things have changed. You child may just be brave enough to stand up to that bully. He may just be the one kids who gets to tell the story of how he punched the school bully. But eventually the bully in a future situation becomes a kid who brings a knife to school. Or he becomes the kid who brings his gang of thugs with him. Or you child stands up for himself again, connects and ends up with a manslaughter charge.

Why not teach them how to ensure they can avoid such situations.

Evidence links or you're blowing smoke.

I really would caution using Google as your sources

Well I have news for you. Research shows context doesn't matter. It's the engagement of violence that is the deciding factor.

All the people against telling your children to hit back must never have been bullied themselves or had their child bullied.

I teach mine to never bully or start a fight but if someone hits you first then you hit back harder. Bullies pick on who they think are weak, who they can intimidate, that's where they get their kicks and how they think they're big and hard. Put them in their place and 9/10 times they'll stop.

In the old days yes. However we live in a rather different world now.

In simple terms telling your child to hit back doesn't seem so bad. However where do you draw the line. Children, kids, young adults these days dont have the same lines they did 20/30/40 years ago. Do you want your child to be stabbed (Entirely possible)? Do you want your child to be beaten by a gang and kicked unconscious? Do you want revenge attacks? Do you want them to be a single punch statistic where they end up in prison for that one situation where they swung and cracked someone's skull open?

Now you could say this is more about little kids and it wouldn't get to that but teaching a child how to deal with something when they are younger gives them a good chance of honing their awareness skills for when the consequences are more severe.

For the record none of my children were in much position to fight back. Not everyone is. I would 100% rather know they have the ability to deal with or escape a situation than be brave enough to swing a punch.

You don't need to have a large number of feral children to ruin a school environment. One or two bad apples will be enough, particularly in an LA where the softly softly approach is taken.

Also schools here would exclude the child who put another in a headlock and hit them. Anyway, I’m glad I live here. We are all quite peaceful.

I just live in a nice area. My DCs never reported any bullying or fighting or violence. Most parents would be appalled. It’s just how most decent people live. That’s why I’m wondering where people live!

Hell yes!

DD 1 was picked on at school (secondary) by a girl a year younger. I know the mum and grandma and the bully bitch trait surely was passed down. Awful family.
DD1 don’t like confrontation.

bully had a sister a yr younger than DD2 and she began picking on DD2. Bitch trait passed on there too.

but DD2 is a terrier. Push her too far and she will bite.

bully 2 kept picking on DD2, shoving, intimidating, threw water on her in the school hall at lunch time. Teachers knew very well what went on as they knew what the bullies and the family were like. DD2 sure blew, put her head in a headlock and whacked her in the nose.

both bullies were expelled for a week a d eventually moved on to finish their education at another school.

i will always be proud of my kids. Bullies need standing up to. I was bulled and wish to god i had the guts to hit back, but i didnt.

Primary or secondary @Julia34 ?

I said my daughter go tell teacher, the teacher not react, then I said my daughter hit back been call to school tell teacher is her own force because when my daughter tell her she not react

Either Tiger lives in utopia or she is mistaken. Turning the other cheek was my religious upbringing jesus really couldn't save me, I had to save myself from a mean girl gang aged 14.

Funnily enough I didn't feel the rage/passion again until I had my first child. Then the tiger returned

@TizerorFizz DS is a big lad, and popular. One issue was the teachers sat him next to the bully in class. He'd come home every day with marks where he'd been given a dead leg or dead arm, or stabbed with a compass or pencil. One time he was sent home with paint rubbed in his hair. The school would give some blather about how they were managing the situation, how we had to remember the other child had problems, and nothing would change.

@TizerorFizz You are talking about an ideal world here. You can't always be with a group of people at all times. Some people will have no choice but to walk home alone and what if you happen to be someone without a whole group of friends to surround you. What if your friends are as afraid as you are to stand up for themselves and what if you are a loner who has no friends? The type of popular kid who is surrounded by a big group of friends at all times probably isn't the type who is going to get picked on, but in the real world not every child is as lucky as that.