Bullying advice

[Carnagery]

My DS is in year 8 and has been the subject of low level bullying behaviour for months now. This has been in the form of taking stuff from his pencil case, telling him no one likes him, inviting him out with them and then telling him he can’t go, taunting him, following him around school etc etc. Part of the difficulty is that these boys are a small group within a larger friendship group and DS feels that he has had to put up with it if he wants to spend time with his friends. He gets easily upset and this has added fuel to the torment because they get a reaction from him. We have been encouraging him to focus on his friends and ignore the small group as much as possible and he has been very against getting the school involved. It has come to a head this week and he asked me to email his tutor about it which I did a couple of days ago.

The tutor has been amazing and has dealt with the boys immediately. However, DS has now been labelled a snitch, has been told that snitches get payback and is finding it really difficult to cope with. His self confidence is at an all time low and is making him feel really vulnerable and as though he is becoming more of a target. I am at a loss as to what to do from here - he has specifically asked me not to escalate it any further and has said that he won’t tell me any more if I ignore him. I feel that the most important thing is for him to continue talking about it so that we can help him. If he shuts down I am concerned that he will be even more vulnerable as he bottles it up.

I have reassured DS that we are all here for him and will support and guide him through this. I am hoping that this will all calm down and that he can build on the friendships he has and that that will in turn increase his confidence. He is at a point where he just wants secure friendships but isn’t sure who to trust. He also thinks that the friends he has will continue in the wider friendship group and that he will be left alone.

I realise this is long but has anyone been through anything similar who can advise?

I’m sorry I don’t have much advice but didn’t want to read and run.

If this were my son, I’d maybe suggest finding another friendship group completely? Where are his friends when the bullying is occurring? Are they standing up for him, or just watching it happen? If it’s the latter, I understand they maybe scared of the repercussions for them, but they don’t seem like they have your sons back. Does your boy feel like he has a good group of friends away from the smaller group?

Btw, you sound like a lovely supportive mum and he’s lucky that you have his back ❤️

He needs a whole new friend group but doesn’t know where to start with it. He has a couple of friends who are not in this group and I have encouraged him to spend lunchtime with them. He’s lost all of his confidence and thinks that they might think he is just following them around. He says he has friends in the bully group and they tell him them at they have his back but they don’t intervene at all. I want him to walk away from them completely but when I say that he bursts into tears and says that he doesn’t want to be lonely.

I get it. My son hung around with a group of not particularly friendly lads in the later years of primary as he didn’t want to be alone. He finally managed to bin them off a year into secondary school when he found some good eggs.
I think you’re doing the right thing by encouraging him to spend some more time with these other boys. From the outside, we can see that it’s the best solution for him, but it’s harder for him who’s got to go through with the change. It’ll probably take some time, it took my son most of year 7 for him to finally make that leap and now in retrospect, he can see how much better off he is.
Your son will come out the other side of this. With a few life lessons probably. It’s strange but I never thought boys could cause so much of an issue with each other 🤷🏼‍♀️