‘What is bullying? How to avoid your child being a victim??

[lisad123]

I had a letter home from DD1 school about a workshop they are running, and the title is "?What is bullying? How to avoid your child being a victim"

Im sorry since when is it a childs fault that they are a victim!!

AIBU, to think this is not on and they would be better to educate parents about how to stop their children NOT to be a bully, rather than blaming victims

I think this is awful, victim blaming bollocks, frankly.

Poor kid who attends, gets bullied anyway and then feels guilty for not 'avoiding being a victim'.

I can only hope it's some sort of workshop on the importance of not colluding with bullies and telling adults of bullying.

crazygal, your son needs support

thats really reassuring that its rare now luna thank you.

i would equally hate if ds was bullied! but god what do you do when your child is the bully? its hard,but i will get there with him this year!

I agree with indigo, I think there are things a child can do to avoid being bullied to a certain extent.

For some children it comes naturally, for some children they just have the personality type that bullies look for. That doesn't make it the victims fault, it just means that there are things that can be done to reduce the risk. In much the same way that there are things you can do to reduce your risk of being mugged, raped, burgled, whatever. It's never the victims fault though.

I'd go.
I've watched from afar my own ds watch whilst another child was being bullied.

After chatting about it - and intervening of course- he said he just didn't know what to do.
Sad thing is that he said if he'd stood up for the victim he'd get punched. He has stood up for his friends and got punched.
Hope that next time it happens he'll walk away and tell a grown up to come and help.
I need to learn more about it.

Stragey worded title - but certainly attention grabbing. Let us know how it goes.

I think when you hear bullying incidents 2nd hand or from one pov they can get twisted a bit (ie my bf of 20 years says now she was bullied at high school by a group of my friends. IMO this never happened)

I suspect people think they've stood up to bullies but workshops can teach you how to do so effectively (as well as usual avenues such as telling a teacher)

I think it's good. It's only when I started corporate training (management - belbin, npd etc) I realised you could, in the nicest possible way, control people by the way you acted towards them. This learning would've been incredibly powerful to have had as a school child.

Umm surely the stance of stopping someone being a victim is a good one?

Those that are bullied often project 'victim' (for whatever reason) they enable the bullying to take place. Bullies look for a reaction from their targets - therefore if you react you will be a victim. It's not rocket science to equip a child (or indeed any person) with a sense of self worth and the ability to parry remarks and to manage others behaviour?

DCs school new behaviour policy mentions something along these lines.

Will you report back on what you find once you've been.

Interesting thread, hearing POV.

That's a very old-fashioned view, troisgarcons: none of the agencies nor govt depts would agree with that, nor any decent school.

Children are often bullied because they stand up for a friend who is being bullied. That is a very courageous stance, not a weak one.

The weak ones are the bullies and the ones who collude and/or stand by.

That's awful if it's a new policy, tread.

I think I've been to this or very similar. You might be surprised how many people don't understand what bullying is....that was quite a large part of the session.

It would have felt more useful to have been compulsory tbh, none of the bullies' patents attended

The bullies' parents would almost certainly say that nothing really constitutes bullying. It's just the targets/victims being feeble; or being telltales, of course. Kids should just man up.

I agree with you troisgarcons. My ds was picked on by a boy because he reacted angrily and got upset. As well as sanctions being taken against the bully, ds was helped to understand why the bully was picking on him and how to deal with the situation by shrugging off the comments etc.

It was a learning curve for both of them and thankfully the situation settled down after prompt intervention by the school

Well, if children are enabled to cry and sit in a corner wailing 'don't pick on me' then they will grow up with a victim complex which will last them throughout their working life and quite probably into relationships.

People also don't differentiate between bullying and teasing. There is telling and tittle tattling.

I'll leave you with a scenario to chew over as to who was the bully.
1.. Child with "issues", prone to flaring up and lashing out. Other boys in class know this is a great diversion to lessons and wind him up a treat. Desks will be thrown, risk of the wind-up merchant getting in the way and hit. Random children often caught in the storm and hit or damaged in some way.

Both parents will claim the other child is the bully. But he isn't is he? Because someone has power over him to wind him up.

I'm with trois on this.

Bullies are still children. Just excluding them is not the answer.

I absolutely agree that bullied children should be given help and support but they should be given knowledge to last them through life because they will find bullies everywhere in life. There won't be a headteacher to expel them.

Addressing the bullying (and the causes of bullying) is important. Just removing a child does not do that.

It means tackling both the bully and the bullied if you really want to help the situation.

I could well imagine that the title is as it is because very few parents would attend one called 'My kid's a bit of a thug, what should I do?'. We're all more prepared to accept that if bullying exists, our child is being bullied rather than the aggressor. I like the idea of a workshop that really explores what bullying is and what it is not - some people might be convinced that bullying means beating someone up in the playground and not realise that it can mean systematic exclusion as well (or what went on in DD2's class: A says to B, you can't be my friend if you play with C).

There are very rare cases where the 'victim of bullying' really has brought it about themselves (and I stress that this is rare) - we had a girl in DD1's class who constantly, throughout primary school, made accusations of being bullied by classmates and teachers, cue mother storming into school etc. It became sadly clear to everyone after a while that the girl was absolutely hysterical, egged on by hysterical mother. Being bullied for her meant she just hadn't got her own way or a teacher had said no to her. She frequently had screaming fits from pique, even when she was 12. Yet she and her mother were convinced she was the sole victim, battling a whole class of bullies. It's shown me that bullying is not always as straightforward as it sounds.

troisgarcons that is SO true!!! i think my ds (has issues) is in similar situation,the kids wind ,but equally he needs to learn,to calm down,and not react...i wish i was with him every day at school to be his 1-1 so i can teach him,he reacts so quick!
and yes tooth they are just kids,and mine is little,hes accused of bullying and you know the teacher has said ds wouldnt know how to bully even if he tried,well thats what she tells me everytime a parent complains,so,maybe shes softening the blow for me i dont know,
but totally agree,both/the bully and the victim need support,xx

mamamoose this is not a new policy, but it is policy. DS2, who is now 19, was bullied in primary school. I discussed the problem with my DM who was a headmistress. Her stance was exactly that - you must teach him not to be a victim. The reason being that sadly it is impossible to prevent bullying, and impossible under current legislation for schools to take effective punitive or remedial action against bullies. Therefore, the only realistic action is to empower victims.

Urgh tenebrist I know exactly what you mean- I reckon there's a few in every year although maybe not to that extreme!

You only have to look at the amount of young teens who pretend to be anorexic for attention- lots of people like to play victim

If this were the only think the school did, then it might be indicative of a tendency to blame the victim. What does the wider anti-bullying policy say?

How old is your DD? Can she tell you what, if anything, has been done (eg in PSHE) has been done already? Or anything else about the school's ethos (as well as policy) on this?

I'd be less concerned than other posters. Then again, I think teaching defensive strategies is vital, and not just in an bullying context. My DCs all do martial arts, and their club includes some basic situational awareness. I shall certainly also be looking for self-defence classes in addition, and would consider one of the specialist pre-gap year training courses idc. This will not, of course, make them in any way immune from being attacked (by bully, rapist, murderer) but if it reduces the chances in any way then it'll all have been worth it. I suppose that I just see it as being about protection.

I was bullied at secondary school back in the days when schools seemed to turn a blind eye to it - or where it was beyond the school's control, as a lot of it took place on the school bus where there were no teachers, and I couldn't get away from it (at its worst, in the case of one particular boy, the way he behaved would be classed as sexual harassment if it was happening between 2 adults).

I always tried not to play the victim, never answered back, never fought back, used to walk away (if not on the bus) and go to the library where I wouldn't be followed. None of it stopped the bullying from happening. I was in despair most of the time not knowing how to avoid it - I didn't care about being 'popular' or fitting in, I just wanted to be left alone and get through school as invisibly as I could.

Not sure if I have a conclusion here, but I was left feeling that even when trying not to behave like a victim and respond to their behaviour, I must have still given off vibes that I was vulnerable and unhappy that made me an easy target. So perhaps it's not about saying 'don't behave like a victim and you won't be one', it's more like 'everyone is vulnerable in some way or other - let's help you find ways to protect your vulnerable side'.

I must have developed a thick skin somehow as an adult as my first ever boss was a terrible bully and her meanness somehow made me more determined than ever to succeed in the job and I was really proud when I eventually won her respect and walked away from the job with my head held high.

However last year I did come across a person whose behaviour I just couldn't cope with and all my childhood instincts came back - I had to leave my career rather than have to work with this person and am not sure I'll ever work professionally again, it was that bad. However, I don't regret the decision (though I miss the money!) as I'm now doing unpaid work which is much more fulfilling.

You need to be careful about teaching kids to laugh off bullying.

I successfully laughed off years of abuse and mockery because I was supposedly fat. I wasn't, looking back, but you know I only realised this in my late twenties. By which time I'd wasted fifteen years feeling worthless, depressed, unattractive and miserable. And of course I comfort ate my way through it all - I might as well, as far as I was concerned I was fat anyway.

On the outside it didn't look like a problem - I took it all in good spirits, I answered back, I was even friends with some of the perpetrators. But at such a young age I needed someone to tell me it was ok not to be strong about it, it was ok to need adult support, it was ok to be hurt and upset by their actions. All I knew was that I needed to appear unaffected. But that doesn't mean I was unaffected :(

I think we have all been bullied at one point or another in our lives so it would be a good skill to learn how to avoid it or deal with it. For example, a friend of mine took a couple of months off work with stress because she said her boss was bullying her and she didn't like the way he spoke to her. I asked her if she had told him that she had a problem with the way he communicated with her and she said "no". I said that he probably didn't even know he was bullying her if she hadn't spoken to him about it. If she had addressed the issue directly it might have been resolved before she felt she needed to be signed off.

Kids are often bullied because they're clever. So should they just dumb down in order to fit in? Don't they have a right to an education?

Mind you, the G&T section of MN probably gives the answer to that one.

It's kind of not great for Britain as a whole, though: levelling down to the lowest common denominator.

Troisgarcons: '1.. Child with "issues", prone to flaring up and lashing out. Other boys in class know this is a great diversion to lessons and wind him up a treat. Desks will be thrown, risk of the wind-up merchant getting in the way and hit. Random children often caught in the storm and hit or damaged in some way.'

Yep. We were more concerned, frankly, that our explosive brat would become a genuine, deliberate bully himself, given that he was permanently on edge and close to snapping anyway. We did have the parents of the chief wind-up merchant on our backs claiming victimisation, too, and they probably felt they had good evidence for it.

The answer in his case was a change of school, given we didn't feel we had the luxury of time to change the whole school ethos.

Interestingly, the other boy in this case has apparently moved straight on to winding up new 'victims' (according to kids still there), whereas our young troublemaker seems to have cast off his past altogether possibly because of the bollocking he knows he'll get if he blows it this time.