To ask if you are or have been the parent of a bully...

[Tootiredtosleep]

My DD was singled out and excluded for most of Year 3 by one girl. This girl is a born ring leader and easily manipulates the other children. DD withdrew on the basis that not being involved with the group of girls was a better option than being picked on, excluded etc.

She had quite a miserable year. We made several trips into the school. The child was spoken to, the parents were spoken to etc. things would always get better for a while then revert to the norm of excluding DD. As an adult I could see that this child was jealous. She also had a much stronger personality and by excluding DD, made life a lot nicer for herself.

Anyway, I digress. Things are gradually getting better and DD is settling down a bit.

I often think that whilst hard for me to witness and distressing for DD, how must it feel to be on the other side? It's all well and good having the school on your side and all saying great things about your DD. What is it like, however, on the other side? This girls parents are nice people. They seem like very caring parents. They never apologised for their DD's behaviour. Do you go into denial and think it must not be true or blown out of proportion?

Would love to hear it from the other side?

Have name changed and changed some details.

Some of the parents can be bullies too! I too was bullied as a teenager, shall never forget the crying I did. The dreams where I would punch that girl in the face and wake up with my arms stretched out. I really went through hell with two girls that came up from primary with me, the worst thing. I got through it, got tough. Even now I come across people even at the school gates and they are nasty bullies too. It never ends. But I would be devastated to find my DC were bullies.

As I say I understand where you are coming from, I still think you are sending the wrong message. Whenever we come across the kids who don't like my kids we cross the road. As I explain to them there is no need to make the situation worse than it already is. There is standing up for yourself and there is aggrevating the situation, if that makes sense.
Whether it be a non-leash or leash parc, you still freely admit that you are letting your dogs (okay you reduced it to just the one dog...still..) chase her on her scooter, and I will stand by my opinion that I think it is wrong. If it was the girl or somebody else who did it on a regular basis would you not see it as bullying?

I don't know, sometimes a good slap or punch to the face of the bully would do wonders. If my son continued to get picked on and bullied then I would find it hard to blame him if he did lash out. I never got bullied but sometimes got to the odd situation with ne of the tough girls who would threaten you or try to make you look stupid in front of her friends for no reason. I always 'kept the moral high ground' and walked away but really I wish I had just punched her in the face.

Ah we all think of the cleverest lines and putdowns as we're walking off don't we? And sadly the stoney Don't Fuck With Me glare only comes along with motherhood.

I admit that I was a bully through secondary school. I was aggressive and very threatening, a lot of girls were scared of me. Now I see that I did it to try to feel that I had some control over things as I was suffering many unpleasant things at home with zero parental support.

I am not happy with my behaviour but it was my way of coping (that and self-harm). Though I am certain that is of little consolation to the girls who suffered at my hands.

Very wise words sarge. Thank you so much for taking the time to post this. It is interesting to hear it from the perspective of the teacher. I wish all teachers were of the same quality.

The situation you describe re the ring leader and other girls following for fear that they are bullied rings so true in DD's case. 'Manipulative' is also a word that describes this girl very well. To be honest, I don't think the other children like her very much. She tells so many lies and exaggerates her own life to such a degree that it is laughable. Her mother can't see any wrong and feels her lies etc 'are funny'. However, she is so popular with other children hanging on her every word.

My DD challenges what she says, and doesn't dance to her tune. As a result she is completely ostracised from the other children. On rare occasions that she is friendly to DD she comes home from school beaming, saying 'xxx was my friend today'. She has to ask permission daily to be friends, most days this is rebuffed. Heartbreaking.

She started school as a lovely, chatty, friendly, happy and bubbly child who made my heart soar with pride. At 9 she is now a shadow of her former self.

If the parents don't care, what else can we do?

She has a few friends in a lower year. They are much younger than her. She doesn't want to move. I wish she would. I have given her this option.

Can I ask, if you are, say, keeping an eye on some girls as you mention in your previous post, would the parents be aware? Say, the ring leader/exclusion etc was going on and one child was miserable, would you stamp this out, without contacting the ring leaders parents, thus keeping it in the school.

It would be reassuring to know that perhaps DD's teacher was working with the girls, but not necessarily sharing the information with parents. I know she likes DD, she has said this a few times. I have recently heard the mother of the bully complain that the teacher doesn't like her DD and is constantly picking on her and making her life miserable. I wonder could this be slightly true?

I would like to think that if my DD was accussed of bullying I would get to the bottom of it and deal with it appropriately.

I got a phone call from DD's head teacher a couple of years ago (so she was about 6) saying DD had been involved in an incident of bullying alongside several of her peers toward a new girl who had gone to the lengths of hiding her school uniform etc so she didn't have to go to school. I was absolutely mortified, my daughter got the rollicking of her life, she absolutely knew she was in the wrong - as soon as I said 'Ive had a phone call from head teacher X' her face crumpled and she knew what was coming. I made her write a letter of apology and she drew the girl a picture saying sorry. I approached the dad in the school yard the following morning and apologised for the way my daughter had behaved, how ashamed I was of her and the poor bloke ended up comforting me as my voice cracked and I started to cry (to be fair I was 3 days postnatal as well at the time!), I invited the girl to our house but explained I understood if she didn't wish to accept (she did a few months down the line) anyway DD was left in no doubt about how unacceptable her behaviour was and we have had no further reports from school but it was bloody awful.

I was bullied for the entirety of high school. In school, out of school. They threw things at my house and threatened my family.

Personally, I would rather be the parent of a bully because then I could do something about it.

As the parent of a bullied child there is nothing you can do but hope the parents of the bully/the teachers/the police will sort it. In my experience they never did.

The only thing that ever worked was when my mum grabbed one of my bullies by the hair, pinned him against the wall and threatened to rip every limb from his body. That boy is the one and only kid who stopped bullying me. Obviously this is not the recommended course of action and I'm surprised she didn't get arrested. Well actually I'm not because the bullies did worse to me and they never got more than a "Warning" from the police.

My older sister was bullied a lot by a gang of girls at school. One day the ringleader of the gang followed her home, taunting her, and waited outside our house.
My mum went out and spoke to her. After that, the girl never bothered my dsis again..
No idea what my mum said, but she can be a pretty scary lady!

I can see ds getting bullied in the future. I wish I couldn't, but I can. If he does ever suffer anything to the extent to what I have read on hear (heartbreaking stuff) he will not be going back to that school. I would quit my job before I sent him back into the lions den, I reckon.

here, not hear!

Benedictus, I imagine that is how I would deal with it. It must have been devastating for you to find out your daughter was involved in these incidents. Well done for tackling it head on. I wish more parents would do the same.

Sarge, I always resisted taking matters into my own hands. I wanted to give school the opportunity to sort it. I only spoke to the mother once she had been seen by the Head. I have known her for 4 years so I thought it was best not to ignore it.

I felt sorry for her in the end, her denial and excuses did help her DD. I firmly believe that good will prevail.

Whilst I don't advocate violence, I hear what some of you are saying. Sometimes a taste of our own medicine is what we need!

I got accused of bullying once whilst i was at Secondary school, because i was going out with a certain girls Ex-bf. I had never, ever had a conversation with her, talked about her nastily or bullied her in anyway. I got told off for that, parents came in, ect.

Whilst that was going on, i was being very badly bullied by my teacher. I mean awful and did anyone believe me about that? Not a soul, only after he slapped me across the face and we had a physical fight that something happened, and i was believed of what had been going on.

Bullying in school is an awful thing to happen, but its just so hard to get anyone to take notice of the truth, or it was in my case!

I was accused of bullying once.

What actually happened was this:

new very insecure girl arrived in class

she was bullied and I stood up for her (including getting into a fight to protect her)

after a while she worked out that my standing in the class wasn't one that was going to do much for her street cred so she switched her attention to the alpha gang

to curry favour with them she started passing nasty comments about me (quite hurtful comments about how looking at my eyes made her feel sick- I had a slight squint etc)

at the same time she wanted me to fall back on when nobody else wanted to play

I felt very uncomfortable and started trying to avoid her (as you would with someone who allegedly felt queasy when you looked at them) and some other friends who had been the targets and/or heard what she said about me followed suit

she complained to her parents who stormed into the school and made a big scene about bullying- and I mean seriously big

I somehow got the impression she had forgotten to tell them about the feeling-sick comments...

fortunately the teacher was very calm and soothing and more or less managed to smooth things down

We never fell out openly again, but I never trusted her again throughout all the years I knew her: all I ever saw of her was someone who was so desperate to be in with the in crowd that she would do anything or say anything about anyone else.

So when my dc have complained about bullying I have always been very careful to listen to the other side as well.

I think the parents probably don't know as much about the situation as they should

I worked with someone who was called in to NURSERY, his spoiled brat of a child, who also happened to be big for his age, was running up to children, grabbing hold of them and kicking them.

He (the parent) thought this was hilarious.

I have not read every post , but bully kids can become bully adults. The joy of Facebook reinforces this! I don't have any answers.

I am going to defend Seeker a little bit here. I agree on the face of it her remark sounded crass and insensitive but I think I know what she means.

When my eldest son was about 8 the teacher called me into class at the end of the day and said 'I am sorry to tell you that we have had to deal with an incidence of bullying involving your DS today.'

My immediate instantaneous reaction was to do this > and to glare at DS. I felt an overwhelming flood of emotions all in two seconds flat - anger, shame, embarrassment, disappointment, guilt.......

and then, upon seeing my face the teacher said 'Oh no! You've misunderstood me! Your DS was not the bully, he was the victim, and I just wanted to tell you that we are aware of it and we are dealing with it!'

I felt an immense sense of relief. Not that I wanted to see my son bullied - of course not, but my instinct was that I knew how to deal emotionally with the fact that someone else's child was a nasty bully, but how to react if it were my own! I had for two seconds only, struggled to comprehend that my child was not the kind, sweet PFB I thought he was.

sorry I meant not how to react if it were my own.

"I am going to defend Seeker a little bit here. I agree on the face of it her remark sounded crass and insensitive but I think I know what she means."

Thank you for defending me. But in the context of the thread, and the rest of the post, I don't think it was crass and insensitive. It is seriously crap being the parent of a bullied child. But it is also hideous being the parent of a bully. Yes, there are of course stereotyped don't give a fuck parents. But they are few and far between. And anyone who says their child would never be a bully is living in fantasy land. As many post on here indicate. "There but for fortune go you or I"

The op specifically said that she would like to hear from the other side.