to think teaching a child they are entitled to defend themselves isn't horrendous?

[lastnerve]

I know things have changed since we were children.
But surely if adults have the legal right to defend themselves shouldn't children??.

And I'm talking about defense here not condoning violence

I know I'm awaiting a flaming. hides

Woah! alot of replies.

I think my main concern is a lot of dinner ladies are useless and just tell the kids to 'go away stop telling tales' even when they do tell an adult, so what then?

I also think that the parents of bullied children should be much more vocal and proactive in getting the schools to stamp down on bullying behaviour......I certainly wouldn't put up with years of misery for her, because that is how school is.

But we've seen in countless threads on here, time and time again, parents being vocal and asking the school to stamp down on bullies, but what happens? Nothing. I've lost count of how many people on here have written threads about their concerns being ignored by HT's regarding their child being bullied.

Also, schools can only be there to defend and look after your child within the school gates. Outside school, anything can happen, and your child has no one to run to for help.

Adults have the right to use reasonable force. They then have to be articulate (or have a solicitor to be articulate for them), and explain what happened first, and convince anyone in authority asking that they only did use reasonable force.

Unfortunately, these are things that children, especially bullied children, can have difficulty with. Couthy's son certainly sounds like he has only ever used reasonable force, for example. Has this been accepted by the staff? Apparently not.

schools have limited powers to deal with bullying - I was loud and made my presence felt but whilst the overt physical stuff stopped, it's hard for them to police the snide comments and exclusion and intimidation that makes your child skulk around the playground trying to be invisible and to me the blame is fair and square with ineffective parents who want deal with their kids. I had a deliberately loud conversation with my sons teacher in which I laid out that taking a persons ball from the,m is theft and if it happened again I would have no hesitation on informing the police. That stopped them and latterly he did get invited to a party by one of these kids but wouldn't go as he wasn't sure that it wasn't a trick and anyway we knew by then he was going to a different school.

I have not read all the pp's but my answer has been to send my children to Karate and Self Defence Classes. I have never told my children that thumping someone back is the answer but if a circumstance of extreme provocation arose I want my children to be able to take care of themselves.

Thebigjessie - unfortunately, blaming the victim is not the only area in which my DS's primary is just crap with bullying. Treating an incident differently if the victim is a girl, even if exactly the same thing happens to them as to a boy, is just another one.

I have a complaint to the Governors going through about an incident in the last week of term, there is a thread in Primary Education titled WWYD? I have running at the moment. I can't link to it as an on my phone, but it is easily searchable.

Lack of decent midday supervision is another problem, as is the teacher's reactions to incidents and parental complaints. More to the point, the HT's and Deputy HT's reactions are no better...

Like my DS1 being told not to antagonise the boy bullying him, where the Deputy HT takes not antagonising to mean don't disagree with him ever. So DS1 is not meant to verbally tell this boy that it is a free world, and he can play with whoever he wants, after being told that he can't play with his friends by the bully, because that is 'antagonising' the bully.

Most schools seem to have a policy to punish the child who has made another child cry, regardless of the whys and wherefores. This includes those children who upset reallyannoying children by walking away from them, for some reason. I really don't understand the logic here. My own son used to get teased and annoyed by one boy constantly, we told him not to hit him but just walk away. He got into so much trouble in school for doing this. Apparently he was "excluding" this boy. In the end he just hit him, can't say I blame him either. Schools need to have a constistent policy about bullying and acknowledge that the child who cries loudest is not always the victim.

Yep, I've also resorted to giving my kids a few boxing lessons after one too many afternoons sat in the park watching my eldest bawling her eyes out after getting walloped by one particular little shit in her class yet again.

I think the term 'self defence' is getting confused with mere retaliation. Self defence should be about stopping a physical assault so in most cases self defence would merely be moving away from a person whereas hitting them back would just be be continuing it surely? If you can't get away then you would have to defend yourself which may involve hurting them but in most cases that's not going to be the norm is it.

It's interesting to me having worked in teaching ....

Teachers generally give out the message "If someone hurts you, come and tell us"

Over the years I became aware that quite a few children were getting a different message at home - "If someone hits you, hit them back !"

I hope it is something that's changing as I don't feel it's a very helpful approach.

Having said that though my own two DC's have enjoyed learning karate.

I think it's the attitude it develops as much as anything - that I'm not taking any nonsense from anyone. I think it's important to grow up with an assertive approach to life.

I think it depends on how you teach them to defend themselves. Punching a child who has shoved you is different to grabbing their arm to prevent them from hitting you again.

We tell DD1 to grab on to whoever is hitting, tell them 'no' and that she can find an adult if she needs help. She also yells 'respect my 'no''.

Martial Arts is an idea but an answer. Certainly not in the case of my DS or AMCKs by the sounds of it. The thing is its ultimately down to the nature of the child. My DS did karate from 4-8 yrs old. He loved learning technique, pad work, the discipline etc. Then came sparring. That's where he lost all enthusiasm. He could not get his head around why he was supposed to knock seven bells out of a friend or why the friend was hitting him. The concept of that passed him by.
It's just far more complicated than a few karate lessons. It's not a cure all.

not an answer.

As a teacher I am just at the parental perspective from almost all posting on this thread!

Please teach your child never to hit anyone and to tell a person in authority as soon as someone threatens them.

Teachers would find it a breeze to deal with bullying if we were actually made aware of it! The minute children try to sort out bullying issues themselves, situations escalate like wildfire until you have dozens involved including parents.

The worst, worst thing about bullying is feeling unprotected, that no-one cares, that you are unsafe, that the world is a scary and unfair place. Tell an adult and the situation will quickly diffuse. Yes adults sometimes deal with bullies ineffectively, but it is always, always better to let a person in authority deal with it.

I'm just so though that the MN consensus is that it's good to teach your child to hit back and not to walk away and tell a teacher! They will not be seen as victims ime but it will prevent a violent power struggle which will never be resolved.

I have a middle class, lovely student in Y8 who is an occasional victim of groups of dickhead boys. He punches them back occasionally and they find it entertaining that they can get a rise from him. Don't let your child be that boy. He is confused that it doesn't seem to stop them but hadn't told any adult it was happening! I begged him to tell me the names of the boys involved so they could be hauled over the coals but he would rather try to sort it out himself

As someone upthread said, it's rarely just about the physical side and if a child is walking in fear and reliant on having enough physical strength to defend themselves, it's not right.

I think of schools as mini versions of society itself. If people in society meted out their own justice, where would we be?! Someone breaks a law - tell the police. Physical assault is no more acceptable in the playground than on the street.

Schools often go for the easiest route. So in my daughter's case it's easier to blame the victim than punish the bully.

You see, all too often the bully gets punished, even excluded only to come straight back in because of their circumstances.

And of course no bully is going to write in their statement "I punched her because I felt like it" so instead it's full of lies and often it's one child's word against another.

I've told my daughter now that if they come up to her and she feels threatened in any way that she is OK to strike first. I really don't see why she should take the first punch before defending herself or even take the thumping before slinking off to the teachers. The teachers have been told repeatedly and in our case the girl in question has been excluded several times only to come back because her parents can't even manage to home school her.

I remember when I was a kid that people only stopped bullying me when i started hitting back.

Yes- "don't hit first, but hit them back harder" doesn't sound exactly like the reasonable force for self defence that adults are entitled to, at all.

ComeonComeon, if all teachers had the same attitude as you then things would change, but sadly they don't.

ialso think there is a difference here from "one off" type incidents to kids who are consistently geting a hard time from another child or group of children. I think the initial reaction should be to tell someone in authority e.g. teacher etc. But for the longer term stuff when that strategy is clearly not working then an unexpected physical reaction can put a stop to it. My younger son's approach is the embarrasing put down which works for him as the kids who try to wind him up are desperately trying to be the "popular" kids. His range from "does it make you feel like a big man to pick on someone so much younger than you?? yeah, very hard you are" to "just remember if we ever meet when we are grown up, I will be wanting fries with that".

ComeonComeon - Teachers would find it a breeze to deal with bullying if we were actually made aware of it!

I spent years telling my teachers/ head of house that I was being bullied (even told them who was doing the bullying). Did they do anything about it other than smile and say they would sort it? No they did nothing.

My Ds will be encouraged to go to Judo and/or Karate so that at least he can defend himself while the teachers do fuck all 'sort the issue'

Unfortunately COC, my Ds did exactly as you say and reported most incidents. These incidents were dealt with as separate incidents. "stand at the wall" "no football for the rest of the day" " leave him alone" "stop doing that" nothing ever resolved and my DS becoming that child constantly running to the teacher. Nobody joined the dots. Nobody took my reports seriously because they were determined to treat each incident individually.

comeon - sometimes telling th eteacher just doesn't work. Also my son would never speak up for himself - what the school then tried was a friendship circle where they would make sure that everyone was with someone else and that people could speak up for each other - didn't really work but it was a good idea. The problem with it was that the people who needed to be in the group were also the ones who don't speak up.

As for the bullies enjoying getting a rise out of the victim, my son never reacted at all (his face became very expressionless at school which is why they felt he may have aspergers......he doesn't) so, then they started to pick on his brother and friends to wind him up. I really wish I knew what the answer was.

after the first real spell, I had the bullies parents crying and apologising etc. They all insisted that I let them know if there was any more problems, strangely when I did, I didn't get a good reaction!!!!!

I think of schools as mini versions of society itself. If people in society meted out their own justice, where would we be?! Someone breaks a law - tell the police. Physical assault is no more acceptable in the playground than on the street.

It's a good analogy. Except let's say you are on a night out in a club/pub (I guess the adult equivalent of a playground). Someone now comes and punches you for no reason and starts picking on you. In the wider world the law states that the victim can defend themselves.

In short if someone comes to pick on me, I have every right to hit them back, use lethal force if that was appropriate. THEN i go and tell the police. And what I expect is that the police would defend my rights and charge the attacker.

What seems to happen in school is that the victim is expected to take the hiding then the aggressor gets a slap on the wrist. Focus room maybe. At worst a temporary exclusion. It's no punishment for most and sends out completely the wrong message.

I'm amazed so many people think it's ok to encourage kids to hit back. It's a total no go for me. Reasonable force to defend yourself is not relevent for toddlers squabbling over a toy. What if a 12 year old is hit by a 3 year old? They should still hit back harder? Really?

Teaching not to hit back does not mean teaching them not to be assertive. Telling an adult is an assertive and appropriate behaviour. You are teaching them self-discipline, conflict resolution and most importantly that two wrongs do not make a right.

Teachers in my DS's school do NOT take bullying seriously, or deal with it effectively when told. You only have to read my WWYD thread to see this.

YOU may be a good teacher, but NOT ALL ARE. And if your DC is attending a school that has a culture of accepting bullying, minimising incidents, telling DC's not to tell tales, and blaming the victim, eventually as a parent you have no choice but to tell your DC's to stop taking the physical pain and hit back.

I am fed up with having to go into the school to complain about their frankly inadequate responses to serious incidents involving hospitals, CAT scans, humiliation of my DC's, permanent scarring of my DC's, all with little gone about it.

So yes, after 8 years of it, I bloody well WILL tell my DC's to hit back if someone hits them first. Because the school certainly isn't going to protect them, and I can't be there to protect them either, do they need to be able to protect themselves.

And this is just about the first time I have EVER agreed with MrNiceGuy.