To think that the parents of bullies have it easy

[EnyainIkea]

Because I see the efforts that the VICTIMS of bullying have to make to get support. They have to go through the hoops of trying to convince teachers and headteachers that they have a case in the first place. They have to convince these people that their child is not making it up, exaggerating, over-reacting and then wait.... whilst they hope the problem is being tackled by the school.

The parents are usually left in the dark about what "measures" are being taken to tackle the bullying behaviour "because that's confidential and can't be discussed". They have to reassure their children that they are trying to help and, of course, they did the right thing by telling them because now we can help you when, in actual fact, the parent feels absolutely powerless.

And then there are the meetings where it's suggested that your child is maybe not robust enough or needs to walk away from situations, or learn to stand up for themselves. You end up thinking that you need to move YOUR child from that classroom or, worse still, the school.

AIBU in thinking that the parents of the "accused" bullies are having it easy in comparison to this?

And BTW I would LOVE to hear from parents who have children who have been accused of bullying for the simple reason that I have never heard your side of the experience and it would help me immensely to know what YOU go through!

[Mosman]

Please tell me really tired isn't a teacher, please please

[ReallyTired]

I am not a teacher, but I have worked in several schools and I KNOW that many teachers agree with me. If you work with a group of children, it wears you down when they constantly tell tales. Its worse than when siblings fight. Children can be specularly horrible to each other. However there is a difference between subtained bullying and a childish squabble.

Bullying is horrific. Believe or not many teachers have been to school and some of them were even bullied at school. Schools want to eradicate bullying and will spend time and effort on what has been shown to work. However some parents unreasonable and do believe the sun shines out of their kid's arse or they take their child's version of events as gospel. This comment applies to both the parents of bullies and the victims.

Children are not divided in to angels and demons. Children make mistakes just like adults. They are immature and often behaviour appaulingly. Surely its the function of schools to help children learn from their mistakes rather than take the easy route of exclusion or the victim changing schools.

Sometimes parents want nothing but pure revenage and this is counter productive. Unless the victim and their parents are prepared to learn strageries for coping with bullying then they will continue to suffer. If training the victim is not helpful then why does kidscape offer courses?

www.kidscape.org.uk/zap/index.asp

I find it depressing that so many mumsnetters believe it is impossible to help a nursery aged bully learn better behaviour. What do you want done with a small child who bullies. Should you shoot him?

[Narked]

Unless the victim and their parents are prepared to learn strageries for coping with bullying then they will continue to suffer.

You know what helps people 'cope'? Removing the bullies. Splitting them up from their group. Isolating them rather than blaming their victims. You don't have to expel them to have them taught in isolation, eat in isolation and arrive at school after everyone else and leave later.

Once my school removed the bullies, there wasn't a bullying problem anymore. Those that had been bullied didn't get targeted by anyone else. The consequences of that behaviour were made clear, and, the rest of the girls weren't actually bullies.

[MaryZezItsOnlyJustNovember]

I find this thread really odd.

I have read most of it - not all I admit, but I have gone back and read ReallyTired's posts and I agree with pretty much everything she says.

It's all very well saying "get rid of the bullies" but schools just can't these days. And if they do, where would the kids go? To another school, where they will continue to bully.

All ReallyTired has suggested (and she has been very patient in the midst of some fairly vicious attacks) is that both the bully and the person being bullied should be helped to change. The bully helped to see things from others' points of view (surely you can't object to that?) and the person being bullied to stand up for themselves, to verbalise how they feel, to actively take charge in as much as they can. Which will surely help their self-esteem and thus their ability to cope.

Teaching someone to cope with being bullied isn't condoning the bullying. It's helping them to cope, surely?

Narked, where did your school's bullies go?

[Narked]

If you read some of the case studies you'll see that many of the DC who were helped by the course had additional issues eg were on the autistic spectrum. They were also helped by changing school (the boy's school blamed him for being too 'sensitive' to the bullying), the bully being excluded and home schooling to get them away from the situation.

[Narked]

Look back a page or two Maryz. To different sixth form colleges. When bullies can't be moved splitting them up is essential. They're always weaker without their friends to back them up.

[Narked]

And as I mentioned, the girls that bullied me also bullied other children. If I had gone on a course I might well have steered their aim elsewhere, but what about the other DC they bullied? Would we all have gone on the course?

These weren't stupid girls or from underprivileged, chaotic families. They enjoyed what they did. They were fully aware of the impact it had.

[shesariver]

Maryz its been said here that children can be both bullies and victims - something which I strongly disagree with, so no thats not all she has said. I dont look at my DS through rose coloured spectacles and I certainly dont take everything he says as "gospel", like I suspect everyone here that has a child that is being bullied I resent being told it could be my DSs fault in some way for not having social skills (something else rt has said)...their posts are very much victim blaming.

I resent being told my DS needs to change - hes fine the way he is and since we have moved has went back to his normal self - he doesnt need to change at all, but the psychopathic bully that bullied him (and I saw it constantly with my own eyes since he was our next door neighbour so Im not believeing it just based on what he told me ) would need to - but never will. I resent having to move house because the bullying was so bad but we all have got our lives back.

[MaryZezItsOnlyJustNovember]

But some children can be bullies and victims.

dd was bullied horribly in primary school and has been on occasion in secondary. But that doesn't stop me being aware that she is now in a group that leaves some children out when they do things. So at times, I'm sure those girls feel bullied, making dd a bully.

But in her case, if someone brings it to her attention, talks to her, reasons with her etc. she will pull back.

Narked, that may work at 16. But what about at 6? It is primary aged bullying that should be dealt with by talking to both the "bully" and the "victim". I don't think naming a 6 year old a bully is any better or worse than naming a 6 year old a "victim" and giving the one an excuse to carry on, and the second a reason to give up. And if it was dealt with better at 6 it would be less endemic in schools at 16.

For example, there was a boy in ds2's class in primary school whose mother was continually in the school complaining about him being bullied by the whole class. She said he was ostracised and that no-one would play with him. However, this child never obeyed the rules of the game they were playing - if they played chasing, he would refuse to stop when caught, he wouldn't ever be "on", he used to say when caught "I'm not playing" and then come back and "free" all the caught children, thus destroying the game for the whole class.

That mother is still convinced he was badly bullied. If she had taken the time to talk to him, to teach him about the rules of the playground, to try to get him to play with the other boys one at a time, his life would have been very different. I tried to talk to her, I invited her son here to play with ds, but she refused. She never accepted that he did anything wrong at all. In her eyes he was a victim at the age of 5 and the other 18 boys in the class were all bullies.

He is now 15, and apparently very much a loner in secondary school . He never learned to play with other children or to make friends.

There are many, many children who bully and are bullied for no reason, and it is awful for those who are bullied. But I still stick to my opinion that teaching both sides a different way is much more appropriate than labelling someone as a bully at the age of 6 and putting huge efforts into getting him/her sent to a different school.

[Alisvolatpropiis]

I think it depends on the type of parent they are if they are of the don't give a fuck/refuse to believe their little darling could do such a thing ilk,then yes, they do have it much easier than parent of a child being bullied.

If they are nice people,who haven't raised their child that way and are horrified at their child's actions and don't know how to stop it happening,then I think they must have a hard time too.

I do think that regardless of what kind of parent the bullying child has,parents of bullied children have a much more difficult situation. Because a bullied child doesn't just get over the minute the bullying stops.

I was bullied at school. It was horrible. I have no idea how children/teenagers cope today when they can be bullied whilst sitting in their own living room, via Facebook,twitter etc. And of course text messages. I remember the texts still.

[Narked]

Sometimes it's an issue of social skills. In those cases, and obviously with young DC, you'd work on the child and the class and then come up with a structured approach to integrate the child back into their peer group gradually, with adult supervision.

What made me and others angry was the assertion that most children are both the bullies and the bullied during their school life. I'm sure some are. Not all though.

I think the words bully and victim are appropriate. Bully describes the behaviour of the child. Victim says it's not their fault. And it isn't. For every child like the one you described above there are ten more who don't have social issues. They may be small or tall or red headed or sound different or wear a hearing aid or have a sick parent or a sibling with disabilities.

[Narked]

And that child wasn't 'at fault'. It's the school's responsibility to identify children who need support and help with social skills and intervene with an appropriate plan of action.

[MaryZezItsOnlyJustNovember]

All children who are bullied need support and help and an appropriate plan of action.

So do all children who bully. Because the alternative is to just keep punishing them, have them continue, punish them more - it becomes a vicious circle.

I genuinely think that intervention, social stories, working with the whole class is a better way to approach it with young children, than just blaming one child or group and labelling him/her/them as bully/ies. Children change an awful lot as they grow, and a child who is helped to see why their behaviour is inappropriate will eventually do better than one who is labelled as bad.

Just as a child who is helped to learn academically will do better than one who is labelled as stupid. In the old days, children were called stupid and left to sink. It did them no good at all. Labelling them as bullies and leaving them to sink will do no good either.

[MaryZezItsOnlyJustNovember]

And I didn't say it was the boy's fault. But the mother should certainly take some responsibility because she consistently told him he was being bullied and never once tried to teach him how to fit in.

[Narked]

Yes, she wasn't parenting well by the sounds of it. That doesn't excuse the school not fulfilling it's duty of care.

In younger children I'd suspect that there's a lot more scope for change in children who bully. Their behaviour deserves to be labelled though. Stupid isn't a verb, bully is.

[ReallyTired]

A lot of posters talk about being bullied by the ENTIRE class. Surely for that to happen then most children must have been a bully to some degree or another. Children can turn into monsters when the herd instinct kicks in. Maybe my maths is not that amazing but if a typical class has 30 children in it then 29 children is surely most children in a class.

There are web links that claim that bullying is a wide spread problem and most children get bullied at some point. Hence my assertion that most children are both bully and victim at different points during their school career.

I think it is important to label the behaviour rather than the child. Children can control or change their behaviour, but they cannot change their fundermental make up.

One of the nastiest experiences a child can experience is to have the entire class refuse to play with them. It is a painful and lonely experience to have no partner in science or drama, to always be picked last for PE. It is nasty when children run away from a (perfectly clean) child claiming that they smell. It is really like Lord of the Flies. It is very hard to punish a child for refusing to play with another child. Ultimately children are allowed to choose their own friends.

It is takes a lot of work to make a school a bullying free zone. The "victim" in the above senario may well benefit with help with making friends in school even if they have good social skills. Interventions like "circle of friends" or "shared concern" (otherwise known as no blame) sometimes do help break down the herd mentality of a class.

[Mosman]

I'm not a surgeon but I've worked in hospitals and many doctors agree with me do I must know enough to offer a medical opinion about your ailments .... Or would that be an ridiculous suggestion ?

[ReallyTired]

"I'm not a surgeon but I've worked in hospitals and many doctors agree with me do I must know enough to offer a medical opinion about your ailments .... Or would that be an ridiculous suggestion ? "

Everyone has the right to offer an opinon. Mosman if you can't cope with people disagreeing with you then I suggst you pick a gentler forum like babycentre or netmums.

My son has experienced incidences of bullying and I am afraid to say that on one occassion he was a bully along with seven other boys. They were six years old at the time and their game got out of hand. None of them stopped to think about their behaviour. The deputy head talked to all eight boys individually and explained to them how X felt. All the parents were also told what had happened. The school also set up a play time club run by a TA to teach children how to play nicely. The club was run for the entire academic year and groups of 15 children attended the club for once a week for 6 weeks. All the children in my son's academic year had the opportunity to attend the club.

Recently my son had a girl telling him he was gay as he loves singing. Again the deputy head spoke to the two children and bullying stopped. Understanding the feelings of both children is important.

OFSTED said that my son's school were outstanding at keeping children safe. My son's school uses the no blame approach. They are also pro active in preventing bullying happening in the first place by using social stories and talking about feelings of other people.

[ReallyTired]

MaryZezItsOnlyJustNovember Thanks for your post. You are right I have had lot of vicous and quite personal attacks from people who have disagreed with my opinons. It makes me wonder what sort of relationship they have their child's school.

However I feel quite sad for the children of these posters who see helping the victim of bullying as a punishment. It must be really hard to help a socially rejected child if the parents are not on side.

[MaryZezItsOnlyJustNovember]

I also don't like the use of the word victim about children who are being bullied by the way. Because it makes it seems as though they have to remain passive and just put up with it, whereas I would prefer the approach of teaching them to deal with it in a problem-solving manner.

After all, it is a skill that we could all do with learning before we enter the workplace which is full of bullies and there will be no mother there to go in and fight our corner.

And in case people insist on misconstruing my posts (as many have misconstrued ReallyTired's), I am not saying children are not being bullied, I'm not saying there should be no consequences for bullying, I'm not saying that children should be blamed or just have to put up with it. I just think that working with all the children to improve relationships throughout the class will eventually be more productive than just trying to move the "bully" from school to school.