Cyber bullying lynch squad

[Givemeallthegin]

This may be long, please bear with but I don't want to drip feed....

My DC and his class left their primary school last September. Where we live, the system is that they start in secondary school at 11 in year 7.

The group set up a social media chatting group to be able to catch up with each other but it has turned unpleasant and another Mother contacted the parents to complain about the content of some of the exchanges going on. I sat for 2 hours this evening and read the last month of message to understand if my DC was the victim of or perputrating any of the cyberbullying. My DC was happy to give me their phone to do this.

Child A and Child B were friends and went off to the same secondary school. They were friends but fell out. Child A was distressed that they were not talking and sent some messages telling Child B how upset she was at being ignored. At this point, the upset child was removed from the chat group and her former friend sent screenshots of the messages to the group to mock her. Several others on the chat joined in saying what a horrible person the upset child was.

There were 3 children whose comments made my chin drop.
Child A - laughing at her distressed friend as she shared the messages her upset former friend sent to her
Child of jailbird Dad - who made comments that the distrssed child was useless, stupid and no-one liked her and wasn't all this hillarious
Child F - who referred to the upset child as a c*nt

Now cut to the conversation that that took place among the Mothers - one Mother took responsability for some of the comments and promised her child was being published. The Mother of another child who joined in with being horrible said "oh well we can't police everything" but her husband is due to be jailed any day now so perhaps she has her mind on other things.

Here is the real problem, the two biggest contributers to the negative comments are not ones that have been called out for their behaviour. Child A and Jailbird Dad child. WWYD in this instance? Approach the mothers privately, share my impressions of the conversation I read or just leave it?

This group are not my friends so I don't care what they think of me. I just think that the kids responsible will go on to do bigger and worse if they are not called out on their behaviour.

My DC was not part of the ugly conversation and I suspect that if it was them that was being picked on, I would have gone absolutely nuclear at those responsible. If they were making the comments, I would be taking their phone away for a year....after going nuclear. I can understand from both sides how awful it is for the parents concerned.

Again WWYD?

I should also add that the Mother of the child that was being picked on in the conversation has also let everyone know that as well as the unpleasantness going on in the chat, her daughter also received a number of unpleasant private messages which amounted to cyberbullying. She is out for blood.

I found your OP very confusing, and I'm not clear who has said what to who.

But I suggest you report to the school (s????). Because secondaries usually take cyber bullying very seriously.

I can't comment other than that, because i'm afraid I didn't properly understand your OP.

They all go to different schools. It's a former group of year 6s who have a social media chat group to keep in contact with each other.

I don't even know the schools some of the group go to.

Besides, how can a school admonish children for their social media interactions with children from other schools? Shouldn't this be something parents should do?

I think you should let it go. Your child wasn't involved and taking the mothers to task over it isn't going to change the way they think if at their ages they don't already understand their children need to be punished for their behaviour.

I would remove your child from the group though. Do you really want that kind of influence around him?

You might tell the mother of child B you agree with her stance.

Thanks @RainbowJack

My DC was unaware of large parts of the chat as only looks in occasionally. As I went through the messages, DC read them too and then removed themselves from the chat without me asking.
I have suggested starting a new group without inviting in the 3 kids who were sending the majority of the nasty messages.

The only challenge is that the Mother of the child who was bearing the brunt of this behaviour is insisting that she admins any further groups the kids set up which I think will just result in her kid being left out of being invited to join.

Lovely to see how nothing changes...I was severely cyber bullied at school when social media was ramping up, think Bebo.
Horrific stuff about how they were going to kill me etc...some lovely illustrations as well....nothing physical ever transpired but I'm still a nervous wreck if I see them around town.

My parents told the school because I was in classes with these girls so it was relevant to the school and they basically told us because Bebo was blocked at school it had to happen off site so therefore not our problem nothing they could do about it.

I'm told cyber bullying is much more heavily dealt with by schools these days, if you are concerned about your child or children definitely mention it to them, but as you probably already have done, should monitor any continued involvement with these nasty children, you don't want your kids getting a bad rep by association
X

When parents start catfighting, nothing good will come of it.

I don't think that you need to do anything further OP. Your child is happy to remain out of the group and is not involved in the situation directly. If the kids want to remain friends they will sort something out themselves. If my child was directly involved, I would contact school so that they could take relevant action (which might be a session on cyber bullying). For your own child, if you are happy with their behaviour and they are happy with the resolution then I don't think there is anything to do. I think the mum of the bullied child deserves a sympathetic ear, but I don't think she can demand to be an admin in future (kids will work around stuff like that).

I don't think the mother being the admin is the way forward at all. I would think if she wants to do something and help those mean children realise they have done wrong she should report it to the schools. They have very strict policies on cyber bullying whether or not all the children go to one school or not.