To think 'Just ignore it' is not the correct response to low level, continual teasing in school?

[MrsHusky]

Just that really.

DD is in yr 6 and been having some continual, low level teasing/being picked on going on by children in her class..

Its all really petty stuff, 'ew dont touch me' when she accidentally touches a couple of them during PE or leaning over the table.. teasing her over 'fake news' that she KNOWS is false, but it upsets her that they keep insisting on it.

Its all silly things like that, but its CONSTANT, every day.

The teachers response (and mine initially) was just to tell her to ignore them, but nothing ever seems to be said to the other children who're doing the teasing/bullying.

AIBU to think its all well and good telling the child being teased to ignore it, but equal input ought to be put into telling the ones doing it to stop it?

I have addressed it with DD's teacher, as its been daily since going back after Christmas... waiting to see what the response is.

Similar issues here and it really annoys me that it is brushed off but it really does seem like they do not know how to deal with it?

I dont know.. it just seems that when I deal with bickering between her and DS, I always tell the one to ignore their sibling, but then I will always, also, tell the one doing it to leave the other alone.. I can't understand this thing with Teachers just dismissing it with 'ignore them'

Ignoring them doesn't stop them doing it, and when the child tells the other kids to leave them alone, it just happens even more.

I told DD to tell the kids if they're stupid enough to believe fake news, then thats their problem, not hers.. shes reported back that SHE got told off for calling the others stupid.. wtf?

Yeah I thought we’d moved past the time when “just ignore them” was an acceptable response. It just gives the bullies the green light imo, and suggests the bullying is the victim’s fault for not being able to ignore / rising to it/

You need to start making more of a fuss. It’s a form of bullying and you should demand that the anti bullying policy is followed. Get yourself a copy of that policy and start quoting it at the teacher and the head.
It’s laziness from teachers who can’t really be arsed to deal with it.

I've no solution, just solidarity. This kind of relentless, low level, unpleasant shit ruined school for me. It lasted from ~7 years old till I left at 18. So I really feel for your little lass, OP. My mum did nothing and the teachers didn't care.

I have to say that I was bullied in this way for years and they were after a reaction. in y10 I finally started to ignore them and it stoped. Was awful until then. And people telling me to ignore didn't help.
What do you think would help?

Cora.. I maintain that she needs to do her best not to react to it, as thats what they're after...

But I have no intention of ignoring it.. and I will keep bothering the teacher about it, and escalate it if needs be.

But do you actually know that the teachers aren't telling the kids to stop it as well as telling your child to ignore it?

Also, telling a child off for being unkind/teasing is easy enough if it happens in front of you, but if you're a primary school teacher you must have to deal with a gazillion tales of "He said this/she said that" every single week, and it's hard to tell who's telling the truth or whether it's six of one and half a dozen of the other.

Don't get me wrong- I really sympathise (and my now yr7 ds has had a lot of this). But it's really really not easy for teachers to deal with when it happens out of their earshot.

Just ignore it never the solution because it can't be done. It's a way of the school avoiding dealing with the problem which is actually their duty and responsibility to do whilst your daughter is in their care. They are expecting your DD to deal with the problem alone without any help from them.

Don't let them get away with absolving themselves from their responsibilities. Keep bothering the teacher and escalate it.

I had the same with my DD. The head called in the parents of the bullies and dealt with it.

Go to the head. Or find our where they live and you and your partner go and knock on each door. X

I would talk with the Safeguarding lead in the school. Insist on a face-to-face meeting and a strategy for the school to deal with this.

Low-level continuous teasing of this kind is very very hard for children to deal with, and undermines their confidence and can lead to mental health problems. The children who are doing this also need help - what they are doing is not good for them either.

Another one whose secondary school years were made a misery by low level bullshit, daily nastiness but not quite enough for intervention.

My sister had similar and at one point a teacher admitted there wasn't a lot he could do.

Looking back there wasn't actually that much they could do. At one point my whole form got told off because I had stated I felt unwelcome in my own classroom if there was no teacher present.

The result?

A boy from my form in the lunch queue, relaying the bollocking they'd had in a nasty voice to another boy "Didn't feel safe she said, she never knows when someone will start on her she said" whilst directly standing by my lunch table

So yeah, teacher intervention was just super effective

I'm a teacher & that's most definitely NOT ok. Push it with the school.

It's all well and good for the teachers to say "ignore it" but are they actually offering any support for your dd in how to deal with all the emotions she must be feeling while this bullying is going on?
Her confidence must be shot and as it's constant and subtle I'd imagine she's feeling really low. I'd definitely request a meeting with the head.

I agree it must be difficult for the teachers to pinpoint, but as it's happening all the time and going on for so long I'd want to ensure some form of action is taking place.

This was the advice my Dad gave me in exactly this situation (although in what would now be yr 7) . "Ignore it and they'll soon get bored". It worked, I kid you not, less than a day of ignoring and they never bothered me again.

Why wouldn't you at least try it before making a much bigger deal of it? I terms of memorable good advice, this is probably the best I've ever had!

As in so many other situations in life, you can't change other people but you can change the way you react to them.

OP I totally get what your DD is experiencing. This was done to me from the start of year 2 (new school at age 7) until the end of secondary. It destroyed my school life and has affected me in so many ways as an adult.

I urge you to try and make her teacher understand the deep and lasting effects of this kind of 'low level' bullying. Teacher needs to make those children understand what it is like to have to face this every day with no way out. The harm they are doing to another person. It is a nightmare. The anxiety it creates towards everyone that never really goes away...

Don't let this drop.

I know its an unpopular view, but what exactly is the teacher supposed to do about it? Children (people) do need to build some resilience and the sad fact is that these kind of "low level" bullies do pick on those who react. The only thing DD can have control over is her reaction. This won't be the last time she comes across this, she does unfortunately need to learn to cope with it. Its not right but it is life. If DD learns to ignore she'll have far fewer issues right through life.

I think it's the wrong thing to say in this case, as a group of children are involved in the behaviour.

I think in some cases, where an individual person is behaving towards you like this it can be wiser to just ignore it or to 'grey rock' as we might tell adults to do.

I'm not sure that works when a group of children are involved because that's more systematic.

It was definitely a group for me Former. I could probably still name them all, but it did stop like magic when I followed my Dad's advice and it taught me that I do in fact have far more control over my own destiny that might sometimes be apparent.

Someone said “what exactly is the teacher supposed to do about it.” Well figuring that kind of stuff out is the most important part of the teacher’s job!

She could give the bullies sanctions eg lost playtime every single time this kind of behaviour comes up. She could focus lesson after lesson on the importance of kindness. She could arrange for classes to be reorganised to split up bullying cliques. She could organise the children to roleplay bullying / give other tasks to help develop empathy. She could give the bullied girl a mentor who is responsible for her welfare during breaks. Etc etc. There any many well known strategies she could at least try.

Schools often don’t deal with bullying until parents force them to.

“Ignore it” is shit advice. It’s better than crying but not by much. Someone needs to call out the bullies on their behaviour and that needs to come from an adult.

Imagine if your work colleagues were bullying you and your manager told you to just ignore it.

Well, I"m obviously from a different era and past it but I do think it's no wonder people have no resilience.

Do people really think the teacher should be considering her "most important" task dealing with children teasing someone for accidently touching them? There are very limited sanctions available to teacher, they should use them on this, when in actual fact, ignoring it would make it go away?

Get DD to give it 24 hrs OP. What do you have to lose, it was life changing for me. I think it would have gone on for ever if they had the fact that I'd got my mum and the staff involved to add to the teasing.

Not everything can be down to the teacher, no wonder so many are giving up. We have a situation where schools are being asked to deliver actual lessons in resilience but teachers aren't allowed to ask children to actually show any and are expected to resolve every peer group issue. This child is 10/11, not an infant.

I was that snowflake child who was always teased, and it was horrible being like that. I sometimes wonder, why did it happen to me so much, and why did it bother me so much? My guess is that I wanted to be liked by everybody, and if someone teased me, I took it to mean they disliked me, so I overreacted to what was intended as affectionate teases, which everybody did to everybody, and was then identified as an easy victim. I think my problem was that I didn't understand the difference between affectionate teases, such as "you numpty", and ones which were really not nice. I tended to react badly to a lot of small things, such as losing a game, and had to be taught not to.

The perpetrators quickly latched on to the fact that my usual reaction was to cry over small things. And bingo, the adults told me "just ignore them" or "don't let them do it". A teased child who tries to follow that advice might dutifully remain silent, while being totally betrayed by their body language, which would bring on teasing all the more. My younger brother used to deliberately wind me up all the time as well; it didn't occur to me to do it back to him, because in my world everybody would be nice, and never tease anybody, ever. I feared confrontation, so I felt I wasn't allowed to defend myself. (Having met up with him recently, he said "wow, you're really assertive now!".)

I only remember one time at primary school when I really asserted myself: and that was not about being teased, but about the whole year group being kept in because of the misbehaviour of a few. I stood up and announced my displeasure about it loudly and clearly (I was 9). A teacher took me aside and eventually talked me down. I suppose I felt safe asserting myself to a teacher, in a way I didn't with the other children; but it reinforced the idea that I wasn't allowed to speak up about something I felt was not right.

I think that what might have helped me could have been role play, being taught that you're not going to like or be liked by everybody, being taught to stand up for myself with dignity, making witty comebacks (easier said than done), saying a very firm NO, and practising saying "that's not very nice", in a firm tone. As a child, I thought only adults were allowed to do that. Seriously! Nobody actually taught me that I could do it for myself. Eventually I survived by making witty comebacks. But there was a strange moment as an adult when somebody who really cared said to me "why are you letting them say such nasty things to you?". The truth was, I hadn't even noticed that that person was saying nasty things! I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.

Certainly, nasty bullying (e.g. racism) does need to be dealt with by the teacher, as does persistent teasing. But I think some children need to be taught the difference between affectionate teasing, where both sides laugh, and nasty teasing, as described here, when the perpetrator knows the victim doesn't like it. I found it very hard to break out of the role of always being teased, and suddenly say "NO!!! I won't put up with this", or to ignore it, and not be betrayed by my body language. There are lots of threads on MN which say "people don't like me any more now that I'm assertive".

Put your concerns in writing. By email is fine - but a written record. Everyday she comes home and reports issues. They cannot ignore written complaints in the same way a word with the teacher on the playground is ignorable.

Can you build up your daughter's 'psychic armour'? I can see this being a tricky one for a teacher to intervene and also sometimes we need to find solutions to people being unkind ourselves. These children are being rude, but it is a common flexing of power. People say stupid things, it doesn't make it true. Can your daughter laugh at them for being so precious? Does she have other friends she can spend time with? Can you give her lots of reassurance and love? Brainstorm with her how she can manage silly teasing and also what she can do if it gets too much.

I was bullied throughout secondary school in a low-level, but persistent way. My mam had a word with the school and the only response was one teacher saying to me (after a particularly gruelling lesson of constant comments), “You should ignore it. If you get tearful, like you did today, they will do it more for the reaction.”

I remember thinking, “You fucker. You could see them walking back and forth across the classroom to say something mean. You could see I had TEARS in my eyes. Why didn’t you do something if you could see all that?”

In answer to “what could the teacher do?” He could have said, “Oi, Ben, Phillip, I can see you bullying Cali. Stop doing that.”