...to think that if your child is a bully then you’re a shit parent?

[Calladia]

AIBU?

Sorry about the terrible typos!

If your child is a bully and you're doing nothing about it- then you're a shit parent.

I agree @FTMF30

The child in that example was clearly being subject to some supremely shit parenting.

Being a shit parent doesn't just mean being horrible to the child, is can be failing to provide a secure environmental. Failing to protect them from abuse.

We could possibly use the term inadequate or sub-par to avoid upsetting those who fall into the category accidentally. Doesn't make much difference to the child though.

I do agree that if the parents know and are in denial, that’s shitty. But if they don’t know, how are they supposed to find out and do something about it? I’ll be the first to admit I did 100 stupid things when I was younger without my parents knowing (definitely not bullying but drinking, drugs etc). My mum and dad were the most supportive, caring, positively invested in my life people that I could ask for. I was just very good at hiding that side of my life, and I think even very small children can be good at that too

Can you actually stop some children though. My son is still only 4 but very impulsive.

Time out doesn't stop him from doing it again. Shouting doesn't upset him. Being disappointed in him doesn't make a difference. I think these things do upset him really but his reaction is to become more defiant or to have a complete meltdown, completely unable to calm down. He got very quickly bored of reward charts and gets lots of attention and play time.

5 minutes later he can be be doing that same behaviour again as though nothing had happened.

I must be a super shit parent because I'm unable to do the firm boundaries and high expectations etc that all the books waffle on about.

Hi Arrietty, thanks but I don’t think I misread anything. I don’t think OP is being UR and I’m fully expecting parents to shift the blame from themselves to situations/the victim/the bully themselves and so on and am looking forward to seeing the lengths people will go to not take responsibility for their child 🤷🏻‍♀️ It just a form of denial, nothing special really.

I think the denial is in the relentlessly MC MN way of looking at the world.

My middle child was horrendously, serially bullied and the school had a terrible mediation-based way of “tackling it”. That is to say they put bullies and victims together around a table and attempted to “mediate their differences”. Which defies belief as an approach and enraged me at the time. But lots of schools are ineffective at tackling bullying, so that’s not unique.

We ended up moving him to a different school to keep him safe, but he needed two terms at home and intensive counselling to deal with it.

Which is a long way of saying I do understand what it feels like when your child is the victim of horrendous violence from another child. It’s natural to be angry, upset etc.

But that still doesn’t mean child bully = shit parent. It’s not true and it’s not helpful to generalise like that. It certainly doesn’t lead you to any helpful solution, even when it’s true. (What are you going to do? Email the parents of the bullies to tell them “You’re shit”?)

What’s more interesting and helpful is to know what schools and parents should be doing to protect the children they are responsible for. We don’t even have a proper national policy.

YABU.

Sometimes yes, parents show violent behaviour at home which is copied into bullying behaviour by the child. But as a teacher I observe bullying coming from everywhere - girls in particular can become bullies without actually realising it. They fall out with each other, and sometimes lovely girls get caught up in a peer pressure, pack mentality. I’m not excusing their behaviour and I will always deal with this behaviour severely, but very often, their parents are mortified, absolutely mortified when they are called in by the head teacher to discuss.

Sometimes it's perception. My DD had the typical "mean girl" friendship group issues. New girl comes into the group and does the old " divide and conquer " routine with my DD as her target. Whispering about her to the others, arranging secret trips at the weekend without her, cutting her off in conversation. Secret Snapchat groups making fun of her.

DD finally had enough and there was an angry confrontation (not physical, just shouting). The other girls realised what had been going on and supported my DD.

Hey presto, according to her parents my DD is the bully and they are ringing the school to demand she is punished. They steadfastly refused to see any of the behaviour that had lead up to this and blamed DD as their child was happy to play victim. I'm sure they think I'm a shit parent too.

I will also say, my 6 year old was told by his best friend to call another boy in his class ‘pee pants’ and push him.

My son did. He was upset and came home and told me and his dad what had happened. He said he didn’t feel like he could say no.

We were mortified, and we took steps as a parent including taking to our son, his teacher, the boy who he had hurt parents, and making our son write a letter of apology to the boy. Never in my life did I think my gentle, kind, strong willed son would have done something like that under instruction of another. But he did. It was dealt with swiftly but the I really think that all children are capable of becoming bullies.

I've read some interesting threads on here from people who bullied others in school and the reasons why. Often it was a herd mentality thing or people were worried about getting bullied themselves. People often felt awful about it years later so did end up growing up ok. Unless your child is very young or a very bad bully that gets caught, how would parents always know?

Even nice kids can act vile on occasion, and also I thought it was fact that empathy isnt developed in kids when they're young and comes a lot later.

I think you are being really judgy and unhelpful actually, if people take more time to actually understand the causes of bullying then maybe they would be able to solve it, saying 'the parents are shit' is a sweeping generalisation and if that was true then it would be almost pointless trying to find a solution because you can't change someone elses parenting style

YANBU. Parents are responsible for everything their child does. For a child to be a bully, the parent(s) must have failed in some way.

Even if you accept the argument that "most bullies are people who have been bullied themselves" this is STILL a failure on the part of the parent. Why did they not help the child understand that the negative experiences must not be directed onto someone else? If the child was being bullied and the parent wasn't aware of it, why did the child feel unable to talk to them?

If you believe "all bullies are cowards" this again is an indication of parental failings. Why has the child been raised to be so insecure as to need to bully others?

There is an argument that some children are just inherently bad. There is probably a good deal of truth to this, but it doesn't absolve the parents of responsibility to turn the child around.

My just turned 5 year old has a tendancy to bully through exclusion.
She has a little clique of cool girls she's friends with.
And a much wider circles of kids who desperately want to be her friend.
I've seen kids shouting and waving at her in the street and watched her snub them horribly: "She not my friend Mummy. I not even know her name!"
We organised an all class party for her birthday and she kept coming up to me with sly little suggestions about who she'd like to exclude " Mummy, you know not everyone is my friend"
I always pull her up on these behaviours when I see them but I suspect she is a right bitch at school.

I am angry and I think more people should be angry about it actually.

Yes I do take people's point that there are reasons, but I suppose my thinking is that as a parent it is your responsibility to find out what sort of child you're raising and if you're not raising a child to be decent then you are not parenting properly. If you don't know your child is not behaving decently then I also think you're not parenting properly - because I think you should make it your business to know. Because ultimately if it's not your responsibility then whose is it?

Yes I understand that the behaviour is cyclical but whose responsibility is it to break the cycle?

Ultimately my sympathy is with the child who goes to sleep every night worried about what horrors another person's child will inflict on them the next day and not understanding why the adults around them can't or won't put a stop to it.

My just turned 5 year old has a tendancy to bully through exclusion. She has a little clique of cool girls she's friends with. And a much wider circles of kids who desperately want to be her friend

At 5? Can kids get into a clique and be 'cool' at 5 years old? 😮

I know a very powerful 16 ur old bully. This girl quite literally runs the upper year groups. The boys all fancy her and the girls all fear her. Behind her back they dislike her but will bow to her commands and do whatever she tells them and then protect her from the fallout. This young woman seems Teflon Coated. She orchestrates bullying campaigns against young people that include whole year groups isolating them - stealing from them and intimidating them.

This bully is no scared young woman. Her parents aren’t concerned. They are proud.
They and she feel powerful. In charge. Winning.
Some people don’t value being good or kind they value being in charge and feared. They don’t give a shit what you or I think.

I wouldn't have believed it either MrsJBaptiste but I've seen the behaviour with my own eyes and I don't know what else to call it.
I always pull her up on it.

I think it is not so straight forward at all. I became good friend with a neighbour's mum whose DS was in my DS class. She was a brilliant mum, very involved, quite strict etc... She then opened up that her DS was being bullied, that it had escalated, that she'd complained to the teacher and Head but that little was done etc...

Then my DS started to talk to me about it and his view was that he was often the target because he just seemed to love to provoke those who were the most likely to respond back, tantalising them, pushing the right buttons etc... and really being a bully himself, but in a more subtle way.

I didn't think anything until I started to see that exact behaviour at his home with his siblings and then at sporting activities. My friend was totally oblivious to it though and really saw him as a victim.

Her three other kids were absolutely lovely, incredibly well behaved, no issues at all at school.

It is not as simple as you make out. I have an 18 year old who has often been a verbal bully (never violent). She has high functioning asd and whatever we do, she can't seem to realise that certain behaviors and things she says are inappropriate. We have modelled good behaviour for her, punished her regularly (including at one point removing every item except her bed from her room and making her earn them back) ; she has had countless therapy that we have paid for at great cost; social skills lessons and still she does this. But to you, I am shit and in denial. Oh and BTW, my other child is a model of compassion and excellent behaviour.

How do the parents put a stop to it op? What's the magic formula? Because I, a shit parent, have no idea what it is.

Btw, my son has sat on hit and bit kids at nursery. It's not targeted at on kid and it's not often so I wouldn't call it bullying but who knows what the other parents think?

I'm with you OP. At nearly 20, my son is still dealing with the damage done by the gobshites. Parents were initially sympathetic but then decided to be aggressive themselves.

Parents do play a huge part. There is a child at my sons school we recently moved him to. He has been targeting my son for months and physically attacked him multiple times. Mum does not care. He has been physically attacking all the other kids since pre-school but mum won't admit there is a problem. If you speak to her you get mouthfuls of abuse and excuses about how it's the victims fault and they did something that caused her child to punch them or kick them or stamp on their head.

In cases like that the kids need taken away from the parents. They are neglecting the kids and the kids are the ones who will suffer in the long run. Yes this child has learning difficulties and is on the spectrum but there are many many children like him who understand that bursting open the lips of other kids or giving them black eyes on an almost daily basis is unacceptable. This mum doesn't even bother with parents evenings or school concerts and wouldn't even get out of bed to take the kids to school when they started at age 4/5, just let them walk to and from school unaccompanied according to all the other parents.

@Beerincomechampagnetastes I've seen so many of those powerful girls you describe. How do they do it? How do they get so much power and influence at such a young age? It baffles me.

I'm sorry unlimited, but your daughter s behaviour sounds horrible and you sound half proud about it. For me, that attitude would have meant no party. You need to get a grip.

I agree with you, bullies are made many times out of either over indulged children or nice kids who were pushed too much. Where were you when they needed support? How did you teach them about empathy, compassion and respect? Where were you when they started picking and hurting people? What are you doing now?

IME most parents of bullies are parents who think their children fart rainbows, who don’t give shit, are in denial or are bullies themselves. The main thing to fight in this culture is the stupid argument that it is a “phase” and will pass. It doesn’t pass, it just mutates into something more underhanded if you don’t deal with it

YADNBU

All of those listing other reasons (death, illness, DV in the family) are describing reasons why parenting might have gone to shit. Doesn't mean the parenting isn't shit

You don't get full marks for effort with parenting

in my unfortunate Experience, The children that have effected my DC over the years,(late teen now and very happy) it has always been the behaviour of the parents being mirrored by the child.

Yes there will be a % that comes from tragic family circumstances. But let's look at the whole, like we do in feminism. forget the What abouty, and concentrate on the majority.

The bullies we've had to deal with range from sneaky, underhanded, gaslighting, and physically nasty. their parents all displayed these traits too.

I believe most of the bullies will grow up and be those adults we continue to see in society.

to the previous poster, who's DD has been through hell, I'm so sorry and understand why she lashes out and struggles.

Not in my experience.

My senior school child was being bullied. It was a complicated situation but eventually after no help from school, and with evidence, we directly approached the bully’s parents. Though I can’t stress enough that at this point we had nothing to lose. The next step would have been to remove our child from the school.

Bully’s parents were horrified, mortified. They invited us to their home to discuss. Their child was severely reprimanded and consequences put in place.

They did acknowledge that had they not seen the evidence we showed them they wouldn’t have been able to believe it.