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

[Calladia]

AIBU?

I wouldn't even for a moment argue that this applies to a child with SEN how can you tell though? It's not obvious or clear all the time. What SEN counts I'm guessing a dyslexic bully wouldn't.

I know a child whose parents were told that he would've been diagnosed with autism 10 years ago but the guidelines have changed. It doesn't make his behaviour any easier to deal with.

I think yabu op, I have seen one instance of a dc going from being a bully to being perfectly behaved and yes I do think it was to do with home life. Not the dc fault that their mother was abusive(to what extent I don't know) but it was clear at face value. Children were eventually removed and are now blossoming in no time at all. Miserable children act out either what they see or how they feel when they have no other outlet. My dc has been a victim of bullying and it is heartbreaking when it happens but in each case it is down to insecurity, jealousy and probably the bully are hurting themselves. Although they are doing wrong , it isn't the parents lack of curtailing bullying nature of children but creating it in them. So yes parents fault but it is a failure to identify what is causing them to bully than just letting them do it.

Don't know if that makes sense.

you don't know how your child is behaving because you don't know your child.

Or because that child is good at hiding it?

Actually what I was trying to say was that IMO all competent parents should make it their business to find out how their children are behaving.

How do you suggest they achieve that? If your child behaves fine at home and there is no indication from school that they are doing anything wrong, it's still possible they are bullying. How would a parent find that out?

I was bullied at school for the best part of a year. Both boys had, as far as I know, competent parents who insisted on good behaviour. I don't know how they were supposed to know that I was being bullied since I never told. Second sight? "You know your child" suggests that human beings are always perfectly consistent in their behaviour, so that you can observe them in one setting and deduce what they will be like in another setting. Not the case ime. I am not sure what made these two boys behave like this in this particular situation: I suspect it was a need to impress one another. That wouldn't have been apparent in a home setting.

Ds was bullied at school for a while. The boy who bullied him? His mum, a truly lovely person, was dying. He took his anger out on his oldest friend. We told the school and they worked on it and things got better. Also the other boys in the playground stepped in and made sure ds- who was quite small and physically unable to defend himself- was safe.

No doubt if we had told the mum she would have "identified" the cause of the behaviour. She couldn't have stopped herself dying, though, she couldn't have spared her little boy that pain

I think it’s too simplistic a view OP.
So many additional factors: mob mentality, kids who are easily led- it’s fine to say a parent knows their child and at 6yrs old that’s true, at 15 that may be very different. In addition a parent can be struggling, you call them “shit” parents but they could be seriously suffering too and unable to parent affectively. I also believe sometimes nature overrides nurture.
This isn’t to give bullies a pass but if you look at cause and prevention you are likely able to help alleviate the problem more successfully.

Quite often those who are being ‘bullied’ often have a bit of a problem with the ‘bully’ in the first place and are quite determined that the child has something against them.

They often have over involved parents who TELL them they’re being bullied then every single look, word etc becomes bullying

See it time and time again

Also see completely innocent kids who are literally minding their own business being hit, kicked etc and the perpetrator never actually gets in trouble because of supposed issues so it works both ways and none are satisfactory

Victims of bullying also have ADHD, siblings with SN, dying parents, abusive parents, live in poverty, they are not excused the way bullies are, in fact this often used as ammunition for more bullying.

The poster who said there is only help offered to victims, in my experience, not. There were teachers clamouring to understand and help the ringleader who bullied me, while I had my form tutor telling me I had to learn to stick up for myself.

It totally destroyed my confidence for life. Still, never mind, let’s make sure the bully is ok.

As for parents, in the bullies I have know they tend to have in common am obsession with appearances, very consumerist, wanting to win and be popular but not especially happy people. Also their child can do no wrong. I expect they were raised the same way and the bullying goes back through generations. I don’t think this is exclusive to every bully but it happens a lot. Children learn their attitudes and empathy from their parents.

Something I always find consistent in these threads is the assumption that the bullies have a problem or that the parents would if they could...

I really strongly disagree.

Many bullies behave like bullies because they enjoy it. The like the feeling of being powerful and they like to cause distress in others.

Chillicheese123, that is so much crap, my son best friend bullied him to the point at 8 years old he tried to kill himself, he was so upset at why she turn on him. Yes her parents had split up and both had handled it wrong but that is no excuse for what she put him through, it's taken 18 months of therapy for us both, a completely different school putting loads of support in place where I'm finally seeing my boy come back to who he was, then we walk in to macdonalds as a treat, she sat there with her parent he turns into this scared little boy again and we are back to nightmares, all he wanted originally is to still be friends even tried to be understanding that she was upset. But to have your child scared that she might be hiding in the back alley to get him is soul destroying. How dare you imply my son caused this.

@itsgettingweird I'm so sorry for your son's dreadful experiences. Hope he's having a better time of it now.

Sorry Chillicheese123 didn't see what you written underneath I apologise

Did you ever find out why they did it?
@nomdefuckit
Not really. The same environment seems to affect people in different ways, which causes different responses from other people in the environment, etc etc. 10/15 years later, hoping some counselling may help. DC is a model citizen in so many ways now, but still 'complicated'.

I think it can be complicated..especially with girls..

Years ago one of DD's had a child in her junior class that the mother was always worrying about and was so "quite and sensitive".

She wasn't a friend of my DD's.

As the years went on my daughter mentioned a few times that she was not nice, definitely not sensitive and was very very much a different child in class to the way she behaved when an adult was around.

Not my concern or business as my dd wasn't friendly with her and it didn't impact us.

However at around age 9 this little girl had become a right little horror quietly in the class, being very quietly nasty to girls.

One day I was contacted by a parent asking was my daughter ok as she had had a run in with this girl over something nasty she had said to another child in her hearing. My daughter had taken it on herself to go and complain the child to the teacher early the next morning.

The little madam absolutely denied everything and started crying hysterically when several witnesses to the incident backed up my daughter's version.

Such was the hysterics that her parents were called into remove her.

My daughter came home and never even mentioned it....I was contacted by a parent and told what had gone on and that her daughter was very upset as she had had years of nastiness from this child.

Following morning there are 10...and I mean a full 10 parents in the school, that have decided to make a complaint about this child....

The Principal couldn't believe it.
This had been the child that had cried for two years every morning, when her mother dropped her off and was such a "quiet sensitive soul"...

Well it was all now the talk of the school, not to mind the class....

Parents were very very upset as it turns out a couple of them HAD been brushed off by the Principal years earlier.

The mother was shamed and I would say absolutely mortified...and wasn't seen for the remaining years in the school.

HOWEVER, she did put manners on her daughter who didn't say BOO to another child for the remaining years in primary.

The point is....this child was a nasty manipulative pup....who had her mother duped as much as anyone.

Funnily enough, it was her lovely grandmother who once said to a friend of mine when she was about 4.."that girl is going to be such a handful.. she's running rings around the whole family". Granny was absolutely right.

Apologies about the length..

Ooooo lots of personal experience here which I'd rather not have had. But one memory sticks out. My DD was having a terrible time with some mean girls in the lower reaches of secondary school. When I took the problem up with the head of year, naming the persistent ring leader the response was (word for word - it's seared in my memory!) 'oh it can't be Xxxxx. She comes from such a LOVELY family'. Lovely or not their daughter was a monster.

I have stopped watching reality programmes TOWIE, Real Housewives of.. as every episode is a lesson in bullying and nasty behaviour. Our teens are being encouraged to think this is normal behaviour - bring back Little House on the Prairie and stop this horrible stuff.

When I was studying to become an early years practitioner we we given a course on identifying bullying and the causes. As a parent whose child was being bullied I sat through the entire day listening to reasons why a child might bully and how to help the bully resolve their feelings/ issues/ concerns.
Toward the end of the day I asked what action is taken for the victims of bullying, what support are we offering, how are we making them feel safe after these incidences and there was nothing, not even a side note.
ALL of the focus, support and action is given to the bully, you have to wonder what life lessons we're giving to young aggressors and their victims.

@Hollybollybingbong
I think you are correct.

Many schools focus on the bully, trying to understand and placate etc.

The victim is often advised to stay away, move school etc.

In the case of my DD's school the parents hadn't been taken very seriously, as I think the Principal couldn't believe it really.

Now the Principal was a really lovely woman, and worked tirelessly for the school.

She was hit with a tsunami of complaints over those few days, AND crucially, the parents all knew about each other, which hugely escalated their annoyance, dissatisfaction and volume!

I never got to hear what actually happened other than they were told it would be dealt with.

I wasn't particularly friendly with the mother so I never really enquired....I tend to prefer to avoid gossip and drama..

I just know I didn't see the mother for a year and my daughter told me that now that it was all out in the open, there wasn't a peep out of the child.

She did try to be super sweet for a period with the class, but that didn't wash with the girls as they knew exactly how she had behaved to so many of them.

Eventually things died down and they moved on to seconday...

I always felt a bit sorry for her Mum, as she really didn't seem to have a clue, but I suspect she and her daughter were read the riot act by the Principal.
Which must have been deeply humiliating, after years of going up to the school about her "sweet sensitive child" that had to be constantly, specifically accommodated because of this....where she sat, who she sat with...etc..

She was an only daughter, the longest with 4 brothers....

I think one way or another it can usually be traced back to family dynamics...maybe not always but usually

Our idiotic headteacher told us during a parents evening that he would punish any kid who was bullied and who didn’t report it. When I mentioned I had reported it, he told me DS was not a victim of bullying because he was not targeted by the same child every time (but a group feral kids).

Apparently, it is only officially considered bullying if the abuse is perpetrated repeatedly by the same child, otherwise it doesn’t count as bullying.

How do you explain families with siblings who all turned out totally different as is often the case? I'm one of 7 and we're all different with different jobs, personalities, temperaments etc. Many bullies are victims and equally some people are just so and so's. Nature vs nurture is interesting.

I will also say I went through an awful time. Being raped, drug addiction issues, self harming and 3 suicide attempts. It wasn't my parent's fault they didn't know. It was because I didn't want to hurt them and I was so good at hiding it all.

So water are any of you a bully?

I'm one of 7, again all with different personalities etc, none of us are bullies. Different personalities etc might make the parenting required different, it doesn't necessarily mean a different outcome.

I only have 2, I don't think I've parented them exactly the same as they needed different strategies. So saying that "well i've raised them the same" doesn't cut it for me. Maybe you shouldn't have raised them the same? That's a generic thing, not to Water specifically.

Sorry, crossed posts, Sorry to hear about the shit time you had.

WaxOnFeckOff Not that I am aware of. One is quite an unpleasant person though so wouldn't be surprised if they had. I was bullied though by one boy in particular who teachers saw touching me inappropriately, 3 teachers walked past when he hit me and one walked past when he has his hand around my throat. He dragged me out of school grounds one morning and when we got back to school he told the head of year I'd split up with him and I got a bollocking! His mum died just after he was born and his stepmum was abusive to him. It didn't make me feel better but it did help me to understand it wasn't my fault or really to do with me specifically.