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

[Calladia]

AIBU?

Not necessarily. Parents always somehow get the blame for everything, your children are their own people independent of you and you can’t micromanage their entire lives.

I think how you react to the knowledge your child is a bully is more telling.

But Water all these adults have let you down, having personal issues themselves is no excuse for allowing this. And actually I know you said your parents aren't to blame because they didn't know, maybe they should have known you better and you should have had a relationship where you were able to tell them?

Don't get me wrong, I do know where you are coming from. When I grew up, it wasn't the done thing for parents to get involved with things that happened outside their house, still doesn't make it right and I hope most parents would pick up on stuff like this nowadays.

I don't micromanage my older teens lives and never have, but it's possible to know them pretty well and know what they are up to or capable of.

Overall I agree tbh, obviously there are some exceptions (e.g. mental health issues), but if you’ve raised a nasty little bully who takes pleasure in upsetting and hurting other children then 9 times out of 10 you’re that way yourself and/or you’re a neglectful/abusive parent whose kids are suffering and taking it out on other kids. Happy children who have good stable parenting usually don’t decide to terrorise other children for their amusement.

Not every bully is damaged, some bullies are naturally inclined to dominate by personality. Equally some bullies do have mental health issues.
Also some parents aren't aware that their child has been bullying.

So yes I think you're being unreasonable and narrow minded

Also we have to remember that the child may not even necessarily be bullying anyone and actually it's the other parents who are the ones who bully that child incessantly because they "think" the child is bullying theirs.

I find the way the OP is phrased to be an example of someone who struggles to interact with other adults in an appropriate way, and I'm wondering why people jump to answer this kind of demand.

I am inclined to agree with you on the whole However, there are always plenty of exceptions and parents of children with social communication difficulties are an obvious one. My son used to punch his sister in anger when he was a toddler I would consistently remove him and tell him ‘no’ when he did it. He stopped fairly quickly. However when they would go to the childminders who was not very good at putting in boundaries he started hitting her again (only at the childminders) I can see a scenario where peers, environment and personality over rides good parenting.

Thelnebriati, I think your comment probably says more about you than it does about me. I do go on to explain my thinking a few posts down from my OP and actually it has been a very useful discussion for me. I'm sorry it wasn't for you.

It's really sad to read so many posts from people who have suffered at the hands of bullies or whose children have suffered. It also makes me really angry to read that so few people feel that the behaviour has been dealt with effectively.

OP some parents I know are ripping out there hair and crying because they have tried everything in there power to stop the child, its really heartbreaking op. Do you suggest they beat there children or abuse them in some other way? 1 child was an absolute horror and her mother cried and begged for help because she was at the end of her tether. Turned out child had mental illness. There are some parents that I admit just are more interested in there phone and will occasionally mumble no quinton we use our inside voice but 99% parents really do try.

We have a rule in my house that is I won't let anyone bully my children and I won't let my children bully anyone these.

I became a bully after my dad died. I was about 11 and my grief and anger came out in that way. My mum was the most phenomenal mum. Some bullies are just dicks, some are hurt/angry/sad about something and need help themselves. Unless you know everything about people's lives it might be hard to work out which is which.

I do understand that some parents are genuinely pulling their hair out when they find out their child is bullying others, but in my experience, most go on the offensive: they defend it, deny it, lie about it, throw in and bullying the victims' family , too. Awful. And schools are beyond rubbish in dealing with it.

We've had to move a child over bullying. School didn't want to know. Mother of the little dick acted like it wasn't happening and like we were over reacting ... still does to this day, and all three of her children are vile, bullying, creatures ...

My child was bullied. The parents of two out of the three children involved wouldn't accept it at all. They made our lives pretty hellish and nearly three years on I wouldn't say we have fully recovered from the way they turned on us when they didn't like what the school was telling them about their children's behaviour. It was truly terrifying for us and our child. Their children now have very few friends as children know to stay away.

The third parent accepted that her child had made some bad choices and supported her to make changes. She has turned into a wonderful friend for our child and I have a huge amount of respect for her mother.

When I was bullied at school, the bullies' mother was the chief school gate bitch mum. The girls seemed to be mimicking the mother's social dynamic in the playground environment

Oh yes... the you are over reacting, when your child comes back home with a shoe print on his head...

I became a bully after my dad died. I was about 11 and my grief and anger came out in that way.

So other kids were victimised because you were upset but it was ok, because you had a reason to abuse people

I’m sorry for your loss but again, the bully has a excuse and nobody protects the victims who may have lost a parent as well or being abused but have not become bullies themselves because they have parents that know how to support them better rather than letting them hurt other kids to take it out.

My dd has been a bully.

I have had another parent scream at her and also scream at me. According to that other parent, my dd was a horrendous bully.

The truth was far more complex.
The other girl was doing a lot of low level unpleasant stuff to dd. Calling her names, and being unkind. Nothing big enough to complain about, and nothing big enough for teachers to take seriously, and my dd wouldn't tell anyway. It really upset dd, and she reacted by bottling up and then being nasty. Mostly she was nasty verbally, but there were a couple of times when there was a push and shove between them, and twice when it was hitting.

I spent ages with both dd and school trying to sort it. I accepted that dd's behaviour was not right and that there was a string of incidents involving the other girl. The other mum would not accept that there was an issue on both sides, or that her dd had done anything at all, and she would not engage with school over it, and plastered all over FB that my dd was bullying her daughter. The head had to ban her from the playground after she screamed in dd's face.

The thing is, on several occasions I know her dd was lying. There was one time when her ds told her dd that my dd had hurt him in the playground. The school investigated and my dd had been in the library all break helping to tidy it. She wasn't in the playground. But her dd went home and told her mum my dd had done it.

There was the time she screamed at me about my dd doing things to her dd on the way home from school, except that, due to her saying there were problems, my dd no longer walked home from school alone. Yet she was still reporting incidents that could not have happened. Her dd was telling her they happened.

That mum was really, really upset with my dd and if you asked her, she would genuinely say that my dd was bullying.
I did everything school asked me to do, to make sure that dd did not behave badly, left this girl alone and that there were no opportunities for anything to happen (like picking her up from school). She wa spunished at home, and talked to at home. We tried to get to the bottom of it and we put action plans in place etc etc etc.

It got to the point at the beginning of year 6 where the class teacher agreed to keep them apart at all times so there was zero interaction. That worked, except her dd would still come over and try to play with mine. My dd was eventually allowed to walk to school again, one day her dd knocks on the door and asks if they can walk together! (I said no)

The thing is, I know dd was at least 50% to blame, maybe more. I know she was bullying. I also know that it wasn't 100% her fault.

DD is also poor at social skills. Her friendship skills are poor. She has had support all through school to try and help her understand social interaction better.

She is now secondary, and friednship issues are rearing their heads again, in a different form, not bullying, but this time dd is struggling to make and keep friends.
I suspect sh may be on the autistic spectrum, but she isn't 'bad enough' to get a diagnosis.

I think your OP is incredibly simplistic.
I am an ex teacher, and bullying happens for all sorts of reasons. It is rarely as simple as one kid is the bully.
The issue is always how a school deals with it.

@TheMotherofAllDilemmas where in my post does it say that it was ok for me to bully people? Clearly never ok. In my situation it was dealt with by the school and the two people I targeted are two of my very best friends in the world now. My point was in relation to the OP that I don't believe in every instance the parents are the culprits - sometimes sure, but not always.

I wholeheartedly agree OP. I have 5 children, the middle of whom was bullied/picked on for a short time, and which made me ask myself would I rather have a child who was bullied or a child who was a bully. And I very quickly came to the the conclusion that I would have failed miserably if I raised a very unhappy cowardly child without empathy, (which is basically what bullies are) whereas you can much more easily give your bullied child the tools/a good old talk in order to give them the confidence to stick up for themselves.

I would have failed miserably if I raised a very unhappy cowardly child without empathy

why don't you just polish your halo a bit more, I don't think we can all see it shining?

There ahve been numerous posts on this thread about why kids bully, eg the pp who was bullying after her father died.
I'm sure her mother would be glad to know she had failed as a parent and had raised an unhappy cowardly child - or maybe she just had a child who was veyr unhappy for a while and needed help?

I’m sorry for your loss but again, the bully has a excuse and nobody protects the victims who may have lost a parent as well or being abused but have not become bullies themselves because they have parents that know how to support them better rather than letting them hurt other kids to take it out.

Never was a truer word said. I had a neighbours child who was a fucking nightmare, horrible to everyone and she was a big girl who lorded it over the other kids and used her size to overpower the other kids. Excuse was always given that her dad had died. Anyway, My DSs (year and 2 younger) were out playing and I was out shooting the breeze with another neighbour who was a childminder. All kids at this point between 8 and 10. Girl the childminder was looking after was in the same class as bully girl. She tells us about how awful this girl was being and then there was an "incident" - witnessed by everyone. Bully's mum comes, and to be fair, makes her apologise and then starts going on with the usual excuse about how it's cos her dad has died. And childminder girl pipes up "well, my mum died and I'm really sad but I don't go hitting people and being nasty" Out of the mouths of babes.

Some children are just scummy and nasty. Others have issues which explains they behaviour.
All the bullies at school are now financially very successful...which is dispiriting.

Different people have different perspectives of what bullying actually is.

You can have the fist fight bullies where the parent thinks its okay.

You can have the "you can't play with us any more bullying" where the parent thinks thats also okay because it isn't fair to tell sophie not to leave ava with no one to play with. After all, you can't tell Sophie who to be friends with.

So its all about perspective.

How much time have you actually spent talking to the parents of bullies, OP?

Dss main bully is now doing extremely well at sport and features regularly in local press. His bully of a dad coaches young children in that sport now. Gawd help us that he is being an example. I still want to punch both their lights out 8/9 years later. I'm normally a very laid back person but the damage that he and his mates did to my son can never be forgiven (by me anyway). His dad froted up to me in the school playground but I made him step back - gobshite.

These were people in our "circle" had been in our house and garden, and at parties. Not some poor unfortunate child from a council scheme and from a 1 parent family as people imagine they might be. The boys who did come from that background were 100% some of the nicest kids I've ever come across.