To be concerned re this advice?

[Nicknamegoeshere]

My ex-husband told my ten year-old son over the phone tonight that if someone pushes him or hits him at playtime, he should push or hit back in "self-defence."

I'm personally quite horrified at this advice. Son says he knows it's wrong.

Advice please!

Hitting someone back because they hit you first without accessing the situation is stupid & clearly many posters on this thread grew up or live in a bubble.

Teacher here.

Look it isn't a terrible lesson to teach kids to stick up for themselves. However they don't have the emotional capacity to channel self defence in healthy ways. So what do you think happens if the child punches back? It ends up in a fight. We cannot just say "oh the person who started it is responsible". It doesn't work like that. We cannot condone violence in any form, it's a terrible lesson for kids.

I've explained this many a dad (it's always the dads who advise their boys to punch back) who refuse to see it from my point of view, and then they go on to wonder why they have an aggressive and violent teenager.

Also the "bullies stop being bullies if you punch back" is utter bullshit. 99% of the time it just means they set their mates on you.

@Halo1234 exactly! Don't be a "victim", walk tall etc & of course fight back hard if no other option but ideally get away from the situation, run away. However I went to school with kids who ended up in Feltham.

Doesn't anyone teach their kids how to avoid being hit in the first place?

Chick how do they do that when they're in schools with any number of children with issues of varying types? Some kids will just walk up and lay into them.

@TartanDMs

You know what - my DS was bullied throughout primary to the extent that he changed schools, the new school was much better and he had no issues. Went to high school and the bullies from his first primary were also there and took delight in torturing him. Teachers didn't give a rats ass because they never saw the incidents and nobody would back DS up. One day he snapped after having his glasses taken off him and his school bag thrown in the bin, and was being pushed around. He squared up to the biggest one, punched him and broke his nose. Two days of being excluded was worth it because nobody ever touched him again. There is being the bigger person then there is being a punchbag. I am with your ex.

Happened to DC. Two days in a row, DC came back bruised. No complaint to the teacher had worked so far. Guess what? Thirds day was the last day this billy tried to hit DC. A well timed kick resolved it nicely.

I used to tell ds to go and tell a teacher, but when he did they did fuck all. And my child ended up being bullied. Absolutely now I would tell him to hit back twice as hard.

I can sympathise with the idea of stopping bullying in its tracks / the uselessness of schools. But the problem is that parents are dishing out this advice as though it’s as absolute and foolproof. “Aim to end the fight”, “hit back twice/ten times as hard/on the nose” and they won’t bother you again.

That might work some time, even most of the time - but there are other times where it can backfire spectacularly. What if you genuinely can’t ‘end it’ because they’re physically stronger than you? What if they get their mates involved, or a weapon? At what point should the child walk away rather than believing that they can end every such situation with their own physical strength?

At some point, the advice surely changes too. You’re 18 years old, get shoved by someone - do you really then aim to hit them back harder?

@Wearywithteens You do know that if a teacher were to advocate hitting back in school then they'd never teach again, don't you?

^ To add to my last post:

Taking the law into your own hands isn't really a useful skill for later life: the way adults stand up for themselves is by involving the appopriate authorities. How to do this effectively a very useful skill to learn.

"Don't ever start it, but make sure you finish it".
Source - my Dad.
Wise words indeed.

A) most people (understandably) don't think as rationally as usual when it comes to their kids being the victims of violence, so the responses here aren't really too surprising.

B) I'm anti-violence but I do think the "rules" are a bit different for children than adults. As an adult, if somebody I know were to hit me, I would be more equipped to defuse or extricate myself from the situation, and there would be clear consequences for the attacker once I told the authorities. Future attacks would also be unlikely. None of that is true for children at school. I have seen firsthand how many kids get repeatedly attacked because they don't stand up for themselves and because telling teachers achieves precisely nothing. Actually makes it worse, most of the time. With that knowledge, what should I advise my child to do?

Personally I have zero faith in schools or teachers to deal with bullying. If my child ever gets hit at school I will promptly phone the police to file a complaint of assault. Just as I would if a colleague hit me at work.

As an adult you, I assume, manage to work with morons, without punching them. You teach your children those skills, distraction, deflection, using their big voice, humour etc etc.

Managing social interactions with different people, without escalation, is a life skill.

Maybe we have all been really unusually lucky.

@Redolent I agree. It's almost as if teach your kids one thing as a child (to hit back), but then they have to learn at some point as a young adult (you would hope) to employ other strategies.

Most of the shit going on in the world is because bullies are allowed to do what they like without adequate retaliation.
This comment wins the thread.
Imagine if someone had stopped Trump from becoming the nasty bully that he is.
What some posters seem to be missing is that this advice of hitting back is not being given in vacuum. Alongside a lot of other life lessons, this advice works brilliantly.

@hetanom What would you tell the police if your kid had hit them back?

My dad always told me to hit back, and i will pass this down to my daughter!

I was bullied once at school by someone 3 years older than me, i didnt run to a teacher, because i knew the teachers would do fuck all about it, instead i told my old man who at the time was Para in the british army, he found out where the lad lived, and a quiet chat with the lads dad, i wss never bullied again!

It's absolutely not true that teachers do nothing about bullies. Where I work, any violence results in suspension or expulsion. We have amazing pastoral teams that look after all pupils welfare, all staff who the teach vulnerable children are briefed by these pastoral teams about their situation and everyone does everything in their power to stop bullying or existing issues escalating. It's not the same as when we went to school. It's not the 80's where a black eye delivered by a peer was seen as character building. And if you think your child's school is doing nothing then you need to either engage with them (this is not the case for everyone but some parents are resistant to engagement and are set on the school being in the wrong from the start, or refuse to acknowledge that actually their child is as much in the wrong as the person they're accusing) or change schools and make your concerns about their lack of following safeguarding procedures known to the local authority.

[quote Nicknamegoeshere]@Redolent I agree. It's almost as if teach your kids one thing as a child (to hit back), but then they have to learn at some point as a young adult (you would hope) to employ other strategies.[/quote]
Yes it is exactly like that, just as a lot of other things. From driving a car to getting a job, things to learn change at every stage of life. Why shouldn’t they?

Hit back harder. YABU.

@hetanom What would you tell the police if your kid had hit them back?

Good question. (By the way I never said I would tell my kid to do that) but it's still a possibility. It's very hard to know really, but I guess if I felt like my child was involved in a two-way fight, I wouldn't feel the need to involve the police. If I felt like my child was the victim of a one-sided attack, I would.

It's absolutely not true that teachers do nothing about bullies. Where I work, any violence results in suspension or expulsion

It may not be true for you, but that doesn't mean it's not for others.

It's not THAT long since I was at school. Certainly nowhere near as far back as the 80s.

@GlummyMcGlummerson
That sounds like some utopia. I drive every morning on a road full of young kids walking to school. How in the world will any of your ideas work in a place like that?
Did you ever think that may be you don’t see anything and think all is going swimmingly is because it is happening where you can’t see it?