Should I report a whatsapp group to my son’s school ?

[M2BANTRIM]

So I am a mum of an 11 year old boy and about a year ago we decided to get him a cellphone so that he can have access to his homework which is usually sent on a school app and we downloaded WhatsApp for him as well . As a backstory we are from a southern African country I do not want to mention living in the UK so WhatsApp allowed him to keep in touch with grandparents and extended family . About a month ago , he told me that he had been added to a group chat and within minutes he was crying hysterically. He showed me his phone only to discover that a meme of a black boy with bulging eyes had been sent on the chat and someone had captioned my son’s name . This sent me into a rage and I managed to contact the boy’s mum who had sent it and she apologised and the son did as well and I just decided not to further escalate it . So my son doesn’t really open his WhatsApp and can go for 3-4 days without been on it and I can check on his 'last seen' . I discovered that he had over 900 messages and I saw he had been added to another group chat and these are kids aged between 10-13 and the chats were horrifying . One girl sent a picture with her mouth wide open and was saying something along the lines of how she is good at oral . The kids were throwing insults at each other including use of the n word , b word , c word it was absolutely vile . But none of these were directed towards my son . I immediately removed my son out of the group , took screenshots and sent them to my phone and deleted everything from my son’s phone and changed his privacy settings that don’t allow him to be added to a group without his permission first . So my question is will I be unreasonable to take the screenshots to the principal and have these kids dealt with ? In another chat one girl told another girl to delete herself because she was a c word ? Should I ignore this or take it up to the principal ? At the end of the day I do not want to be labelled a Karen but at the same time these kids are very unhinged . Please help

Of course it takes days! Secondary school teacher here. It doesn’t just take the school day, it goes on into the evening interviewing children, speaking to parents. It’s exhausting for staff involved who then roll up to school next day to find more overnight incidents. Everything has to be documented; it’s incredibly time consuming.

That's a safeguarding issue. So I think you have to report it to the school DSL.

Until we somehow stop the Great Parenting Cop-out nothing will change. Stop blaming social media, the government, the school… and parent your own children.

Those group WhatsApps do get out of hand, from my own and other parents' experience. I monitor my son's phone so when I saw it taking a turn for the worse I pulled him out of the group and monitored it to ensure he didn't rejoin. At that age, anything that could be bullying/ offensive aimed at individuals I took up directly with the parents. There wasn't any racism, but if I'd spotted it I absolutely would have reported it to the school. Likewise Misogyny and homophobia. Son is now 13 and although I don't tend to step in with parents directly now, I do still monitor his phone, with his agreement (a condition of him having a phone). Trouble is, they all have Snapchat now, which is much harder to monitor due to the immediate and temporary nature of the app. Kids use it to get around monitoring by parents for this reason. It's so hard as you don't want them to become targets by them not having access to the apps all their friends do (ds has had fun poked at him because we instill restrictions) but they're exposed to so much more, and it's pretty much constant, with no break from it.

OP if you don’t want to report to school (and I can understand why), do you have a parents WhatsApp group? When we’ve had similar instances, we’ve had parents post on that, along the lines of ‘not sure if you’re aware, but the kids WhatsApp group is getting a bit out of hand. Just a heads up you might want to check your child’s phone’. That often works quite well, especially when the parents of the perpetrators realise exactly what their DC have been posting.

@Pottedpalm yes we deal with it at school if it’s brought to our attention. We have all the PSHE lessons and cyber safe workshops but these things still happen. We teach chn to speak up and tell a trusted adult. Of course, school staff can be those trusted adults so we are not going to ignore a child who comes for help.
We also run parent workshops and most parents are shocked at what their chn have access to and the dangers.
My own DD was sent a nude by a boy from another secondary school. I told his school and they suspended him and called parents in. They were shocked and doubled down on their monitoring.

@Pottedpalm I agree with too many of your posts to quote

OP schools can raise issues in general if there are effects felt in class but if there is racism then go to the police

And stop with the "K" shite. It's ageist and misogynistic

Totally agree - it’s not the schools fault parents are letting children have access to apps when they are under age or even if legally old enough, aren’t responsible enough to be using them.

Unfortunately this has become very common, it seems to happen everywhere

Please report to the school. This is safeguarding issue.

Where are the parents of these kids?

OP - your DS is 11, why did he has access to WhatsApp?

I think a lot of the issues with parents is that with their eldest child, they have absolutely no idea what sort of stuff gets posted on these chats. We weren’t exposed to it as kids as we didn’t have phones and with your eldest child, certainly it simply never crossed my mind that Y6/Y7 kids would know what PornHub is, let alone posting links to it on the year group WhatsApp. It’s still inconceivable to me, but maybe older siblings, who knows. Obviously once I realised exactly what was going on, I could react accordingly and I was much better prepared when DD got a phone. It is a huge eye opener though the first time you’re dealing with this as a parent.

I've literally just had an e-Mail from DS's primary school about WhatsApp groups causing problems. They've reiterated that it's 16+ due to the maturity needed and that secondary schools have asked children NOT to form year groups on there due to the issues. They have asked to be informed of any issues (but stressing the time it takes to resolve) and signposted to the NSPCC website for support and resources.

This is true because you left the group - everyone gets a message saying X left the group so they’ll all know he’s not on it. And then if it gets reported it’ll be obvious it’s from him. To be honest too, everyone seems to be concerned about WhatsApp - the problem is not what’sapp, it’s that these kids sound like they’ve been exposed to/are exposing each other to hideous behaviour. That’s not limited to WhatsApp. They’ll be behaving like this at school. And I’m not an idiot, I remember talking about dodgy things as a teen that my parents probably wouldn’t be impressed by and stuff but this sounds extreme. Maybe this is not the right school.

or maybe all kids behave this way these days? I don’t know. But I don’t think I’d want my kid around kids who were racist over sexualised bullies who tell each other to do themselves in, for want of a better phrase. It’s awful.

I would say contact the safeguarding person at the school, but from the perspective that you feel the other parents should be aware of what their children are receiving/sending and you don't have contact details of the other parents.

The school won't give you contact details of other parents, but they can make the other parents aware.

I'm struggling a bit with the picture with your son's name on it? If someone sent my son a picture of a white boy with his name attached, my mind wouldn't jump straight to racism.

I was on your side op until your use of the name Karen, it is misogynistic and bullying. How can you have the moral high ground when you are bullying all the women named Karen?

This.

I think the OP may have meant they didn’t want to be ‘that parent’, rather than a ‘Karen’

Some people on this thread might be interested in this movement:

https://smartphonefreechildhood.co.uk/

you can link up with other concerned parents . I set up a group for my child’s school, within the regional group. Parents need to be getting together about this. It’s a huge problem

For what it’s worth, I know early teens who have a brick phone but access to WhatsApp via a parents phone only

Agree with this.

I find it shocking that we are so accepting of phones and social media use for kids. We are normalising online bullying for this generation as just a part of owning a mobile phone.

Please don’t use the misogynistic term Karen. Kind of lowering yourself towards their level there OP.

I would tell the school, but in person not electronically, as you might be committing some sort of offence sending screenshots electronically.

Yes report. There are also settings in WhatsApp that you can use to control who can add you to groups. For example can be restricted only to someone who is in your contacts.

I only found this out recently and it's been useful.

it was a meme of a very extremely dark boy with bulging eyes that was extremely exaggerated with photoshoot and he has a grin on his face making the white teeth just visible and the lips were red more like the jim crow thing and my son’s name was captioned on it . My son and another boy are the only black kids in that class so it’s obvious that it was sent to mock his race and skin colour