Vile text

[JustWondering222]

My 10yr old received a horrendous text last night (honestly I've never seen anything like it. So many swear words, telling him to kill himself 😧 telling him to suck pussy, telling him everyone hates him (the f word was used quite a few times as were other foul swear words.. basically every other word was a swear word and the general message was to go kill yourself because you r the worst of the worst) from someone that's normally a good friend. I was really shocked because my DC is quite innocent and didn't even understand half the message or half the words used.

I sent the mum a screenshot so she can ask her child about it and have talked to my DC about it and he feels ok. I praised him for showing me the text. He knows I've texted the mum so is worried he'll get called a snitch, but otherwise he's fine. I've reassured him he did the right thing. He's quite popular at school and has never been bullied or received anything like this before. The two boys are normally good friends and have a lovely friendship group. They've known each other several years, had playdates etc..

My question is, is it enough just to raise this with the boys mum, or would you also mention something to school? (I'm just quite shocked at the language and venom coming out of a 10yr old. I'm a bit worried about the boy to be honest.. Also a bit worried because another child might get v upset by this kind of message. My son has another friend that is very vulnerable and has sen and the boy that sent the message previously had a falling out with this child. If he sent such a text to this boy, or another like him, it would likely quite severely impact them.)

I think you could tell the school and ask them for discretion ie. Not singling out the boys involved and simply doing a reminder for all on phone behaviour and safety.

Well done to your son for sharing it with you - that’s the absolute most important thing here. I would be offering him some serious reward for that! x

I'd mention it to the school - DD1 in Y8 had this with texts and the school was really good putting a stop to it - spoke to all the girls.

Change in leadership since they've said they won't deal with on-line phone issue at school nor intervene in fight even just outside school doors - so I'd still mention it to them but expect they'd do fuck all and just tell DC to block the number.

I agree. A friend of mine was on a dating site and the bloke she was talking to was clearly a scammer. He spent a long time trying to convince her to come off the dating site, where conversations were monitored and moderated, and onto WhatsApp where they’re neither. Once she did, he started to ask her for money. It definitely is a problem.

Yep. Immediately she saw the message.

This isn’t enough. The body of the text was abusive and it mentioned suicide. That’s a police matter in the first instance, even if it’s only to scare the shit out of the boy who sent it.

You need to tell school. It is not for your child to give permission for you to do this. You are the adult and they are not aware of the bigger picture that this may be a piece of.
This is a massive safe guarding issue. And safe guarding is everyone’s responsibility.

Sending abusive texts is not appropriate and the child who sent them obviously needs some help. No year 6 child should know those sexualised things - this is a safe guarding issue. They could be being abused themselves, shown indecent images etc you just don’t know what goes on behind closed doors. Please help protect them.

As it stands, you don't know that it was the boy who composed and sent the text. Has he got an older brother?

Young people who take their lives do so because of a coalescence of factors, including a campaign of harassment or bullying.

OP’s son had received a text, which he immediately told his parents about. This incident, that we’re talking about, isn’t what you refer to. It isn’t a serious crime. It’s a 10yo boy who’s made a mistake that needs correction.

Each year my DCs’ school expels children (places them elsewhere), and fires a coach or faculty member for some type of online activity, and it seems like every other year there is at least one case of serious sexual abuse (the most recent of which has resulted in incarceration). I’m not immune to this issue. No parent with a child at school in the western world is.

Jumping to alert the school, which has legal and regulatory obligations, before talking to the child and parents involved is disproportionate imo. It’s unnecessary and knee-jerk. Primary responsibility for the children lies with the parents. We can agree to disagree.

I said this further up. Nobody knows who sent the text.

Had your son had any falling out with this boy previous to this?
So strange that he would message your son this if they are good friends and haven’t had a fall out.
I wonder if he is just being really silly and thinking of it as a joke, not understanding the consequences of sending such things and will be mortified when his mum finds out.
I would defo mention to the school so that they can have a good talk with the children about phone safety and appropriate behaviour around phones.

He's too young to have a phone.
You say it's for his safety for playing out, but he still doesn't need access to what's app. He could have an old Nokia with only your number in. Or only be given the smartphone when playing out with just your number in there and no apps like this downloaded.

Please report to the school. Whether he sent it on purpose, as a joke or let somebody else get hold of his phone, the child needs speaking to about the use of his mobile and messaging.

Don't underestimate the impact of receiving a message telling you to kill yourself. It's not acceptable at all and school / possibly social services needs to be aware. The school will be able to assess whether it needs taking further.
My daughter took an overdose following a very similar message. She's ok now but she was very ill in hospital.

It will be interesting to hear the mums response

In case this hasn’t already been suggested, it might not be the owner of the phone who sent the messages. My son’s phone was grabbed by a friend when they were about 13, and the grabber sent an unpleasant message to a third child. Fortunately the offending child’s DM walked in on them arguing about it, and messaged me and the parents of the third child to say what had happened, and hit the roof with her son.

It is possible that someone else has sent the message.

You should definitely tell school because it is a red flag for safeguarding for a 10yr old telling another child to suck pussy and kill themselves. How does a 10yr old in particular know words like suck pussy unless they have been accessing porn? There needs to be more done here around online safety, bullying online and around communication in general; school would definitely want to know.

FYI WhatsApp have reduced their age limit from 16 to 13, but 10yr olds should not be accessing it.

Primary responsibility lies with the parents, yes. And OP has said she advised the other parent of what was happening last night, and there has been no response. And this is one text. We don’t know what else has been happening at the school. But what we do know is that this boy has a friend with SEN and they have fallen out previously. One can only imagine his reaction at reading something similar. As one can only imagine the impact on any child reading a text suggesting that they kill themselves.

The age of criminal responsibility in the UK is ten. Therefore this child has committed an offence. OK no one is suggesting they imprison him for five years at this stage, but the fact remains that he has committed an offence. And a serious one at that.

It doesn’t matter. The fact is that an abusive text suggesting suicide was sent from that phone, and it warrants investigation. There is absolutely no excuse not to.

Which is no excuse not to investigate and get to the bottom of it. If it’s his phone and he didn’t send the text, he should at least have an idea of who else had access to it.

Yes, absolutely speak with the school tomorrow. We had exactly the same in one of my dc’s friend groups in Y6. One of the children just went off on a rant at another one, calling her horrible names, telling her to kill herself, etc. Not on WhatsApp btw, just in a text message. They can still have group chats via SMS (there was only 10 of them in the whole year, so we all know each other well and everything is very tightly monitored usually). The school had individual chats with the children involved, also got the whole class together to talk about online behaviour, and sent a letter to parents reiterating the importance of monitoring online safety and behaviour. I think it was a really positive thing for everyone involved.

Why is it so difficult to believe that a ten year old could be the culprit ?

Tell the school. This is bigger than just letting the parent know. I wouldn't be surprised if there's more going on with this. There's been a lot of online bullying happening at our school and it all stems from Whatsapp.

Sorry but this is exactly why my DC will not be getting smartphones at this age. I'm seeing way too much of this kind of behavior amongst my children's peers (admittedly not as vile as that message which sounds shocking) because of phone use and I'll admit, I genuinely do not get why you'd give a ten year old a smartphone. We were out all the time in the 80s and just about managed without having WhatsApp!