To ask your advice for my 5 year old DS being bullied?

[saddolphin]

NC'd in case the other boy's mum is on here. Posting here to get as many replies as possible as I'm so upset.

DS has a ‘friend’ in his class that he is desperate for him to like, but he can be horrible to my DS. In the last few months, he has: scratched DS’ face, given DS bruises, pushed DS over, ripped his tie off to throw away, been mean to him for having glasses, this morning shouted at DS to go away when DS went up to him, DS got so upset. We’ve told DS that he is not his friend and to stay away from him, but DS is desperate for him to be his friend and just keeps trying to make him like him. I showed the boy’s mum the scratch in a photo and she apologised and said she’d speak to him. In nursery last year, he threw a plastic toy at DS’ face and gave him a nosebleed, although the nursery said it was an accident. I’m going to speak to the school tomorrow as it’s gone on for too long, I’ve spoken to DS’ teacher about my concerns before but I don’t think that did anything. I'm devastated that my son is starting his day with his 'friend' shouting at him to go away and crying. I’ve had to give up a hobby I enjoy as the boy’s mum goes to it and I’m honestly too scared to be confronted by her outside of the school environment, I’m such a pacifist and timid that I’d cry if she started having a go at me (she’s quite intimidating).

The thing is, I don’t know what I want the outcome to be. DS has other friends in his class that he doesn’t want to leave if he moves to a new class, and why should he have to move when he’s the one being bullied? But I doubt that the other boy will be moved class? So I don’t know what I want to be the resolution, what do you think? Ideally he’d be nice to DS and be friends, but no one can make him do that. I think that he has a ‘difficult’ home life, as I’ve seen his older brother be horrible to him and someone in his house ripped the head off the class teddy bear when he took it home for the weekend. What would you go in hoping for the outcome to be if you were me?

To add, moving school’s isn’t really an option as I gave a DC in an older class who loves it and I can’t do two school runs every morning practically speaking, I don’t have a car.

To add, my older DD in the same school has witnessed this boy being mean to DS at break time, he's also pushed my older (7yo) DD over for trying to stick up for her brother.

This is obviously very upsetting for your DS and yourself but it is not uncommon behaviour at that age. The best thing would be to book a meeting with the class teacher asap to discuss your concerns. They will have dealt with friendship/bullying issues many times. The teacher can then try to separate the boys for activities and encourage your DS in partnering up with others. They won’t necessarily move either child to another class, if schools did that every time there was an issue, it would be chaos. But the class teacher can at least keep an eye on the situation.

Keep encouraging your DS to establish friendships with others in his class and help him understand that real friends are not unkind to us, to help him understand this boy is not his friend.

Just saw this update. You definitely need to request a meeting with the class teacher and/or HT as this is more serious if he is being physically aggressive in the playground and it needs to be addressed. It’s likely that he is behaving like this to others as well so the school may already have some awareness.

The school should be dealing with this. You should not be worrying about the childs mother confronting you.
They are really little and it sounds like this other boy needs a lot more supervision. The school are not keeping the children safe

Go in, give the school a full account of what’s going on and ask them to intervene and keep the boys separate as far as possible.

But I think you also need to be pretty firm with your child - if he is going up to this boy trying to get him to be his friend and being repeatedly rejected then your son needs to stop and understand this boy isn’t his friend, has made it plain he doesn’t want to be his friend and that repeatedly going up to him is not acceptable.

@Katy232425 I know, believe me I have tried, DH has told him so many times as well

Sorry if it's a drip feed, but I would add that sometimes the boy is DS' friend and plays with him/wants to see him.