Would you leave your child in a school where they were being bullied?

[ThatNimblePeer]

I had a pretty miserable time being bullied at my local secondary school aged 11-15. Parents knew about it, and they went in to talk to teachers a few times when it was particularly bad, but they didn’t make any attempt to put me in a different school. It was five formative years of my life and has really affected me long term. Looking back I can’t really understand why they didn’t take more action. I think if I had really pushed to change schools they might have done something, but I think that kind of certainty and agency is a lot to ask for from a kid that age (who is lacking confidence anyway after being bullied), I sort of feel it was their responsibility. As a grownup now I just can’t imagine leaving my kid in a school for five years where they were miserable.

It was the local school and the nearest for them, but there were other options. I think they worried about taking me away from friends (as most people from my primary school went on to this school) but in practice I only had one close friend from primary in my form, and most of the other people in the form were new to me and weren’t nice to me.

AIBU to think they should have taken action to find a different school, once it became clear that the school wasn’t going to get a grip on the bullying?

I get where you are coming from but I don’t think it’s helpful to think like that. Ultimately you are shifting the blame of the bullying on to your parents for not doing more.

Perhaps you would have been bullied at a different school as well further crushing your confidence. I don’t think all moves are successful. They may have feared that would happen. It also might not have even occurred to them as being an option. It’s also possible it wasn’t an option anyway as other schools may have been full.

Having made the decision to remove our child to a different school, I would be very slow to judge others for not doing so. It's a big gamble and you need a huge mental shift to even contemplate it. You're right that you'd need an unusual level of agency and certainty to push for it as the child, but I think that is also true of parents. I'm not sure how old you are but I know when I was a teen the idea of moving schools would have been almost unthinkable.

I'm sorry you had that awful experience, but unless you have strong evidence to the contrary I would give them the benefit of the doubt. Most of us make the best decisions we can for our kids, on the info and with the options we can see at the time.

Sometimes it's not possible.

I lived within walking distance of the only secondary school in our town. In order to transfer to another school, I would have had to use public transport.

The journey time would have made matters rather difficult and I now realise that my parents simply couldn't afford the travelling costs.

The irony is that the bullies had decided that I was 'posh' and 'rich'.

I had a miserable time of it until the bullying ringleaders left school at 16. I knew that I wanted to go to university, so I hunkered down until they had gone. At least the physical abused stopped when I was 14. (By then, I wasn't in so many shared classes - I only had to endure their presence in P.E.)

It's stayed with me. I'm now 65.

I would because I experienced it myself and know how awful it is. It wouldn’t be an instant thing I would give school opportunity to manage things but if it didn’t improve and my child was miserable then yes u would

I would in a heart beat but again I was bullied badly all through primary school and it was miserable. So I know what it's like to be unhappy somewhere.

Did you make it clear to them that you wanted to move? My brother was badly bullied from years 5-8. In year 6, when it was clear things werent going to improve, my parents were very keen to move him to a private school for year 7, but my brother absolutely refused, and only moved for year 9. Looking back, my mum always said she wished she had just made the decision for him and just done it anyway, but they always tried to be very respectful of our choices - I had a partial scholarship place at a good private school for year 9 onwards but rejected it to go to a local state school. I got 9 A's/A*'s and then 4 A's, so it would have been a waste of their money.
I think its often hard to know, as a parent what best option is. My oldest was bullied for several months last school year, we did think about moving her, but then she found her voice, put them in their place and has a sense of control in that she feels she sorted this out for herself - which of course isn't always possible, but I am glad we didn't move her.

I had a similar experience. I think my DP felt that as my school was the "good" school and other schools in the area were a lot "rougher" that it wouldn't have helped to move and may even have been worse. In early adulthood I felt angry about it. I remember thinking how adults get signed off from work for less distress than I was in at the time yet I didn't have that option.

The other thing that was different (this was 2000s for me) was that there seemed to be a keep them attending schools at all costs attitude for the parents. I swear they all knew someone who knew someone that had to drop out before GCSEs, for whatever reason, and it sent their whole life into a trajectory of doom. As long as their kids were attending school everything would probably work out.

I think now we are far more aware of mental illness and how traumatising a bad school environment can be. We've got to be careful about applying this more modern viewpoint to parents that may well have been doing their best under very different attitudes to schooling.

I would absolutely move DS if he was bullied.
I would obviously try to get it resolved first but there's no way I would sit and let him continue to be bullied for years.

If (like PP are suggesting) he was also bullied in the second school, I would take him out and homeschool him.

My ds has asd and based on others around me, I fear he will be bullied in secondary school and it will destroy his MH. My MH is poor and I don't want DS to get there and attempt suicide like other teens I know have.

Yes I have already made this choice as my DS gets bullied but also says he wants to stay. Its also our only walkable option, and the one his primary school friends are at. As a parent it's a really hard decision and you can only be guided by your child. If he said please send me to a new school I hate it here of course I would immediately, but he says there's always bullies and he's also got friends so it's not a straightforward choice. I've been into school and every time one group get made to stop a different group starts up so it's hard to completely end it. It sounds like your parents tried their best at least.

I went to quite a few schools due to my parents job and was bullied at all of them so I have to agree that there's bullies everywhere and some people just seem to get picked on more than others and it happens wherever they go, it certainly does for me.

My parents couldn’t move me - only secondary school with transport in a rural area. I had to just endure the bullying. It had a significant and long-lasting impact on my self-esteem. When my daughter experienced bullying, we had far more choice and so moved her. It has been transformative for her. It very much depends on the child and the choices available

Yeah maybe but we have moved our DSD 13 due to bullying. Now she travels 2 hours a day to and from a new school and she is having problems there also so I just don't know the answer.

It hurts me to say it but it does seem like some kids just seem to be targets for bullies wherever they go. She has 3 years left of school and can then go to college and at the moment it feels like something she just has to get through which is heartbreaking.

It doesn’t always work out, particularly now we live in a world of social media. I moved my DD in year 9, but the bullies at the old school managed to contact people at her new school and the same rumours she had at the old school continued here. The bullies also never really left her alone. I removed all social media but they would get her phone number. I’d change her number and they would find out her email. I think it very much depends on the resilience of the child. For mine, she just wanted to get something out of school and has continued to go every day, despite how hard some days have been. I was literally jumping up and down when she finally finished on Friday. It’s finally over for school.

I was in a secondary school where I was bullied. I begged to be moved, but my parents were concerned that the bullying might repeat itself (the alternative was a much larger, rougher, state school - and I had a distinctive accent). Plus it would (they said) mean repeating a year due to different syllabi. At the time I hated them, hated everything.. with hindsight I know their concerns were valid and they just wanted to get the secondary school period over as soon as possible. So as an adult, no hard feelings. I would probably have made the same decision in their shoes

My primary aged DC has been picked on this. I have tried to engage the school but not much has changed. I would like to move schools but DC has a couple of friends and doesn't want to. Not sure what to do as I don't want him to hate me for moving him.

I would move them.

Thank you for all the thoughtful replies. Interesting to see the range of responses. I do see that it’s a difficult call for anyone to make (but I also note that about 75% of people think I am not BU to think they should have made it).

My heart really goes out to any child in this situation. And also any parent needing to make the decision.