to tell ds to hit this little boy back??

[Nemoandthefishes]

little boy in ds class has been badly bullying one of ds friends for the last couple of months. However today he decided to punch ds in the stomach and then told him not to tell, so ds didnt until he punched him in the stomach again at which point he told the teacher whose answer was 'oh just ignore him'. So I have told ds if the little boy punches him again to hit him back usually I wouldnt have said this but ds has already been through a bullying incident since sept and only just got it sorted about 2 weeks ago.

My big issue is not whether it is OK to hit back or not, but a 5 year old being told that the solution to him being bullied is that he has got to resort to physical violence.

So while I think it's all right to say: "Some people think that if you hit a bully back it teaches them a lesson. I won't be at all cross if you decide to try that if he hits you again. But I will be talking to the head and the teacher to try get this stopped," I really don't think it's all right to say to a five year old "Just hit him back then" OR "Just ignore him."

He's five. He needs the responsible adults in his life to sort out this problem for him.

If he was 10, maybe then he should be thinking of strategies to cope with it himself, but not at this age. Quite apart from the emotional aspect, if a five year old calls to you that the computer isn't working, would you yell back "just re-boot it darling, and if that doesn't work you'll have to re-install Windows"? Of course not; five year olds need adult help for their problems.

At 5 my DSs didn't have to hit back, but they knew that they could. No child has to put up with another child hitting them. I would agree that the school is the way to go, but my message to my DSs would be that no one can just hit them because they are bigger and stronger and think they can get away with it.

God this is going to sound terrible but I do think that sometimes it is the only thing that works.
I would try all avenues first but if the hitting persisted I am afraid I can see myself suggesting this too

TBH I do understand where the op is coming from. It is not something I would tell my DC to do but everyone deals with things in their own way.

I do however have experience of both sides of the coin here.

I was always bullied throughout school, my mum told me to ignore the bullies and they would go away as they would get bored, this always worked for me. I can remember one incident thought when I was about 13yo and I had had enough of a certain person bullying me. I walked away and went straight to my head of years office (with the intention of telling the head of year) The bully and her hangers on followed me, when she saw me stood outside the office she looked like she had s**t her pants TBH.
She came over all nice and asked what I was doing, I told her and she burst into tears and asked me not to. The bully eventually left being dragged off by her friends. I never did get to tell her that there was no one in the office lol. She never ever bothered me again.

My brother on the other hand, was bullied at school for wearing a hearing aid , my parents told him to hit back twice as hard (not good as my bro is built like a brick out house). He did and he has been in trouble with the police on numerous occasions, for hitting back. He cannot just walk away from trouble, even now at the age of 27, he has to have the last say etc.

I hate the thought of using violence to try to combat violence, I know that some DC need to be able to stand up for themselves etc as the bullies really are nasty little thugs. It is so hard to know what to do for the best.

Oh and BTW I am not suggesting that any DC who hit back at the bullies are going to get in trouble with the police or become a bully.

Yes, since no one can be arsed to help your son at school then he must defend himself.

he should punch back

I also have to say that if ds ever comes home and tells me he is being bullied or intimidated I will do my best to arm him against the bullies. It might be martial arts lessons (for confidence, not so that he can go ninja stalking for revenge!), or shouting something back, smart retorts, or if he's being physically picked on he can physically defend himself. As someone else's ds said, I would not expect him to just stand there and take it. I would not intend him to feel as though he has the responsibility of dealing with it all himself, just that he can feel empowered and prepared, and not helpless. Such things help people to break the victim cycle.

I would hope that the way we are bringing him up will teach him the difference between active aggression and defence. Well actually I know that he does already know the difference.

YANBU but it'll probably be your DS that gets wrong, not the other child.

If you don't get any joy from the teacher, then see the head. The school has a duty to have (and implement!) an anti-bullying policy.

If your ds hits the other boy back, what is going to happen? Suppose he hits back a little too hard and lands the other boy in hospital? Would you be ok with that?

If he doesn't hit too hard, what is going to happen? Well, naturally, the other boy will hit him back a little harder? And sooner or later one of them will have a serious accident? How would you feel if your son, or the other boy, ended up seriously injured due to your advice?

It's not about sanctimoniousness- having myself attended a school where fighting was fairly rife, I couldn't help noticing that hitting back seldom solved the problem: it usually led to a full scale fight with lots of children involved and great potential for serious injuries.

My dcs have gone to schools where no hitting is allowed under any pretext. All the children are taught from reception that they must look out for each other and find a responsible adult if any other child is hurt or frightened or upset. Anyone who hits or hurts another child gets instant detention. At junior level you get excluded for repeated hitting.

The result is that everybody knows that fighting is wrong and it is impossible to get street cred by being vicious. My ds was knocked down in junior's by a friend of his: the other children instantly interfered and pulled the boy off and someone got a teacher. The offender lost a week of playtime. He hasn't done it again.

The school has some of the lowest levels of bullying in town.

This is what your school should be doing - and this is what you should tell them they ought to be doing.

I was bullied regularly at school, and because we were left to sort things out, noone ever moved on- the bullies never learnt not to bully, I never learnt any working responses to it. All it meant was I spent my junior school years as an increasingly defiant loner. Being left to sort it out for ourselves achieved nothing. I feel my dcs have learnt a lot more from their schools and are socially much more adept.

YANBU - school policies that say children should not retaliate sound great on paper but what happens in reality is that you create a victim culture where the aggressive kids have all the power. I have always told my children to hit back precisely because they are not aggressive and they need some kind of empowerment around teachers/dinnerladies who are useless most of the time a)because bullies know how to do it on the sly and b)school sanctions often don't work with damaged children.

I agree with mrsruffallo-you try all avenues first (in a good school they should work),but if all fails you hit back. The one thing that you don't do is allow yourself to be bullied.
It is all very well having good peace loving values, but if they are being trampled all over by someone who doesn't share them, there comes a point where you have to call a halt in the only way they will take notice.

Wise words KerryMumbles. And you have the law on your side (ish).

Oh god! lifes just too short for visiting the school and all that. Letters and telephone calls and visiting the school may sound like a reasonable thing to do but will take time and prolong the suffering especially if the other kids find out that your DS is a 'tell tale'

Meet the little S**t after school and tell him that if he so much as looks funny at your little one again you will take matters into your own hands! .

Also take your son to some self defence classes and make sure that this will never happen again. It's amazing how quickly the bullying stops if the victim turns round and beats up his attacker. It may not be right but it'll solve the problem and he will feel much better about himself. He may get into trouble at school but hey....S**t happens!

hope this isn't too harsh for you!

Fairynufff on Sat 31-Jan-09 12:02:10
"YANBU - school policies that say children should not retaliate sound great on paper but what happens in reality is that you create a victim culture where the aggressive kids have all the power."

Not if the school is tough enough with aggressors. There was far more of this culture in my primary school, where you were allowed to hit back than there is in ds's school where it is known that adults will interfere at once and bullies will get excluded.

I remember the same bullies carrying on for year after year as the teachers assumed that we could deal with it. In ds's school it was dealt with instantly.

If the school had not kept to their written commitment to clamp down on bullying, I would have been on their necks every week.

It is not about my being namby-pamby, but about being realistic. The hit back approach is based on the assumption that the victim is going to be stronger than his bullies. I wasn't and stood no chance.

Ds was also very much smaller and weaker than the boy who hit him: I don't suppose he would even have noticed if ds had hit him back.

Fair point cory. I agree that bullying is the school's repsonsibility first and foremost. As BalloonSlayer said, it is not good for a little 5 year old to think he has to shoulder all the responsibility for his own safety. We always told our son to hit back (although he could never do it) and after every incident we saw the teacher or Head. My DH even became parent governor. But after 4 years of the same names coming up again and again (for low level bullying and disruption) I finally flipped and changed schools. I haven't looked back.

This is a bit more trickier than it sounds. My dad always said to us to hit back but I didn't have fights really.

Especially as it's a boy. With a girl you could say don't hit back but with a boy---hmmm.

In this day and age when some kids live in a house where their parents use guns is also a problem.

You don't want your son to be a pushover but you don't want him to start getting into the fighting to solve problems habit either.

Speak to the teacher and then if she is wishy washy give him power words as a warning to frighten the kid off. Then if he continues back up with sound words with a push back.

Why on Earth do people keep saying that teaching your child to defend themselves from physical attach, is"teaching them that violence solves everything"????

You are not saying, "hit that child if you want her ice-cream", "hit that child if you want her toys"

You are saying " hit that child if he hits you, because it is called SELF DEFENCE".

If we as children understood the difference, why the lack of faith that the next generation won't turn into violent aggressors either?

"Hit them back only harder" isn't self defence. "Beat the crap out of them" isn't self defence.

We are talking about 5 year olds here - just remember that.

5 year olds should NOT be mare responsible for dealing with being bullied. Camp out on the head teacher's doorstep until she does something about it - but DON"T tell your child that it's up to him or her to sort it out.

I had to admit to being on the "never tell your child to hit back" group..

BUT I also don't think your son should ignore the bullying.. I am teaching my DD (also 5) to tell the other person loudly. DO not hit me.. shout if need be. She can be as agressive as need be but she mustn't hit/push them back...

She would then tell me what happened. I would go and speak to the teacher EVERY time it happened.

I know that I am lucky with DD school, as all girls school and they do take agressive behaviour etc very seriously. Parents are spoken to the same day. But even if they didn't, I would be there, day after day if need be, talking to the teacher, head, governors, whatever it takes.

I was taught to walk away and tbh wish I had been taught how to stand up for myself, but not by fighting back, but by being vocal.

I didn't say much in my last post but I want to expand on it.

Every day of school from "bottom infants" till Year 9 (excluding Year 8 because I was out of school in too bad a state to be taught in formal education) I was bullied. I don't think a day went by when I wasn't hit at school. I remember one day when I was lying in the middle of the playground with every child around me trying to get their hit in. I had my arms and legs pulled in to protect myself and eventually I thought the only way out is to hit back. I pushed my arms and legs out punching or kicking the four children that were in the way. I was hauled into the head teachers office because a teacher had watched the whole thing from the stairs window, waited till I hit out and then came to intervene.

My parents always taught me "two wrongs don't make a right". They told me to go to teachers, I told them what was happening and they spoke to the teachers and head teachers themselves. Later on our MP was the then education minister Estelle Morris, she did a lot for us and has stepped in with the school too. But nothing ever got better. When I was in Year 9, after a year in a school for children who weren't able to attend school trying to get me the confidence to return to school, I started a new school. Straight away I was bullied again. I ignored it as I'd been taught to do but one day I was sitting on the steps of one of the hut classrooms reading a book. Some of the girls from my class surrounded me and started shouting and calling me names. I carried on ignoring them until one hit me in the back. I put my book in my bag and put my bag on my back, normally as though I was moving, I then turned round fast and hit the girl so hard that the school had to bring the cleaners back in to clean up the blood! I'm not proud of hitting back, but I'm glad I did it and I never had to do it again.

I think anyone who says to keep going to the teacher hasn't been there. Whilst I am not one to worry about "grassing" and do believe in telling the teacher, I'm also not naive enough to think that it will be a permanent fix. It's one thing when a child is being called names to take it to the school but when it comes to hitting it shouldn't be let go and I'm sorry to disappoint people but most bullies can cope with the (excuse the pun) wrist slap that the teachers will give them for hitting.

There seems to be a bit of a view here that telling your child not to hit back is tantamount to telling them to allow themselves to be victimised. Some of use who were bullied have experienced what happens if it is ignored by those who should have sorted it out, parents and teachers, and it's not good. But I don't think that is the approach of those (like myself) who prefer to say to our children that violence rarely solves things and working with them to have a variety of strategies to call upon in tricky situations, the first of which is always tell someone in authority, and that they can always always tell us as parents and that we will help them sort out any problem.

To correct another idea that's been floating around, the advice from the police on being attacked is not to fight back, but to shout out and draw as much attention to yourself as possible. Self defense classes taught by the police are all about prevention not about fighting back. I was told that if you do so you are much more likely to come off the worse - ie dead instead of raped, knifed instead of mugged etc. I also think it's foolish to say if you have never been in that situation what you might do if someone hit you. In truth you would probably act on instinct (fight or flight) unless you had had some training or previous exposure.

Self defense/martial arts is also not about hitting back, but about avoiding violence, instilling discipline and using your opponents aggression against them.

My dd resorts to violence very quickly, and has done since she was small. It doesn't help her making friends, although she told me today that she only hits her brother now. I don't see how you can try to stop your children resorting to violence at home and condone it in the school playground. Deliberately hurting another person is wrong, and when you are small should not be required.

Interestingly when the police came to our University following a rape on campus they told us to kick the shit out of anybody who tried to hurt you as screaming would mean they were more likely to kill you to keep you quiet or gag you. And nobody would come to your rescue anyway. If you were fighting and hitting then you had a good chance of getting a lucky elbow or kick in and get away or they decide you were more trouble than you were worth.

5 is a bit young for all this, at 11 I'd be saying hit back but in primary school then Mummy and Daddy can still deal with things without mortifying the child forever.

Tink that sounds awful. The schools I went to had very strict rules on bullying, and children could be, and were, expelled for it. I remember biting someone once in juniors (they were really annoying me) and being totally hauled up in front of the headmistress, and deprived of playtime for a considerable length of time (it was a very catholic school, so I'm sure was also told that Mary was very disappointed). At another school the classes were completely rearranged to break up a bullying culture that had got going in one class, with three girls expelled, and several being suspended.

At my children's schools there has also been a no-bullying culture. Two pretty successful because they acknowledged that bullying could always happen, and the other rather less so, because they thought it "couldn't happen here". ds and another kid recently got hauled up in front of the head, and no playtime for a week because they had somehow got into a fight. We were rang at home and had to come in and speak with the head and the class teacher. This even though they were confident it was a one off, and the two boys had already made their peace. That's the way I expect a school to manage this sort of thing. Children are not always very sophisticated in their approach to life, fights and bullying can and will always happen. Its how the adults respond that matters.