to high five and congratulate DS on his kick!

[carocaro]

Long story short, one child since reception has been a pain in the ass nasty behavior wise on and off, DS1 is now 8 and in year 3. He already has one small scar by his eye from said child scratching his face. There has been nothing for a while, but in the last two weeks he has scratched his face again, spoke to school and the mother, but so not interested really.

So I told DS to kick said child as hard as he could if he tried it again. And he did this today as he went for DS face again, he fell over and backed off.

So I high fived him and told him well done and do it again!!!!

YANBU I know from experience that the only effective way to stop a bully is to give him a taste of his own medicine and he'll move on to a weaker target.

YANBU.
Sometime it is all a nasty bully understands

Oh and before anyone says the bully might be having issues at home, tough shit. My son also had issues with the ex and never bullied anyone

Are you certain your child is innocent in this bullying scenario????

i heard a parent discussing how another child was whacking their dd on the back when this particular child had given my dd a chinese burn previously??????

school HAVE to sort it if you contact the local education authority office!!!!!!

I am with some of the others: YANBU to encourage your ds to give bully a taste of his own medicine, just to get him to back off.
YABU to reward or praise him for it.

if you are encouraging it the praise after is almost irrelevant....the encouragement is as good as giving praise anyway. i am a mum and a teacher and as a teacher i would punish the ops child equally for being aggressive. although it doesnt sound like the bully has been punished so i would be marching into the office and demanding something done....writing letters....most schools have a policy on responding to parental complaints, i would be doing everything BUT encouraging my child to be aggressive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In a lot of cases nobody saw or heard anything, and bullies can be very snidey. If my child was told off for reacting to a bully I'd be questionning why the hell the bullies parents aren't being called in and why the innocent party is being told off instead. Easier to handle isn't it

YABU to praise the kick, but YANBU to tell your son he can defend himself.

If someone went for my face, I would protect myself first and seek out authority afterwards. Why shouldn't a child defend themselves when attacked too?

Thanks all, he totally undertands the context of kicking him back and he totally understands it is not a green light to kick anyone at the drop of a hat.

We discussed it in detail, what was happening, and the school are rubbish to be honest, another Mum phoned me last night to thank my DS for sticking up for her son, he has a speech issues and was being bullied (again) by said child.

I stand by congratulting my son for standing up for himself and not subjecting him to any further facial scaring.

if your child has reported the incident repeatedly and the school/mother arent bothered, then the child should be encouraged to give the bully a taste of their own medicine. half the problem with bullies [especially physical ones] is that they dont know how it feels, because people talk to them about it telling them to stop, its not nice etc, when bullies really do need a kick up the arse.

every child is bullied at some point in their life, and i would encourage my kids to report it, and if nothing changed, give the bully as good as they bloody got. if you are physically attacking someone then no, they dont deserve respect, and young children dont get that their victim is being the bigger person by not retaliating.

in other words, give your DS a high five from me. as someone who was bullied at school on and off for years, i wish id kicked someone at the start!