Gay as insult

[sleepyhead]

Ds1 (10) complained to me on Friday that his "friend" had been saying ds1 was gay because he plays with girls

He was also telling everyone not to play with ds1 because he was gay.

So we had the chat about how friend was an idiot because a) there's nothing wrong with being gay and b) being gay was about boys fancying boys and girls fancying girls and nothing to do with who you play with.

My question is would you tell friend's mum what he'd been saying? I'm pretty sure she'd be horrified and hopefully would nip it in the bud.

No I would not. I'd tell the school. It needs stopping right now...a talk is needed. If gay is used as an insult then kids who ARE gay have this inner hatred and fear of who they are...it has to be stopped in its tracks.

We have been involved in a very similar situation. Tell the school. We approached it as this from two fronts - the bully attempting to turn other children against someone else and the use of the label "gay" as an insult which has much wider implications. School need to know.

I absolutely would have told the school if it happened there but they were at an out of school club at the time.

I might mention it to the class teacher as a heads up anyway.

I'd tell the school but not name names, for them to mention v seriously in assembly etc. The boy needs to realise how bad everyone thinks this is, I'm sure he'll follow suit from then on

FYI I seem sensitive but a young boy in our town tried to take his life after months of people calling him this, it's all anyone called him and isolated him from others. The perpetrators said they'd only been doing it for a few months, but obviously those are a long "few" months for someone being bullied with no support. Worse that he later came out as gay so he thought they hated him for that and everyone knew his secret, when in fact they were just latching on to a generic mean term

Anyway I digress but terms like this are a) homophobic and b) can have more impact than we first realise

This needs reporting to the out of school club too. They should not be allowing this kind of behaviour.

Yes tell the teacher and the out of school club. Don't tell the child's Mother. It always gets messy when people do that OP.

Also it's good to have open communication between parents and schools, and as a parent interesting to see how seriously they take things like this/how they respond to children