Son constantly being bullied

[onlyoneparenting]

I need advice that isn't 'move schools' - this might be an option but i worry as with move to secondary next year these kids would be in the catchment secondary anyway & private is too expensive for us certainly with the VAT increase..

My son is in p7 and is being bullied. We moved house for work last year so he started at this school - large, but good rep - in p6. From day1 there was a boy in his class that immediately took a dislike to him and threatened him, and has been low level bullying him on and off ever since.

My son is a good kid, teachers all have glowing reports about him, he works hard and they say he's respectful and mature, but he is really struggling emotionally with this.

Before he started at the school he did know a handful of people there, but one of them has decided to try to fit in with the boys who are generally being crap to my DS and another seems to doing similar, and so that friendship has weakened. He has one real friend there now and I don't know why there aren't more as like I say it's not a small school, so I thought he'd find his people, however it seems there are less of them than you'd expect.

We have spoken to the school at times and things briefly improve, but there is a group of boys who are just relentless - kicking him as he walks past, taking his bag from the cloakroom, 'accidentally' pushing him over on playing fields. DS has never responded with violence, and I do wonder sometimes if I should give him permission to just hit one of them as hard as he can, but he's smaller than these kids and there's more of them than him... so I dont think it would end well!

What can be done? How can I help him cope? How can we make it stop? It's been low level but it's escalating and I hate it. My poor lovely boy is just so fed up. Surely the only answer can't be that he has to move? And if we do, he will be back in the same school as them come secondary unless we get an out of catchment place (unlikely) so what's the point? We can't move house again as DH has a contract here...

Perhaps a two pronged approach. Take a note of all incidents and teach your son how to stick up for himself. The NSPCC has some good information about bullying on its website.

Honestly, I am still living with emotional trauma and scars from school bullying. The impact of it cannot be overstated.

I”m so sorry but I don’t think this can be resolved within the current school. As long as the bullies are there, the bullying will continue. Bullies operate in nasty nasty ways that evade teachers observation and draw others in (like what has happened with the other boys that used to be friends). Emotional abuse is the worst and, as I found, completely ‘invisible’ to others/ teachers and would be hard for teachers to intervene as it goes on under the radar. The hitting should be easier for teachers to intervene, but again bullies do it when no one in authority is around, is just so awful and I’m sorry your son is going through this.

If I was honestly in your shoes today, and could not relocate (ie move house away from the secondary catchment) I would pull him out asap and home school.

I was going to post the same thing.

I actually missed a year of school between year 7-8 because of bullying. It was relentless and psychological and has affected me deeply - I am 44 now and still cannot sustain friendships.

Moving schools and then even potentially moving house for secondary is the only way towards. I did eventually go to another school and things were better but the damage had already been done, I should have been moved a lot sooner.

how far would you need to move to another catchment and how would doing this prevent your husband from doing his job? Surely it’s only going to be a few miles not to the other end of the country?

Re home school I will just sing the praises a bit! I have friends who have been home schooling for years and are getting on great, there are so many positives and their kids are thriving!

Home Ed networks operate all over the country so home educators don’t go it alone. The one my friends are in is fantastic, very active, loads of meets, varied and fun learning, plenty of socialisation and a great mix of core subjects and loads of things that would never get covered in mainstream. All the kids I have met through my friend and her Home Ed network are happy, confident and enjoying life and learning.

Hopefully home schooling is something you might be in a position to consider?

I have no experience of physically bullying, only verbal, but can you identify the key bully? Is there a ‘leader of the pack’ who you can focus on?
If you can identify, isolate and/or remove the leader, it’s not impossible to imagine the others will drop off their efforts, as they are likely to be doing it to impress him anyway.

As well as tackling the school again and again until something is done,

would your son consider learning a martial art? He may then grow in confidence, carry himself in a different way and ultimately be able to attack or defend himself.

I think the problem is there isn’t really anything you can do to ‘remove’ the lead bully, or isolate them as they in the school right there and able to continue bullying as they please.

I ended up in a mediation meeting with the other girls (main bully plus two minions) to try and ‘resolve’ the bullying I was being subjected to. The main leader perfected giving face to the teacher and saying all the right things and the school was happy to leave it there and took no more action. After this meeting the bullying ramped up, all under the radar, more minions were drawn in and I attempted suicide aged 15. My dear sibling also suffered terribly in the same way at the same school (different year), they also tried to end their life in their mid teens.

Please please take your son out of this school asap OP. Unseen psychological damage is being done that cannot be easily undone, get your lovely boy out of there

I would log everything and email the school after four weeks. I’d time and date reference everything. Maybe do it for the next month.

22.2.25 (lunchtime break) Pushed over on muddy field by Jack Smith

23.2.25 Kicked by Jack Smith, Josh Clarke and Mark Bloggs in PE.

24.2.25 Called a by Jack Smith

I would create a long detailed list and ask them what they intend to do, tell them you’re worried about his mental health and need a structure plan of action as to how they intend to deal with Jack Smith and his friends.

This is quite a long process though and damage is being done now, everyday OP’s son is in his current school.

Also if there are a cohort of boys involved now he may come off worse if he tried to physically fight back 😞

Self defence/ karate classes and an instruction the hit to hurt. Kids like that don’t understand any other language.
I also found helpful going to the GP and telling them how it was effecting my son’s mental health and asking them to write to the head teacher. That got their attention.

The school should not be tolerating this.
Every incident needs to be logged with the school, as described above, and you need to have a meeting with whoever is in charge of behaviour *to find out how they will be protecting your DS and how they will be dealing with the bullies gong forwards. If necessary request regular meetings to to update.
*At my school in England it would be the Head or Deputy Head.

Log all incidents. Find out what the Anti-Bullying process is within the school (should be on the school website). Absolutely take your son to the GP and ask if they can write a letter to the Headteacher. Request a proper formal meeting and ask them to provide you will written information on how they are going to ensure your son feels safe in school. Your son has a right to be safe and feel safe in school, and if the school aren't providing that environment, then it's a safeguarding issue. You can take further action by contacting the Governors and the Local Education Authority. I was bullied at school as a child, and it's awful, it stays with you for decades afterwards. I work in a school, and I will not tolerate even a sniff of bullying, it's nipped in the bud damn quick.

How many classes are in the year group?

If more than one, could he move to the other one?

How big is the secondary school he will be attending? Does it have a reputation for being strict?

Does the main bully get into trouble for other things? If so, it may be that he starts truanting etc anyway by year 8 and will drop out of the secondary school.

I am sorry this is happening to your son.

I do wonder sometimes if I should give him permission to just hit one of them

No please don't do this. Doing this will neutralise any future complaints you might have and will make the situation worse. Often the one who fights back against bullies ends up being punished by the school. You can guarantee that the bully's parents will complain.

As others have said, keep a log of any incidents. Decide how often you will send this to the Head Teacher and the Safeguarding Lead. Write this as a formal written letter with the log attached. If you feel able to, you might also send a copy of this letter to the Governors.

Thank you for all your replies. To answer some things - we are not in a position to home school as I have to work too and moving house again would be a last resort, we love our house and we have other younger kids too to think of and this was meant to be our forever home. I feel deeply that it cannot be the answer that is as a family with a nice kid have to literally for our thousands of pounds to change our lives (either in private school fees or moving house stamp duty etc) all cause of a handful of horrible kids... it just so wrong. Does anyone know if escaping bullying is ever considered when applying for out of catchment schools? We could potentially drive him an extra 20mins to go to an out of catchment high school, it's not that far away, but I feel for now surely there is something that the primary school should do to improve things. It seems a stern word only works for a few weeks and then it comes back and gets worse. My DS is actually being v resilient about it - but I know it's bothering him and it's making him feel unenthusiastic about high school which is a real shame.

Martial arts helped my dc. Gave confidence and a sense of belonging in the group.

Secondary schools often have a house system where you only do lessons with one half of the school. Bullies can be avoided if you’re in a different house.

Apply for the out of catchment secondary school or apply for scholarships at the private school. Don't send him to secondary with the bullies.

I would literally complain every single day and escalate to head, governors etc as needed. This should not be happening. Dont worry about secondary just yet. You can ask for them to be separated and the secondary may be better at dealing with it.

I would move your DC schools. This shouldn’t be the case but unfortunately schools can’t or won’t deal with bullying.

I agree with others who say to log every incident with detail. If it were me, I’d then go into the school every week, present last week’s incident list and demand to know what they’re going to do about it.

Get everything in writing, photograph any injuries. GP, your local MP…lots of options if you feel the school are useless.

RE moving school - it’s a huge, costly upheaval and there are no guarantees that he won’t be bullied there too.

I’d get him into a self defence class or MMA/boxing. You say he’s smaller than the rest, so I think you need to empower him as much as possible. This will only get worse as time goes on.

It's a difficult and sad situation. Moving schools won't necessarily solve it, because he'll be the new/lonely kid at the new school. It might work of course, but you just can't know. But there are things you can do.

(I am assuming your're in the UK and this is a state secondary/academy)

It is the school's responsibility to stop this happening. It's not easy for them to achieve this, but how hard it is for them isn't your problem.

Take a good look at the school's anti-bullying policy. You should then write to the head of year and the safeguarding lead in the school. As stated elsewhere, provide details, so that the scale of the problem can't be refuted. Ask what actions the school are going to take to protect your son and make reference to the policy. Do not ask what will be done to the bullies - they won't tell you and it can make you seem vindicative and you don't know what problems those children might be having of their own.

The very first time that the plan isn't followed, or when more bullying occurs, escalate it to the head teacher. Go through the same process again - details, firm distinct requests (so many parents make the mistake of their complaints being far too vague) stating what your expectations are.

If the Headteacher's actions don't get the results you want it's at that point you look at the school's complaints policy, which will almost certainly involve a complaint to the Chair of the governing board; complain specifically about how the headteacher has failed to meet your child's needs. Once again, be specific. Don't just say "they're rubbish" or "my kid is getting bullied". List what the headteacher has not done that they said they would, or how despite having done what they said they would that it hasn't resolved the problem. The complaints policy will lay out a timetable for how the governing board must respond.

This approach will get the headteacher's attention. If you still don't get the result you need then complain to the Local Authority and Ofsted, but it's important that you go the head of year, the safeguarding lead and then the headteacher first, otherwise you'll just get referred there. If it's a good headteacher (and most are) then they'll do something about it. If they're not then you need to make it more problematic for them to be placed under such scrutiny by governors/the local authorty/ofsted than it is for them to solve the problem.

It's good your son is resilient; the above approach is going to take a bit of time so hopefully he can stick it out until it gets resolved.

Good luck. If you want any help with the complaints letter, send me a PM.

Kidscape are an anti-bullying charity that can offer help.

The stick and stay approach utterly failed me. The policies were there and in the eyes of the school they probably followed what they were legally required to, but in the end it was to nil effect.

If anything formal intervention escalated the bullying.

By this point my mental health was so broken and the psychological abuse from the bullies involved was like domestic violence, I felt silenced and unable to escape or communicate what was happening (to my parents, sibling or teachers) and how I couldn’t cope.

OP, I also OUTWARDLY appeared very resilient!

I never cried. I rarely spoke about it. I did my school work, homework and got good grades. Did all the normal kid stuff, read, had hobbies, went out with my family at weekends and shopping with my mum etc. Inside was mental torment, I cannot really describe the relentless pain of it.

The effects of bullying go deep, and the reach goes far beyond the in-person abuses occurring. It’s not just about fighting back when being physically in front of the bully/ bullies because they get in your head and imo this is where most of the harm is done.

Once they get in your head (if it goes on long enough) the bullies are ALWAYS with you. 24/7

Mine were with me before school, at school, after school, at night and anywhere I went with my family. The damage is continual and harrowing, imagine what this is like now in the age of social media. This is how I ended up planning and attempting suicide as the only way out and my parents knew nothing.

Kids can be very very very good at masking damage.

I am so very sorry you experienced this, and can totally relate to the bullies are always with you. I really hope things are better for you now.
The best ever advice I received was from a therapist who told me there are only two things that will change a situation when someone is being bullied - removing them from the situation or if someone in power wants to change that dynamic and will call out the behaviour. Unfortunately, in our case the Head was unwilling to change the dynamic. We moved our DC. We were certainly nervous in doing so, worried about all the things mentioned above. It was a tough thing to do but our DC has absolutely thrived.