My son is being bullied by his 'best mate' - advicce needed.

[ElleMacpherson]

His best mate is not popular and it has come to light that he has been bullying other children in their class. Sat down with ds yesterday evening and ds is finding it more oand more diffucult becasue his 'best mate' threatens (everyday) to tell the whole class that ds used to wet the bed until he was 10.

ds has asked us talk to boys father about this. Should we talk to the school? Should we persude ds to talk to his tutor?

Ds scared that if his teachers find out he used to wet the bed that they will think differently of him. have tried to explain that this is common and teachers won't care.

Thoughts would be very helpful. Ds in tears last night. He hates the fact that his mate has this' hold' over him and this stops him from being able to makes friends with anyone else.

I think that talking to the dad might just give the bully even more leverage as he will realise how much this bothers your ds.

My gut feeling is that you need to work with ds to
a) Understand that this is not 'freaky' unusual etc
b) Work out with ds the best way for him to react if this fact did come out (because although the bully may not say something now he may at some other time.)

You don't say how old ds is - I know that what I am suggesting may be extremely difficult for a young teenager to do.

Lastly, once ds has strategies to tackle this I hope he makes some fab new friends.

DS is nearly 13

bully's dad is good mate of ours.

Have discussed the fact that thebully is notliked and ds is liked and that if bully did say something kids may well not belive him bully.

do you have suggesations about how he coudl deal with it if it came out.

He knows it is not unusual but feels teachers and peers will treat him differently if they know.

the parents will beleive it but not sure what they will do.

i keep thinking I shoudl go to the school. should i do this without ds permissin?

I have just had a quick look at some websites for children being bullied and wonder if it might be a good idea to post this question there too.

This is from one such website

'You'll never get rid of bullying so let's concentrate on teaching victims how to assert themselves'
It is sensible to teach everybody strategies of self-defence, however, this must not be used as a smokescreen for encouraging bullies by failing to hold them accountable. Any anti-bullying scheme which omits accountability for the bullies is likely to have only limited success, and often no long-term success. It's likely we'll never completely get rid of harassment, discrimination, racism, abuse, molestation, paedophilia etc but we must never give up trying. Problems like bullying are solved by identifying and dealing with the cause, not by trying to hide, suppress or reduce the effects. Unfortunately, many people - and especially the responsible adults who are abdicating and denying their legal obligations - like to focus exclusively on the targets of bullying, thus distracting attention away from the source of the problem.

Its taken from bullyonline

Reading that seems to advise both giving your son strategies to tackle this but also speaking to and working with bully and his family. (Also difficult as they are friends of yours)

I do hope you can sort this out, its a horrible situation for your ds especially as he has done so well and overcame the problem 3 years ago.

thanks for the website polly.

there seems to be very little on this particular thing - best mate etc.

I have a very quiet sad boy this morning.

If the bully does tell, why doesn't your son deny it? How would the bully prove it? and then if your son wanted to he could follow it up with saying it was the bully who had the wetting problem. After that ignore and make out he's not worth bothering with. If the bully has also been harrassing others in the class, then they already know what a nasty character he is.
Tell your son that the bedwetting isn't an issue anymore it's in the past and his 'friend' has no hold over him at all. Have no more to do with this lad and make other friends.

Elle, my advice to you is this: tell your son to deny it if the bully boy says anything embarrassing about your ds to anyone else.

You can report the boy to the school for bullying without mentioning the particular thing that is worrying your ds.

x posts

no one knows whether this is true - tell your kid to tell friend this.

my very pc motherly approach would be to tell my son to tell friend to take a running jump - tell him that your son will deny it and tell everyone his mum used to dress him in pink until he was 7 - called him a girls nate - if there is a girls equiv of is name - thats great

so joseph = josephine - see!

and that he had a barbie doll until he was 5.

"yeah but thats all crap" friend will say

"ahhh but the school doesn't know that, and i will say what your saying is crap too - only i bet by that time you will be called ..........GAY"

see i am so PC
t

Also, call me old-fashioned but why do we all have to speak to the school, parents etc nowadays?

When I was a child if anyone at school was on someone's case, the mother of the "injured party" would simply tell the "offender" to their face leave their child alone. It worked as well.

Now we are all scared to speak to someone else's child except to praise them

ds loved the Josephine idea - trouble is it is a bit near the knuckle!!!

he has asked me not to talk to the teacher. I will respect that for the moment and see how it goes. DH is talking ot the dad this morning so we will see what happens.

hiya Elle

i was bullied by my 'best friend' in the last year of primary school. i know how your poor little man feels! my 'best friend' wouldnt let me play with or talk to my other frinds/classmates and one of them was my cousin! it started out as emotional black mail "dont leave me on my own, dont you like me? arent we best friends?" that sort of thing, but graduated to "i'll beat you up if you do"
charming.

in the end (had been going on for a while) i was miserable and

oh dripes, gotta take child to preschool - back in a mo!

I'd go with those saying deny it - who can prove whether it's true or not.

And love the idea of this little bully being dressed in pink!

I was bullied by my best friend in the last 2 years of primary school. It is funny but I had actually forgotten all about it until I read your post. We were initially friends because we were thrown together as we were the only two girls placed in a higher year class I never actually liked her but I did feel sorry for her and I think that she probably sensed this which is why she bullied me to take back some control.

When we joined senior school she started demanding quite large amounts of money and it was at this point that I actually realised that I was being 'bullied' and I refused she said that she would beat me up and tell everyone that I had started my periods and I told her to go ahead by this point I did not care I had made other friends and also realised that people did not like her very much and were more likely to stand by me. She never actually carried out her threats she just backed away from me when she realised that she no longer had a hold over me.

It is difficult I would advise that your son tries to make friends with other boy's perhaps invites them out bowling at the weekend or something and to join a club outside of school such as judo or something similiar to enable him to make friends in an environment where he doesn't feel that his friend has a 'hold'. My nephew was mugged when he was 15 and joined karate and it has done wonders for his self esteem.

Good luck.

nogoes, how awful!

The trouble is ds is in a small group becasue he is in a specialist music form This alienates him form the rest for the year in many ways becasue he has different lesson times to them. He is popular and many people have said to him that he is so much nicer when he is not around this bully.

...as i was saying;

in the end i was miserable and my mum or dad, cant remember which, had a conversation with me about it and encouraged me to tell the girl to back off and allow me to speak to who i wished. i wasnt keen as this girl was pretty tough and i was a bit shy and meek but the parent said that if that didnt work they would speak to the teacher for me, which i wasnt sure about either, but couldnt really see any way out so i agreed.
i remember telling her to this day. took me ages to sum up the courage and then i lagged behind after a class till she and i were the only ones there and i said in my strongest voice something like: "you are bullying me and i dont like it. i dont want to be your friend anymore so please leave me alone" (my parent had coached me)

i was really surprised because instead of beating me up, she crumbled. in retrospect i feel really sorry for her, but right then i was just so relieved not to have the threat hanging over me any more.

to complicate things, she then told our teacher that i had bullied her by saying what i said (minus the bullying part) and my teacher, who i trusted and liked, believed her and told me off and asked me to be kind to her and take it back! i guess she never saw the real dynamic between us. anyway...

after that she ceased threatening me and things were a little awkward but i suppose not for too long because we all left for secondary school.

my point is; this kid seems menacing now, but try not to be too hard on him because he is more than likely pretty sad and lonely if this is how he is behaving.

your son needs to show him that he is strong and will not be manipulated. i agree 100% that he should front out the disclosure threat. he should tell the bully "go on then, tell them. i'll deny it and no-one will believe you" even threaten the counter rumours suggested below.

i really think thats about all it will take. they just need to see that your son wont be pushed around and will withdraw his friendship altogether if he doesnt buck up his ideas and start behaving reasonably.

i hope this helps. do post back with his progress

i feel my dd is too, in a way, trouble is there are a 3some, but one wont let her play with anyone else, gets in a strop, is basically a spoilt brad imo.
what to do

nappies, thank you for that. I do hope that my son can be brave and confront this issue.

He KNOWS thisis not how freinds behave. and he knows he h as to stop it.

we have spoken to the father of the bully who was very shocked. They had not taken the other bullying allegations seriously (just year 8 being silly) but he knows ds and us and knows ds would not make this up.

alice just seen this. Not sure what to say = how old is she?

Had a bit of a nightmare with this a couple of years ago with DD, but very different as they are much younger than your DS. We are good friends with the parents so I approached the Mum. Never again, it all got a bit nightmarish, so if anything happens like that again, I am going to let the school deal with it.

parents andschool know now.
ds seems in good mood, will talk to him once others in bed.