Child saying he will tell his teacher we bully & hit him

[Strawblue]

DS(7) has started saying in the past week that he is going to tell his teacher that we “bully and hit him all the time.” This is always in response to being told off or told not to do something, or told no. A couple of times we have lightly bumped arms whilst out walking, and another time he flailed his arm around and his hand hit my watch, and he has gone into a fury and said he is telling his teacher that I hit him all the time.

We have NEVER hit him, and we do not emotionally abuse our child. We are an ordinary family who love him to bits.

About a month ago his Year 3 group had an anti-bullying topic as part of the PSHE curriculum and DH thinks it’s stemming from this- he’s processing it all and saying these things to us to get a reaction out of us when he’s annoyed/angry about something. He thinks we should just ignore him and he’ll get bored if he gets no reaction.

What do people think? I would be devastated if he made a false accusation to his teacher and, rightly so of course, SS got involved etc? I had DS late in life and never thought I would be able to have children and I would be beyond devastated if he was taken away while SS investigated us. There was a thread on a similar situation about a week ago.

I think you're overreacting. He's not going to be taken away.

I think your over reacting too. I would agree with him and make sure he knows he should always tell a grown up he trusts if something is bothering him.

Just speak to the teacher and explain this. Then tell your son. Game over

He’s not going to be taken away. Worst that is likely to happen is that he tells a lie at school, the school go through the process that they are obliged to by recording it, they will see that your ds is fibbing and they’ll talk to you, then it will all blow over.

Tell your DS that you very much hope he does tell a trusted adult if anyone hurts him.

When I was growing up, childline was very much the thing so we used to threaten our parents with that. Never did call of course.

He would not be taken away. That's massively, massively over thinking.

The worse that will happen is that someone from children's services speak to you and DS, you explain as above, case closed.

These comments aren’t necessarily true my son went to school with a small scratch on his face and told them “mummy did it” when asked, I certainly didn’t! School called the police, so no the “worst thing” isn’t them just them making a record of it 🙄 and before anyone says maybe they had previous concerns it was his first day of school!

Just say "If you want to tell lies to your teacher that is your choice to make. I do not think it is a good choice, but that is for you to decide."

You don't need to worry about the school or social services, but do think about how you react to his nonsense. It sounds like you are taking it to heart too much.

Please go and talk to the school and say you are struggling with this situation. They have lots of experience and will value you approaching them.

I told school that DD kept saying that I kept hurting her. I just thought it was better to preempt. I still knew they'd have to follow safeguarding protocol if she did say it though.

No need to involve school. Just make it clear to him that he can't blackmail you.

I would be telling him about The Boy Who Cried Wolf as well. Openly telling you that he is willing to lie about things to get his own way means that he is damaging his own credibility. Explain that school will take the allegation seriously, it will be looked into and then the truth will out, because they will have experience of working with real situations. He will then have damaged his credibility with them too.

I would be telling him about The Boy Who Cried Wolf Agree. The chances are he won’t say anything but even if he does I wouldn’t worry too much. I’m a teacher and I’ve had children accuse their parents of all sorts. Obviously any accusation gets logged and monitored internally but we’re good (I hope) at telling the difference between a genuine disclosure and a child showing off.

Both of mine threatened to call childline at some point - after having a session in school on childline.
I sat them down and told them firstly that childline was for children who were being hurt and if they are hurt they must call. However, if they threaten it to try to get their own way they are (1) taking a call slot away from a child in danger and (2) it will come out that they are lying and teachers will not believe them in the future. I didn’t make s huge thing over it, but it stopped.

No I would tell school. To get it noted. As a self protection issue.

Plus you can 'blame' it on the recent PSHE topic of bullying, and tell teacher could she have a word with him, because he's overreacted to that topic.

Well it would be a lie, so he’d have to deal with the fall out of that when it comes to light and it wouldn’t be nice for him if he was taken away from you, even for a just a few days while SS investigate (highly unlikely to happen!) but I’d make that very clear to him. And I’d be quite frank (within reason and in an age appropriate way) about why some children really do get taken away from their parents, and why his stance is therefore incredibly in inappropriate.