how best to deal with this playground incident

[mckenzie]

Background is this. Ds is year 4, one of youngest and smallest in class, fairly immature (I think) and not one of the cool kids it would seem. Two incidents of mild bullying last school year, one by boy one by girl. This school year, few incidents already of not really bullying, more like teasing, picking on etc. All been picked up on by teacher and being dealt with.
MIL dropped DS off at school today (a one off) and saw a boy who we all would consider to be a good friend of DS (play dates, birthday trips etc), stamp very harshly on his feet, a couple of times and with an aggressive look on his face (MIL's description). According to MIL, this child's mother was present but she doesn't know if the mother actually saw what happened.
From what I can gather, DS moved away from the child toward MIL but the child followed DS and continued with the stamping. At this stage MIL approached them and told the child off.

Do i need to do anything? Should I follow it up by mentioning it to the teacher? I'm friends with the child's mother - is it ever acceptable for us parents to discuss it and get involved or should we leave it to the children and the teacher? I don't want to make a mountain out of a molehill and I do think that DS maybe needs to toughen up a bit and stick up for himself but at the same time, I certainly don't want DS to be treated this way.

I'd appreciate any advice please. TIA

Have you talked to your ds about it?
What does he say?
I think if you're good friends with the mum, I'd say something along the lines of...
MIL tells me there some sort of spat between ds and friend yesterday, has friend mentioned it?
and see what she says...
If she says no, I'd brush it off and say doesn't matter I'm sure it was nothing, then have a very quiet word with teacher.
The thing about this age with boys, is they have little rows quite often with their mates,...and they do resort to low level aggression but it's usually quite short lived. I think it's about asserting authority over the group and finding their place within it as their hormones start to kick in.
Give it a day or 2 and it'll have blown over probably.

I would ask the mum if she knows if there is a 'problem' between the boys. That way, it's an opening to tell her about the incident.

I appreciate that after last year you'd be alert for potential problems. However, your mil told him off so the problem was dealt with. If she was my friend I would mention it - I'd say something along the lines of 'I hope you didn't mind mil telling ...off and I hope they're still good friends'

I did chat with DS about it earlier, I got the impression he was feeling a tad victimised. Apparently it's happened before with this same lad. I'll see if I can have a casual chat with the mum tomorrow morning. Thanks for your comments - much appreciated.

When my ds was in reception, he had two best 'pals'..they were (still are!) a bit of a threesome. However, he was the quiet, shy one they seemed to pick on. Both of the other boys have older siblings, so I think were not afraid to stick up for themselves. There were a couple of 'bullying'-type instances, which culminated in ds crying and not wanting to go to school, and finally coming home with a huge bite mark on his arm.

I knew both of the mums very well and knew they'd be horrified to know that this had gone on, yet also I was aware that I was a 'newbie' and not sure what to do. Anyway, I went to the headteacher and explained what happened. The school were brilliant. Brought all the boys in to discuss what happened and why it was so wrong to be unkind.

The other thing I did with ds during all of this was to do role-playing with him and getting him to shout 'stop, I don't like that' or 'no, stop that'. I pretended to be boy 1 who was teasing him 'oooh, you shouldn't wear that jumper, it's the wrong colour', and he practised his reply.

2 years on, all is well.

thanks FG - glad to hear that your DS is okay at school now. We try to get DS to do the things that you have mentioned - DS does lack confidence and I wonder if this is part of the problem at the moment. We are doing things to try and increase his confidence, as is his teacher, to give him the courage to speak out to the boys who tease him/pick on him.