Don't know how to help DS2

[temporarilyjerry]

Ds2 is 13, in year 9. He is young in the year and is also small for his age. He was happy at primary school but since he want to secondary school, he has experienced low level bullying and "banter" from his friends. He is not able to cope with this and becomes upset and angry. He often comes home in a bad mood and is unpleasant to his brother and sister.

The school have dealt with incidents when we have approached them and they do not happen again, but there always seems to be someone else ready to begin bullying him. He has friends but these friendships do not seem very positive or supportive.

In the summer, DH and I arranged a meeting with the HOY and AH to discuss the situation and it was agreed that DS2 would be referred for counselling. There is a long waiting list for this so we did not speak to him about this. We also discussed something else which would help DS2 at school and which was more easily arranged by the school. Nothing happened, so before half term I contacted the HOY to ask what was happening as an outcome of our meeting. She spoke to DS2 and he told her that he did not want to have counselling (what 13 year old boy would?) and he now does not want to participate in the other activity, which is related to his interest.

The HOY has asked how I want to proceed re counselling.
This was a good school but is now RI in all areas. DS2's year has a lot of behaviour issues.

DD goes to an outstanding school and we have applied for DS2 to go there although we need to appeal and he says that he does not want to change schools.

I still feel that counselling would help DS2 to learn to handle "banter" better and hopefully, he would develop more emotional resilience but wonder if there is any point if he does not want to engage with it.

If your son does nt want to have counselling there is much you or the school can do to make him, I'm not convinced counselling is the answer anyway.

what I'd do is encourage him to take up activities/ hobbies to improve his self confidence, help him build friendship groups, and learn how to deal with group tensions.

Boxing/karate works miracles for self confidence btw.

Just wanted to say that kids often say they don't want to change schools, even when a change is clearly a good option for them. It is hard and scary for them to imagine the unknown school.

Sorry you are going through this.

Thank you both for your replies. I am a teacher and feel that I ought to know what to do!

It is horrible having a child with a problem which you can't solve. That is the real difficulty with teenagers; their troubles are so much more complex, and our instincts no longer infallibly tell us what to do (the way they do with young children).

From my experience, I would say that the bullying and the damage tends to be worse and more destructive than your child will admit. It is very hard to cope with because you want to protect your child, but you also want to send him the message that he is strong and resilient, with normal, solvable problems.

We ended up HEing for a term and then changing our son's school. He was absolutely fine in the new school, and the term off gave him time to detox and also time to think about how to get on better with other children (he had a tendency to be a bit pompous and holier-than-thou which he figured out how to tone down).

On a different note, I think the right counselling could probably help almost anyone, though I don't think the NHS service for teens is good in all parts of the country by any means. I would probably try to find a private therapist who would get on well with your son. Maybe there is a way you can present this idea to your son without calling it counselling?

I would second what northernparent said. Our DS 14 displayed low level anxiety moving into yr 7, so before the low level picking on him got worse we enrolled him in a martial arts family class which he really didn't want to go to and since persisting with that he has gained a lot of confidence around other kids. We also encouraged him to expand rather than change his friendship group. It helps that he did Scouts and some of them go to his school too so he could swing by other friendship groups if his closer friends were doing other stuff.
Does your DS have a sense of humour, it's surprising how developing counter banter can get them out of fixes. (I even worked on making up some really cutting remarks that DS could use to answer back.)

I agree, claraschu. It was the HOY who used the word counselling. I had been playing it down - someone to make sure that you're happy at school. I hadn't considered HE but it would be doable.

Northernsoul, he does go to scouts but sadly some of the "banter" happened at camp (taking his belongings, throwing sweets at him). I contacted the mother of the ringleader in that incident and she did deal with it. I could help him to come up with counter banter; I'm hilarious in my opinion.

It is fine to come up with clever answers if you are feeling strong, but when you are anxious and unhappy it is hard to put on a convincing act.

If the HOY has been effective at stopping the problem in the past, maybe he should just keep addressing it, and taking up a tougher stance if the same kids start bullying again after a period of backing off. It is not your son's responsibility to solve this problem.

For us, temporary HE with a fresh start at a new school was really the best course of action. The habit of teasing our son and seeing him as the nerdy butt of jokes was too ingrained in a group of the other children.