Should the victims of bullying be punished?

http://www.torontosun.com/news/torontoandgta/2010/12/06/16451631.html

What are your thoughts?

 

I don't understand why the bully kid isn't being suspended or kicked out of the school or put in a different class.

That said, I don't know that moving the kid being bullied into another class is a punishment.

Bottom line, the kid being bullied should knock the crap out of his tormentor. You can't let some kid bite you and put rocks in your pants. Obviously, the school won't do anything about it, so go for it.

 

The bullying behaviour seems pretty extreme for that age. I don't know what the solution is but it should not be to punish the victim.

I have a toddler who will be in 3 in Jan. I have told her that if anyone hits her she MUST punch back. We have worked on punching Daddy's hands. I have showed her that she should be trying to puch the other person on the bridge of the nose as hard as she can.

I don't trust schools to deal with bullying effectively and it seems to be that once a person is bullied, it does not stop.

I am fortunate that I have some presence and experience that if someone bullied my daughter I have the ability to bully the parent.

It may sound crazy but I am hoping to give my daughter the knowledge that she does not have to cop shit from schoolyard asshole whose parents have not given them proper social skill.

 

I cannot disagree more with this post.

I will not be teaching my child that violence is the answer.

But to each his own. I know parenting style is a sensitive topic, so I don't want to begin a flame war.

 

Wonder how you'd feel if your kid came home crying about being picked on, punched and bit.

 

Well, I won't be starting UFC training at age 3 in the event that he gets bullied some day, that's for sure.

To me, this is like the old argument about having a gun. In that people with a gun are more likely to use it to shoot a family member or themselves than an intruder. A kid who is trained as a toddler to punch and break people's noses is very likely to do it in the wrong situation, and to think that violence is the answer for everything.

 

You have to report it to the school. Talking to the parents doesn't work because the bully's parents will look for a way out or minimize the problem.

Teaching a kid to hit back doesn't work either. If that did, I should be able to ram cars off of road if they cut me off or tailgate.

 

I feel you. I agree with you about guns in that they should not be in the hands of cowards.

But in this bullying type of situation, I follow the sage advice of Roadhouse.

Be nice until it's time to not be nice.

 

Dick, it isn't teaching violence, it's teaching self-defense. That's a valuable and lost skill these days.

My 8-year-old son was being bullied a bit last year -- he's the biggest kid in the class and one of the smaller kids was trying to prove himself. My son is very easygoing and has taken in all the lessons about not hitting, perhaps too well, so he was just letting it happen. We reported the most severe incident. And after that I sat my son down and told him in no uncertain terms that I don't want him to start a fight, but if that kid does anything else to him, he is free to do whatever he has to do to defend himself and he will not be in trouble at home. Fortunately, the other kid got in enough trouble that he stopped the bullying and then switched schools. Problem solved. (It really gave me a lot of faith in my school considering some of the horror stories I've heard about unresponsive administrations.)

Over the summer, I saw a flyer for an introductory martial arts camp/class. My son got in it, and he's still going strong on the stuff five months later. I must say, the kid can throw a punch now, and he can get his hands up quick to defend himself. The instructor is very good about teaching that this is a self-defense class and not a "Go Demonstrate Your Ass-Kicking Ability On Anyone And Everyone" class. They spend a lot of time teaching escape/avoidance moves. There hasn't been any occasion so far, but I feel confident about my son's ability to handle situation.

Schools can talk all they want about stopping the bullying, but it isn't going to be completely eliminated as long as there are schoolyards and shitty parents. And the kids who aren't bullies are at an extreme disadvantage because, unlike when we were growing up and we'd all get into a scrape here or there, most of them have had no experience whatsoever in anything resembling a fight or even your basic roughhousing or wrestling that we used to do. Best to have your kids prepared.

Having said that, 4 years old is way too early to have to encounter this problem. My older but smaller son got pushed around by a group of kids one day in kindergarten, and the school was right on it -- they didn't go overboard on the discipline with the other kids but they made sure the parents knew that the next time the consequences would be much more severe.

Sounds like the administrators are idiots. But that's par for the course in schools.

 

This is Canada, so I am not sure of the rules up north, but I am guessing they are similar.

First, suspending a kid that young is not an option.

Talk to the school. Report everything that is happening to the building administrator. Take pictures of the wounds if you can with a newspaper next to the wound to give a point of reference/date to what is happening.

Give the school a chance to do what they need to do. It might take a week or two, but any longer than that I would give the principal one of two choices. The first would be he or she needs to have this solved in 24 hours or your file of pictures is going to their superior or a member of the school board. Most school admins are great, but you want to be sure you have documentation if you kid's principal is an idiot.

Chances are this kid is too violent for a regular school setting, so this child might get to go a school with students who need more one-on-one attention.

And Chet, self defense is great, but if your kid punches out another kid in a school, they will punished.

 

I agree with Chet. We did the same thing with our daughter at age three because she was quiet and shy. I saw her get pushed by two girls in a gymnastics class and I talked to her about it. I said if they did it again, yell really loud, tell them no, stick your hand in their face (not punch) but up their cheek, and call for a teacher. Next class, the girls came at her, she reacted and the girls backed off.

Luckily, my daughter hasn't turned into a K-5 thug two years later, but has learned to hit back if needed.