There has been a lot of press about the increased instances of Schoolyard bullying. In one recent article a child killed themselves supposedly over the constant bullying.
We also hear about increased violence in the playground (not the club, the real playgrounds...)
Interested in your views about what used to be, what is and what your kids are likely to face.
To give you some brain fodder.....My kids are in a new primary school and have been the subject of bullying in the form of threats and a couple of schoolyard fights. The school faculty seem as supportive as the can be to the point one of the perps was suspended (fuck me, suspensions in primary school - that in itself is a worry)
2 days ago a child in my oldest boys class made a threat against my youngest boy. To which my oldest boy jumps across the room and holds a compass to this kids throat demanding he retract the threat or else.
I’ve already explained the inappropriateness of his response but he is adamant that this was his only course of action and that the ‘protection’ the school offered was inadequate. I can see genuine concern for his younfer brother (which I admire) but still cannot condone the response to a bullying incident.
And they still have high school to l;ook forward to....:(
Needless to say I’m worried out of my mind both for ongoing saftey and the severity of his response to threat.
Intersted in your comments (especially those with younger siblings)
I have to say home schooling is looking better by the day......
maaaaan, i copped it a lot in primary school. Real bad. Used to go home and cry every night. I think the only thing that would have helped me get through those years, is if my parents specifically worked on my self esteem in my early years. So instead of me thinking… “these kids pick on me because i’m a loser” it may have been more like.. “these kids pick on me for attention. What losers”.
A mate of mine copped it worse than me but his self esteem seemed to protect him really well. Didn’t seem to worry him much at all. His dad who’s a psychologist worked with him as a child to improve his self esteem.
I think home schooling is a bad idea. Kids need to make friends, have relationships and interact with everyone on a day to day basis. They learn a lot from just interacting and you wouldn’t want to deny them that learning experience.
Schools are full of sh.t when it comes to anti-bullying policies… they do nothing to actually enforce any of their policies, they’re just in place so they can be seeing to be doing something about it but they don’, they just pay it lip service.
It’s a pretty telling and tragic state of affairs when kids like your son Bobby, and even parents, are forced to resort to extreme measures because the school is just not combating the issue. As jailhouse as the whole compass incident is, I actually tip my hat to your son for standing up to the punk. Of course as a parent you’d be concerned at such a reaction and would never ever encourage that kind of approach, but you can at the very least take solace in the fact that your son has a steely sense of loyalty and won’t succumb to bullying.
A friend of mine, a former school yard bully, was telling me about the muck she used to run in primary school, picking on anyone and everyone who crossed her path. No warnings or detentions deterred her. The only time she stopped was when one of her victims dads came down to the school just after the final bell had rang, cornered her in the corridor and got right up in her face – like nose to nose and growled through gritted teeth that if she so much as looked sideways at his kid again he would slit her f.ing throat.
When I was in year 3 (my sister was in year 5) a boy in year 6 was teasing her after school and she was crying. I walked up and wacked him across the head with my bag full of school books. He needed stiches....oops. But didn’t regret it. Its sticking up for my sister..
I got moved schools, (not from that alone) but as I found it hard to find myself through primary.
We never fought and were always close growing up, and that might be the reason for it too. We had our own space and it was about being your own person.
It might sound extreme or unmanagable. But the best thing my parents did for me was move me do a different school than my sister.
Yeah Auds my oldest goes to high school next year and I’m actually glad for the separation - It will give each of the boys the chance to adjust to life without the other - from a scholastic perspective. Its weird I feel that the little one would have no problems on his own. The older one because of his feisty personality actually probably invites some unsavoury attention.
I so hope next year is a good one for both the lads. I dont want to have to resort to alternative teaching methods....
They are such brilliant boys (yes I’m biased but if you met them you’d agree) respectful with adults, insightful, intelligent....but with their peers....I dunno.....
Thanks for sharing kids - this is giving me some perspective.
Man im the youngest of four brothers, I was bullied at home b4 i went to primary but when i got there man i was ready for primary school but didnt know it, a bully my older brothers age had tried to take my lunch well all those years of my bros picking on me made me a lil hard ass so i beat him up my brother ran to protect me just to see me pounding him he stood there and laughed there was a four years differnce between me and the bully, i had no bully probs after that, my suggestion is teah him how to protect him self and only fight if u have too i went to a few schools if they can stand up for them self they will be fine
my suggestion is teach him how to protect him self and only fight if u have too
They are both enrolled in self defence-The trick is the 2nd part..’only fight if you have to.’ I am totally opposed to any violence but they’ve got latino blood in them so the defence mechanisms kick in too early for my liking. I’d prefer them to seek more diplomatic approaches before pulling out the old compass. But then I was raised with 3 sisters. Not a lot of physical sparring going on in that house.
What equally cracks me up (and not in a good way) is the fact they are forever quarrellling and shit but if someone threatens the other then all of a sudden its ‘my darling brother (who I was beating up yeasterday) needs my support...’ - For fucks sake!!!!
Aahh the joys of parenthood
Maybe I should send Sef around to have a quiet word to the kids and their parents (and their cats if they have any )
I am really over-protective of my little brother n sister but they seem to both be pretty ok. We are very close and they tell me pretty much everything. Anything they’ve ever told me pertaining to “bullying” has never been serious. It’s still pissed me off but I’ve always given them advice and seems to always help. Mostly I tell them not to buy into bullshit because they are better than that. I remind them that the ppl who say shit are usually the ones with their own issues and they just do things to make themselves feel better. Being the hot tempered over-protective sister that I am though, I have def thought abuot going down to the school myself. Then I think about one of the girls at our school whose older sister used to do that and how sad it was and how it never helped her any....actually it made matters worse.
I never had any real bullying issues in primary or high school. I have always been a tough little bitch....I get it from my dad. I think it has a lot to do with the way you carry yourself. I have never put up with any shit from anyone and I dunno, ppl just never messed with me.
I have a similar story to Jerome’s in that in primary school these 2 boys in my brother’s year called me a dirty dago. I was in year 3 and they were in year 7. I belted the fuck out of both of them and they were scared of me ever since hehe.
I mostly ever encountered little bitchy fights whereby girls would play their stupid mind games or try to spread shit about you. I would always confront the person and that would usually be that. If it came to fists then so be it but dad always taught me never to throw the first punch. I never went looking for a fight but if some one started with me or one of my friend’s...best believe I finished it.
I remember sports day year 11 and this little mole was getting up in my best friends face. She pushed my best friend (who is tiny) and I just saw red!!! I stood right in front of this bitch’s face and grabbed her by her shirt and told her to fuck off or I would chop her up in little pieces and throw her in the bin. I pushed her on the ground and we walked off. I CLEARLY wasn’t serious about “killing” her but this “tough bitch” took it seriously. She didn’t go to school for a week. I later found out that she had been asking my cousin if I was serious and that she was sorry for starting with my bestie.
Bobbie your point about parents instilling self esteem (and pride) is right on the money imo. I think the fact that I’ve always had that from my parents has a lot to do with it. If some one ever made a comment about the fact that I had boobs before anyone else I wasn’t mad because I thought I looked bad...it was because I thought who the fuck are you to say that about me?!?!!! I would usually turn around with something a billion times more hurtful and that would shut ppl up. I have a silver tongue and can be very mean when I want to be!!!
PS i know no one is going to read this essay - it’s WAY too long lol
Bobby, as you know I dont have kids of my own, and dont have much experience with bullies in the school setting. But i do have experience with kids, especially those who resort to agression and violence as a means of solving problems. Given your boys sound fairly capable of weighing up consequences and thinking logically, i’d suggest really trying to get them to use different thinking strategies. Whilst it is totally understandable that your oldest would react in this way, the gradual justification of the use of violence to resolve conflict, even as a form of self-defence, shouldn’t be condoned, as it is such a way of thinking at a younger age that can lead to problematic thinknig later on in life.
By no means am I trying to scare you, because i know your boys are from a loving family environment and have been brought up in a morally rich (haha i laughed a bit as i typed that ... is it snowing outside =P) environment, thinking errors that we’ve had since a young age can plague us later on in life. eg. i had to do something about it cos the school won’t do anything sounds a lot like, “i had to get him back cos the cops dont do shit” and so forth.
So my suggestions are as simple as encouraging a bit of forethought… try and get him to acknowledge the negative implications of responding aggressively for himself or even his brother. Get him to identify other ways he could’ve dealt with it, and if he can’t come up with any, suggest some yourself. The general point of it is to get him to identify ways of dealing with it other than violence. This way he doesn’t have to react inappropriately, but at the same time is not disempowered by having to rely on the school system that seems to have failed him.
It might seem that i’m taking a fairly small, and relatively justifiable, incdient way too seriously. But i’ve seen a lot of kids who have ended up in a very bad way, simply because certain ways of thinking weren’t corrected at a young age. Your oldest is nowhere near like that Bobby, but it definitely cant hurt to try and fix it. I hope you dont take this as a lecture or anything because I will not pretend to know the slightest thing about parenting; just putting this forward from a perspective that i do understand.
the way i see it skoolyard bullying has being here for so damn long but only now ppl are starting to do something about it or try to
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to me its abit to damn late
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if someone gets busted bullying someone they should get kicked out of that skool straight away
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it happened to me when i was in primary skool and if something isnt done u basically go from a decent lil kid to a evil lil fuck like me
Bobby, you may or may not know that im a big fan of mixed martial arts, fighting styles, and full contact combat sports. Now… This is coming from me… Violence will only dig the hole deeper.
I’m all for watching people beat each other up in a cage with a ref, then hug it out afterwards, but in the playground, NOTHING good can come out of it. Here’s the outcomes that would occur
1. Your kid wins the fight, then relates beating people up to resolving issues. Will continue to use this as a method of resolving issues.
2. Your kid wins the fight. The guy he beat up, goes and gets his mates, comes back, and hospitalizes your kid. (Very common outcome)
3. Your kid loses the fight.
There’s no possible win. He should be taught that a real man doesn’t need to prove himself by swinging his fists. A real man backs off and lets the derro kid say what he wants coz he knows the kid will end up in jail in the near future. lol. Same thing happened to me when i was a kid. We actually ran from these kids trying to smash us, then in the paper the next day, looks like they felt like hard arses, went and found another group of kids to fight. Most of them ended up in hospital. Heh. Karma.
Anyway. Me being the.. “go to the gym, get massive, get in the octagon and bash people” kinda guy… Yeah, violence is only gonna dig the hole deeper.
i was bullied in primary school cos i fall off the fort .. damn fell off like a low roof .. and the kids just laughed at me and the day after called me kilo gecko but damn i was hurt and i was thinking helloi need help not ur fcuking laughter.. that day chnaged me for the worst i became an angry young man .. and i agree wif the violence isnt the answer .. cos it does get worse b4 it gets better .. like poppa sed a real man dont need to prove anything a real man will walk away ... and it is cool to get the teachers involved ..
This is why I am really trying to impress upon him that violence will never prevail....Even if that means sometimes waiting for justice to occur through proper channels (and I know in some cases it doesn’t occur).
He couldn’t fathom how I could seemingly sit back and accept a threat (whether real or not) against a loved one. I explained to him that I wasn’t and I was mad as hell - but I wanted to give the school every opportunity to work with the issue. That also did not want further bad things to come from a bad situation.
Life has taught me that 9 out of 10 times if you turn your back on bullying and violence it generally goes away. But on the 1 occasion that it materializes then that’s the hard one cause someone totally innocent gets hurt
Thanks again for all you perspectives. It confirms to me that I MUST convince my kids that violence and physical retaliation are not the answers
I think home schooling is a bad idea. Kids need to make friends, have relationships and interact with everyone on a day to day basis. They learn a lot from just interacting and you wouldn’t want to deny them that learning experience.
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You might be surprised by the Australian home schooling system. It’s pretty amazing these days. Somewhere between 1 - 2% of kids are home schooled now. And the studies on it are coming back well in favor of home schooling vs the schooling system.
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”Studies also show homeschoolers mature and better socialized than are those sent to school. Dr. John Wesley Taylor’s nationwide study revealed that the self-concept of home school students was significantly higher than that of public school students for the global and all six subscales of the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale. The Galloway-Sutton Study (performed in 1997), showed that from five success indicators (academic, cognitive, spiritual, affective-social and pyschomotor), comparing with public and private schooled students, “in every success category except pyschomotor, the home school graduates excelled above the other students.””
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The home schooling in Australia focuses a lot on socialisation and has days where you get together with other home schooling families (like museum days, sports days, art days etc). Plus the kids tend to do a lot more activities to add to the social aspect.
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With the current schooling system, I think the percentage of home schooling is going to start rising dramatically.
I dont think there is noone that goes through school not being bullied whether its verbal or physical from reading up it sounds like its ten times worse than when i was at school
I am the eldest of five girls and by the time i was in year 10 we were all at school at the same school i would always stick up for my sisters if someone was picking on them
When i was in primary school they started a mediator program where year 6 students would volunteer and walk around playfields at lunchtimes if anyone felt like they were getting picked on or just needed someone to talk to you could could go to one of the mediators if it was too serious you would consult a teacher to deal with the problem
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