Topic : 01/26 Bullies

My son is 11 years old now. He has been bullied since he was in Kindergarten. Back then even the teachers ostrosized him. He was sick a lot when he was first in school. And although very bright, he started falling behind in school. The teachers would let him go off on his own, spinning around the room at any time he wanted. They would sit him apart from his class for two years. Even at lunch he was forced to sit alone because he put ketchup on his mac & cheese. It was 6 months before I found out the extent of what was happening. Finally I took him out of the public school system, and homeschooled him for a year in 2nd grade. I put him back in public school in a new town for 3rd grade. The bullying didn't stop. Kids started to hit him. He has a rather severe overbite and they would call him "horse-face" and "buck tooth fairy" all of the time. There wasn't a day that went by that someone didn't make fun of him for some reason.

He started putting on weight. He stopped trying in school. He would explode in bursts of anger over the slightest things. He would take it out on his brother, or me, or his grandmother. He retreated into an imaginary world full of dragons, and his imaginary friend tornado that he would picture taking out the bullies that tormented him so. It got to the point where most people could not tell when he was telling tales or when he was telling the truth. I knew it, but his teachers and special education helpers could not. He just wanted to escape his daily life at all costs. I began to worry that he would be one of those kids that shoots up a school or something if we didn't put a stop to this.

I got involved at his school. I got to know all of his friends. And I made home the safest, and best place to be if the outside world was not so nice to be in. I don't believe in hitting as a first solution, but I have always told him that he is "not allowed to start a fight, but definately he can finish one"  I also taught him to take a look at the life that the bully is living. If they are spending so much of their time picking on him, it usually means that their own home life is not the happiest place on earth to be. He knew that some of these kids were being beaten at home. That some of them had parents that didn't care about them very much at all. And others had weight issues or height issues and saw him as an easy target. This really helped him, when he took a real look at these kids. It didn't fix the problem completely, but it did give him empathy for the bullies, and made it easier to let go of his anger toward them.

A couple of weeks ago he was being picked on so much that he could not take it any more and ended up punching one of the children that I have complained so much about over the past school year. He got suspended for doing so, as they have a zero tolerance policy for violence. But the other child was suspended as well. When he got home he was ready to go to his room, no television, and what not. Imagine his suprise when we didn't punish him. He just started crying. He had had enough, and we understood that. The school felt bad that they had to suspend him, but were a little suprised at our response to the situation.  I explained to them that it would never have happened if they had taken action against the kids picking on him up until that point. And since it happened, the kids are not calling him names anymore. They learned that you can be suspended for name calling just as much as hitting.

I agree that you need to do special things with your child, if for no other reason than to give them something to look back on and smile at about their childhood. Our family likes to go to the drive-in movie theater as often as we can. It is certainly affordable, as kids under the age of 12 get in free, and you get to watch 2 or 3 movies for less than in a regular theater.  We live near an amusement park where we get season passes and go nearly every day, if only for a few hours. There he is able to scream his head off no the roller coasters. To let out all that pent up anger and frustration without hurting anyone in the process. And because we live in a northern state, and it gets cold for a few months of the year, we often hop in the car, drive down the highway and just crank up the radio and sing loudly to it. We play board games at least once a week together, and invite his friends to join in whenever possible.  I have two boys, and I make sure to take time each day to be with each one if only for a half hour, one on one. And each week, I have what we call "mommy/son dates" where we spend an afternoon or an evening together just the two of us. Sometimes we go out for icecream, sometimes we eat in at the local pizza parlor, sometimes we just go for walks along the many nature trails in our state. But I make sure that they each know they are special people, and deserve nothing but the very best. Please note that we often do all of these things together as well. But I have always made a point to let each son know that they are my "number one first born son" and "number one second born son". We even make a game out of coming up with bigger and better ways to say we love one another.  Both of my boys know that they are very important people in my life. And that they are worth more than words can say.

I don't know if this will help you. But I can tell you that my boys have stopped fighting so much with each other. They don't feel like home is just another war zone to be tolerated until they can get out. They also know that they have each other's backs when it counts. And that I have their backs. I am not blind to my children's behavior. I do my best to point out behaviors that may make them targets for bullys. But I also support them the best I can at all times. And I remind them that it could be so much worse.

I only wish that the bullies of the world could learn such lessons.

My 13 yr old daughter has had problems from time to time through the years with other kids but nothing like what has been going on since October '06.  She was friends with 3 other girls on her field hockey team, 1 goes to my daughter's school and the other 2 go to a nearby school.  Everything was going great and then one day the 3 decided they didn't like her anymore.  My daughter was devastated and tried so hard to find out why to no avail.

These 3 girls set out on a campaign to harass her as often as possible through cell phone texts and the internet.  I finally had to step up when they called her phone and left a message stating they were going to hunt her down and f-ing kill her, that she'd better bring an ice pack to practice because they were going to beat her f-ing face in.  I called the parents and for a time things calmed down.

In December the girl that goes to school with my daughter was starting things up again, basically just talking a lot of smack but it did escalate into a physical confrontation at school between the 2 of them. 

After that, things calmed down somewhat over the holidays.  I live online though, constantly monitoring everything my daughter does and I took her cell phone, not because she did anything wrong but so they couldn't get to her so easily.

But over this past weekend, things escalated once more.  Threatening messages were left all over myspace from these girls.  I printed out everything and contacted the police where we were told we had enough to have them charged with harassment.  I tried to contact the parents but never got any return calls.  I then went to our principal, gave him some copies of the threats and he helped me get in touch with all the parents, even the ones from the other school.  Even though I didn't have to, I felt that I needed to contact the parents and let them know how far things had gone and that the police were ready and waiting for my cue to have them charged.

These parents had no idea what their daughters were doing online and were horrified when they went on their myspace pages.   Two girls have been taken offline, one is supposed to be offline but I saw she left messages this morning,  I guarantee her parents have no idea she's getting on before school.

So I'm still keeping an eye on things, kinda lurking in the background, part of me wants to call the one girls parents and tell them she's still online.  But I just don't know how far I'm supposed to take this, as long as she's not threatening my daughter.

The worst part of all this is my daughter is being punished, she doesn't have her cell phone, she can't get online without me hovering over her shoulder, she doesn't feel safe going to the movies or to youth dances with her friends because those girls might be there.  I'm worried about her emotionally and I'm hoping to gain some more insight when I watch today's show.  I don't think I can watch the video of the girl being beat up, that makes me physically ill because that could've happened to my daughter.

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Bullying got so bad for me that I couldn't go to school a single day without people yelling obcenities, imitating my speech and turning against me in a pack-like fashion. I was 'Carrie' from the Stephen King movie, Mary Magdalene from the Bible and so on...

Anyway, I hope that one day we can truly conquer this problem. And it goes on EVERYWHERE, whether it's public school, private school, middle school, high school or elementary school. It goes on in the workplace too.

I am 10 minutes into the Dr. Hpil show today and i have cried twice. I have an 11 yr old daughter and this video disturbes me to much. I am terrifide that this type of thing is going on the high school where she will attend. Also, if this is happening now what will it be like when my 5 year old gets to this age. Where are the parents in all this? I wonder if they feel that suspension till May is reasonable. I believe that video stands for juvenile detention. They were beating up a girl and laughing about it. Just terrible.

These kids LOVE that this video is being played all over the news and now on the Dr Phil show. And he didn't play it once, it played NUMEROUS times during the discussion. We get it..we saw it the first 3 times you showed it. This contributes to and doesn't help the situation, imo.

I'm very surprised that nobody seems to recognize the false sense of security technology is giving parents.  These videos of beatings that are so widely circulating on the internet right now are only made available by the parents who supply their children with cell phones/cameras.  We hand our children phones for their "safety", for "emergencies", clearly that is not what they are being used for.  We no longer have to call the parents of our children to ensure they are in fact where they say they are, we call them on their cell phones and take for granted that "my child would never lie to me".  Before, where it would take days to spread word around about a fight scheduled between children, now it takes seconds.  "Fight at the park", can be texted to hundrends of potential audience members within seconds.  There is no opportunity for these fights to be stopped by a parent overhearing or a teacher finding out about it.  Our children are becoming desensitized to violence, and parents are being falsely comforted by the same things they believe are making their childrens lives safer.  Our bodies physical reaction to violence is the same as a sexual reaction, chemically.  It's a "high".

Instant access to our children is nice but where do we draw the line?  A simple cell phone in the hands of teenager becomes a chaperone, cheating device, opportunity to advertise anything they want recognized (fighting, sexual attention, parties, whatever), that same phone has taken bullying to a whole new level.  Rumors don't just get passed from one ear to the next, they are posted for the world to see, forever. 

Why is it parents, politicians, and professionals can't seem to answer the simple question of why bullying has gone to such extreme?  Seems pretty simple to me -we've handed them a spotlight!