Parents of Bullies

[Anonymous]

Do parents of bullies know about their kids behavior or are they truly oblivious?

[Anonymous]

Oblivious. In fact, most think their kids are very popular and well-liked.

[Anonymous]

Considering you are posting in the teen and tween forum, I think many parents know their kids are jerks. By that age parents have little control how their kids act when they aren’t around. Some parents are oblivious. Grounding Johnny or taking away his phone won’t make him be nice to your kid at school or on the field.

[Anonymous]

My experience is in elementary schools but almost all the jerk kids have jerk parents.

[Anonymous]

Parents of bullies are in many instances bullies themselves

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oblivious. In fact, most think their kids are very popular and well-liked.

Oblivious and/or in denial. They sometimes know that their popular kid is actually quite mean to kids on the margins.

[Anonymous]

It’s both.

They often DO know- but don’t recognize it is bullying/genuinely mean behavior. “Oh they are just joking around” “that’s just how boys/girls are at this age” etc etc.

And usually the parents themselves are the same way, so it is no wonder.

[Anonymous]

Sometimes. But almost every kid bullies at some point—not all are persistent regular bullies, but every kid in elementary school does something callous and cruel, says something hurtful, or gets caught up in the moment and finds themselves laughing and playing along as someone else gets picked on — it's very normal, and a good kid will realize they did something wrong, and will feel bad and try not to ever do it again. True bullies keep it up.

So much bullying can be so subtle, something that only the victim knows how terribly painful it is...

So I'd say, in a lot of cases, no, the parents don't know... but if it's the kind of thing that keeps up, any decent parent will catch on. Some are oblivious, some don't know what to do, some are fine with it, etc.

[Anonymous]

My kid's biggest bully was the most "popular" kid in the class—parents very active in the PTA, wealthy and good grades... but behind the teacher's back he was a nasty piece of work, and his popularity was more a function of fear—kids were desperate to stay on his good side and fawned all over him to keep his approval.

His mother once marveled to me that her little dear was really struggling with the popularity–it can be very overwhelming, she said, when so many other kids expect so much of him. They were very nice people otherwise, but I have a low opinion of their parenting skills, but I could say that about a lot of other people.

Then again, I also don't know what was going on at home—maybe they were trying to correct his behavior, maybe it was a struggle for them? But there certainly was no public acknowledgement of it.

[Anonymous]

Generally they do not know. My kids have always said that the nastiest peers were the ones very well regarded by teachers/parents- yet absolutely horrible to peers when adults were not around. Those kids totally fly under the radar while teachers/parents deal with the more low hanging fruit (kids who are not truly mean but can be inappropriate or somewhat disruptive, or have some social or academic issues to address).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Generally they do not know. My kids have always said that the nastiest peers were the ones very well regarded by teachers/parents- yet absolutely horrible to peers when adults were not around. Those kids totally fly under the radar while teachers/parents deal with the more low hanging fruit (kids who are not truly mean but can be inappropriate or somewhat disruptive, or have some social or academic issues to address).

I think there are also lots of cases where one person thinks it's playing or joking or fun teasing and someone else is getting crushed.

In elementary school I was very good friends with two other kids—a boy and a girl. We were all dweebs and members in very good standing of the chess club—no one you would normally define as socially dominant. At some point in 4th grade, the other boy started teasing the girl about various things, her hair, her thick new york accent, etc. and she, being a tough and smart girl, gave it back to him pretty good. It was super funny. Sometimes I'd join in when he was doing it and she always came back with zingers to me—haha, very funny!

Then one day, her mother called my mother and said that she was sick of me relentlessly bullying her poor daughter. My mother was horrified and laid into me, I had to write an apology to her and apologize to her parents... and I was completely stunned, I had no idea what was going on! She was my friend! She teases me all the time! Plus, I reasoned, I don't say HALF the things that the other boy says! Plus, as noted by my chess club status, it was boggling to think (in my mind) that I had any sort of social influence/capital to ever punch down at anyone! I was literally the bottom of the heap! How could I bully anyone?

What was really going on was that the two of them liked each other—in the 4th grade way where they're expressing some mild form of puppy love by teasing—and even though he was saying worse things, when he said them, she didn't mind, she liked the attention. When I said them, I was just a boy saying mean things. And just because she was arguably smarter and less of a dork than me, and could snap back expertly, and just because I was, on the scale of elementary school, one of the least likely people to bully anyone, I said stuff that made her feel bad, and as unfair/unbelievable as it may have seemed to me at the time, I was saying things that made her go home and cry at night. It doesn't matter that most of the school was far harsher to the three of us than anything I did to her, I'm sure she still remembers me as the boy who ruined her fourth grade year.

I think there's a valuable lesson in that, and I tried to apply it going forward—you have to be so, so careful about what you say, you have to be so, so careful about context... something that seems like harmless play or teasing, could be felt in ways you don't understand, for reasons you don't understand, and it doesn't matter if you meant it, if you're actually a bad person, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Generally they do not know. My kids have always said that the nastiest peers were the ones very well regarded by teachers/parents- yet absolutely horrible to peers when adults were not around. Those kids totally fly under the radar while teachers/parents deal with the more low hanging fruit (kids who are not truly mean but can be inappropriate or somewhat disruptive, or have some social or academic issues to address).

I think there are also lots of cases where one person thinks it's playing or joking or fun teasing and someone else is getting crushed.

In elementary school I was very good friends with two other kids—a boy and a girl. We were all dweebs and members in very good standing of the chess club—no one you would normally define as socially dominant. At some point in 4th grade, the other boy started teasing the girl about various things, her hair, her thick new york accent, etc. and she, being a tough and smart girl, gave it back to him pretty good. It was super funny. Sometimes I'd join in when he was doing it and she always came back with zingers to me—haha, very funny!

Then one day, her mother called my mother and said that she was sick of me relentlessly bullying her poor daughter. My mother was horrified and laid into me, I had to write an apology to her and apologize to her parents... and I was completely stunned, I had no idea what was going on! She was my friend! She teases me all the time! Plus, I reasoned, I don't say HALF the things that the other boy says! Plus, as noted by my chess club status, it was boggling to think (in my mind) that I had any sort of social influence/capital to ever punch down at anyone! I was literally the bottom of the heap! How could I bully anyone?

What was really going on was that the two of them liked each other—in the 4th grade way where they're expressing some mild form of puppy love by teasing—and even though he was saying worse things, when he said them, she didn't mind, she liked the attention. When I said them, I was just a boy saying mean things. And just because she was arguably smarter and less of a dork than me, and could snap back expertly, and just because I was, on the scale of elementary school, one of the least likely people to bully anyone, I said stuff that made her feel bad, and as unfair/unbelievable as it may have seemed to me at the time, I was saying things that made her go home and cry at night. It doesn't matter that most of the school was far harsher to the three of us than anything I did to her, I'm sure she still remembers me as the boy who ruined her fourth grade year.

I think there's a valuable lesson in that, and I tried to apply it going forward—you have to be so, so careful about what you say, you have to be so, so careful about context... something that seems like harmless play or teasing, could be felt in ways you don't understand, for reasons you don't understand, and it doesn't matter if you meant it, if you're actually a bad person, etc.

SP, cont... I think my parents handled it the right way, but I don't think anyone would've pegged me as the bully, and I like to think that I learned a lesson and wasnt' ever again like that, but from her side, it was and probably still is, a classic example of bullying, and from my end it was very reasonable for noone to think it was anything bad going on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parents of bullies are in many instances bullies themselves

Not always, though. Granted, it was in pre-k, but the parents handled an issue very well. I think the kid was getting it from an older sibling, and the issue pushed the family to fix things at home. They offered to have their child stay in at recess if anything happened again, and I know they were doing "kindness" projects at home and had the teachers implement some new class-wide strategies at school as well.

[Anonymous]

DS has encountered 2 mean kids, only 1 really rose to the level of bully

For kid 1. Parents really had no idea. I don't know if things had been going on that year and that's why the kid was mean or what. Next year they were friends and in the years since kid hasn't been mean

Kid 2, their parents knew. Her older sister was also mean. I've had minimal interactions with the parents, but from what ive heard from others, they are difficult to deal with too.

[Anonymous]

A lot of times the parents of bullies are in denial, as they find it hard to square the bullying with their pride and joy. It seems many parents explain the bullying away “oh Larla is just taking it personally that their friendship drifted apart” or “boys will be boys!” or “my Larlo is the one being bullied, not the other way around “. I have heard parents say their child isn’t involved but would defend others from bullying, rather than being the bully themselves. But it comes back to denial.