Bullying prevalent. What would you do?

[Anonymous]

If your child is being bullied: get involved.
Don't ever chalk it off to character building. If your child needs help - help. That's all that needs to be said. No child should be left alone dealing with being bullied. That's how kids get traumatized, develop anxiety, kill themselves or others...get. Involved. Be their parent. You are their safe haven.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If your child is being bullied: get involved.
Don't ever chalk it off to character building. If your child needs help - help. That's all that needs to be said. No child should be left alone dealing with being bullied. That's how kids get traumatized, develop anxiety, kill themselves or others...get. Involved. Be their parent. You are their safe haven.

My 9 yr old DS is being bullied at school, but he said he wants to try to handle it himself. The bullying involves some rough housing and a lot of verbal abuse. This is going on in a gifted program. It's all I can do right now to keep me from emailing the teacher and the parent. But he wants to try, so I'm going to let him. But I talk to him everyday after school regarding how is day went, and what he did at recess (which is when most of the rough housing bullying is occurring).

I'm really torn between stepping in myself (I am definitely not a heli-parent) and letting him handle it. How long do I wait? I know if DS gets physically hurt, I will definitely step in, but most of this is rough housing, which by itself is not bullying to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If your child is being bullied: get involved.
Don't ever chalk it off to character building. If your child needs help - help. That's all that needs to be said. No child should be left alone dealing with being bullied. That's how kids get traumatized, develop anxiety, kill themselves or others...get. Involved. Be their parent. You are their safe haven.


My 9 yr old DS is being bullied at school, but he said he wants to try to handle it himself. The bullying involves some rough housing and a lot of verbal abuse. This is going on in a gifted program. It's all I can do right now to keep me from emailing the teacher and the parent. But he wants to try, so I'm going to let him. But I talk to him everyday after school regarding how is day went, and what he did at recess (which is when most of the rough housing bullying is occurring).

I'm really torn between stepping in myself (I am definitely not a heli-parent) and letting him handle it. How long do I wait? I know if DS gets physically hurt, I will definitely step in, but most of this is rough housing, which by itself is not bullying to me.

From my point of view, that is the right thing. If this has gone on for more than a week or so, I think I would talk to the teacher--just so that she is aware.

[Anonymous]

If you can find an alternative by all means go for it. The caregivers seem dismissive but I'm not sure what types of things are being said. If that's your only option, put things in perspective. Is it fair to call it bullying? Bullying is systematic and targeted?

I'm not surprised that the environment is as you describe, after school, kids have a lot of energy and with different ages your child is no doubt going to hear things from the older kids. Can you live with it or not? Try to think back to what you heard, saw and did as a child.

[Anonymous]

Remove him if you find that he is not able to handle the situation at this time and work on teaching the skills necessary to defend himself if he is bullied in the future.