Reply to 5th grade son told us he’s being bullied and doesn’t want us to talk to school

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[quote=Anonymous]OP, this is the poster at 10:37 who also went through this in 5th grade with my son.  If is helps, here is our experience and my advice:

It sounds like my son experienced a very similar issue.  My son had a lot of friends in grade school until the end of 5th grade.  He was in an informal friend group of boys at school that they called a 'club' and there was a boy who named himself the leader. The leader of the group did not like that my son wouldn't just go along with whatever he said, and after a few weeks of contention, one day he started yelling insults at my son during recess and kicked him out of the club.  He also told all of the other boys in the club that they also would get kicked out if they stayed friends with my son. Some of the other boys told my son separately that they still liked him but they couldn't be his friend anymore because they did not want what this boy did to my son to happen to them.  I did not know anything about this for a couple of months, because my son mainly spent time with his brothers and neighbor kids on weekends, so I didn't see the impact on his social life.  One day my son broke down and told me the whole story about what had been happening.  He was adamant that I couldn't tell the school, because at this point the boy had stopped harassing him every day and he knew this boy would just retaliate again if the counselor spoke to him and tried to get them to come to a resolution.  So we didn't file the bullying report and my son started middle school with no school friends.  My husband came up with the idea to start him in a new sport, wrestling, and it was really a lifesaver because a lot of the kids on his team were in his middle school but from a different feeder elementary school, so they had no history with him and became his friend, and things improved from there.

What is interesting is that when we talked about this incident a couple of years later (my son is now in high school), my son tells me that we absolutely should have filed the bullying report over his objections.  He said that while he was afraid of what might happen at the time, he has since observed other situations where someone filed a bullying report and what happened, and that at least it would have helped this kid stay away from him during school because the teachers would have been alerted to the problem.  Also, it would have been on this kid's record at school, and the kid subsequently got in trouble for a prank -- remember the killer clown prank a few years ago?  It happened at many schools and with many kids, so I don't think this is identifying the bully -- and I heard through the grapevine that one of the reasons the police didn't do anything to this particular boy was because he had no record of getting into trouble.  Also, apparently this kid also bullied other boys in the same way as he bullied my son -- which I learned years later from other parents -- so maybe if we had filed the form this would have deterred him.  Given all of this and the perspective of hindsight, I think that you need to file the form even if your kid objects.

I'm not sure about some of the advice in the other posts.  Unfortunately, people talk and there is not really a way to stay anonymous in such a situation.  Also, regarding telling a teacher rather than filing the form;  if your kid is in private school, I hear that the teachers will be 'on it' and step up to try to help things not get worse, if not try to improve things;  but in public school this does not happen.  Just my perspective.

Also, I've posted this other places on this board:  if you can emotionally distance yourself, it will help.  I'm not sure why, probably some kind of childhood triggers from my past, but I got very, very upset by this situation to the point that I was crying during the day and dwelling on it.  I also was very upset because, if my son had told me earlier, I thought I could have done something before he lost all of his friends, and I blamed myself.  This did not help anything. OP, you don't say anything to make me think that you are reacting in this way, so I hope you are emotionally healthier than I was :) but I just wanted to share in case it helps.   Hugs--[/quote]

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