Preventing Retaliation

[KIDPOWER]

A friend of mine just described how her twelve-year-old son was jumped at middle school by an older boy after their PE class. This boy hit her son in the face. Her son walked away and asked for help from the PE teacher and his mother.

The good news is that the school vice principal handled the incident extremely well by believing her son but not revealing his identity, since several other kids saw the attack.

They got the parents involved and suspended the older boy, providing clear boundaries about what is and is not okay at school as well as offering some counseling to his family.

The bad news is that this older boy is now back at school and is blaming my friend's son for his getting into trouble. He is glaring at my friend's son and telling other kids that he'll get back at him sooner or later.

Her son is afraid of retaliation and doesn't know what to do, since nothing overt has happened yet. He knows to stay away from this boy and to not answer back, but this is obviously stressful.

I told my friend that the school needs to do some follow up when a student who has been suspended or otherwise punished for harming another student returns to school. The student who was victimized needs to have the PE teacher and the vice principal say clearly, "What happened was NOT your fault. I'm glad you asked for help. When the boy who bullied you is back at school, please tell me if you have ANY problems, even nasty remarks or dirty looks from this boy or his friends. You have the right to feel safe at school."

The student who did the bullying needs to be told by the PE teacher and the vice principal, "Making other kids feel unsafe by pushing them, hitting them, dirty looks, mean remarks, or anything else is against the rules at school. This includes making threats and comments to others that might get repeated. It is NOT a joke and it is NOT cool. If you need help in stopping yourself because you are upset or angry, please talk with me about other ways you can handle the situation. However, I expect you to be in charge of yourself when you are at school."

My friend said she was going to talk with the vice principal.

Have you ever had a problem with retaliation? Do you have any other ideas?

[cara7166]

Oh yeah. We had a big problem with this. When my daughter was attacked, the girl finally (after a LOT of pressure from us) ended up in In School Suspension. What she did was since she could not get to my daughter, she had her friends start a big campaign against her. It was mostly a lot of talk. However, we really had to stay right on top of it. We did have to put a TON of pressure on the school but finally we ended up having a pretty decent relationship with one vice principal. We could call her when things were happening, and she would get the kids right into the office to give consequences. This was really important in putting an end to it - my daughter would call or text me, I'd call the vp, and the kids would end up either in her office or in the school policeman's office. When the group of kids began seeing immediate consequences when they would pull crap, the crap started to dwindle.

My daughter had to really spell out to her friends NOT to become involved so that it was only the other side getting in trouble. And my daughter never did anything back to them, even when they would call her names and get up in her face.

I was very happy to finally get this female vp to help us. The male vp had told us "I don't know what you're so worried about, Chelsea could whip her butt." Well YEAH, she COULD...but that's not really what I wanted to be teaching my daughter in this situation!!

The policeman was the hardest person to get 'on our side' at all because he felt very, very sorry for the perpetrator, whose father had died the year before. Well, I feel sorry for her too for that but that does not excuse all that she was doing. At one point we actually had to go around the school policeman to the police department and file charges because he would not take us seriously - he did get the case right back, and it did make him mad that we did that, but I was getting absolutely SICK of it.

I am sorry that your friend's child is having problems and I hope it is resolved soon. All I can suggest is to really convey to those school officials that as a parent you are part of a team with them in an effort to get this resolved. We had to get really ugly to get to that point but when we finally got there, it really worked out great for everyone.

As a side note, I got some great satisfaction when the Bully Girl ended up bawling in the halls this year because SHE was being bullied by a child who is a LOT bigger and badder than she is. And apparently her parent is not up at the school raising cain for something to be done about it so they are ignoring it. I feel that at least now she is going to know how this feels to do this to someone else.