Anyone experienced this with their children in school?

How did you cope?

I have a neighbor who has a son in grade 5 who is being bullied. She's talked to the principal to no avail.

My 12 year old stepdaughter is experiencing this as well.

Anyone else worried about it as their kids get a bit older in school? It's become so widespread, and it's so sad.

dunno if this is anyhelp at all but i was bullied at school and the only thing that really stopped it was just carrying on. not ignoring them like grown-ups say "just ignore it", but just carrying on what i was doing, and if they needed answering back they got it. of course thats a difficult thing to teach. i think really all parents can do apart from speaking to the school is try and build up their kid's self confidence and make it easier for the bullies' attempts to hurt them just bounce off.

I would say just keep on and on at the school, make a proper pest of yourself until someone takes proper steps to stop it

Keeping a diary of incidents is a good idea, so you have something solid to take into school with you

How old is grade 5?

My stepdaughter doesn't live with us, but I don't think her mom is helping her get through this as much as she should be. So I truly want to help her out.

I was picked on in junior high school, many, many years ago I am starting to do research on bullying in the hopes of learning all I can to help my stepdaughter and then my own kids when and if they come to that point in school.

I am so against the bullying and it is just getting worse, and I thought it was bad back in my day.

My son was being bullied a couple of years ago by a boy in his class. I had numerous words with his teacher who didnt seem to care less. It was that bad my son didnt want to go to school and was having nightmares.

I decided to keep my son off school and wrote a letter (kept a copy) to the head teacher and sent it be recorded delivery to the school. I asked them if they could send me a copy of their anti-bullying policy and said i wanted an official appointment made with the head teacher and class teachers asap.

At the meeting I found out the class teacher and teacher assistant knew that my son was being bullied and who was doing it but never though to do anything about it or tell anyone else.

I told them I wanted to know there and then what they were going to do about it, I also wanted it followed up in writing within the week. I said my son would be back in school the following monday and if the bullying was not dealt with within 14 days I would send a copy of the original letter etc to the education board and let them deal with the situation.

As expected they whole situation changed the class teacher left the school at the end of that month and a new teacher took over. The parents of the boy doing the bullying were called into the school and he was put on some behaviour support programme. I have since heard he was expelled from the school a few months later for bullying another pupil.

IMO many kids seem to get worse year by year & theres not enough interest from schools or enough open & known support for those kids at the hand of bullies. 'Telling' often results in more bullying because a quick 5 minutes in the heads office goes in one ear & out the other.

Shameful thing is when the parants of the child dishing out the bullying doesn't do much of it.

Personally I would have to come face to face with the childs mother & to be quite blunt about this if my lil girl is ever bullied & I feel parent of this child is sat doing f all (come on does happen) I'll bully the mother. I will never take to this with a soft approach if more than once! - Too many horrors on kids trying to end their lives even succeeding because of bullying & I will do everything in my ability to prevent this and prevent my lil girl being in any other way permantly effected by bullying (self confidence & so on).

Forgot to say if Caitlin is ever the child dishing out bullying I will come down on her very hard!

My next door neighbor's son is 10 and was being bullied and his mother has spoken to the principal at the school a number of times to no avail. (My daughter goes to this same school.)

Finally, last week she obtained the number for the bully's parents and on Friday they came to her house with their son. Turns out that the bully himself was being bullied too at school. Things are much better now.

So, in this case, it worked but won't work in every case. Not every parent cares like this bully's parents did.

What ticks me off though is that the school principal wasn't doing anything about it.

Turn a blind eye don't they and bullying continues outside of the school. Just a nightmare for any child.

I was bullied at my last year in primary school and the girls big brother in 1st or 2nd stage of high school bullied at me too when he could ... My foster sister (4th stage of high school at that point) had enough and one day coming out of school there she was ...said to me "leather her or I'll leather you" she was serious and I gave the bully a good slap (or more lol) ... Its probably not the best advised but it worked for me I was never bullied again!

Wobbs

Glad it worked out in this situation leeanne--but you are right, unfortunately not all parents care what their kids do or don't do at school (and outside of it!)