Is bullying a big problem where your child goes to school?

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My son just re-entered the brick and mortar system. And while the problems he’s having are somewhat unique, he has told me about his principal, a priest, calling spontaneous assemblies to address bullying, especially among his freshmen classmates. We’re seeking a transfer for him, and several other kids either have or talked about transferring.

Are schools not handling this problem, is it the family not instilling values or both? I would love to hear your thoughts, as I gave a bullying lecture about 2 years ago and it still seems to be tolerated way too much in Catholic schools (sorry, I cannot speak for public). Thank you for your (name removed by moderator)ut.
 
As someone who dealt with bullying at a Catholic high school some decades ago, the fact that the priest is even having assemblies to lecture about it is a big positive development, since in my case the principal denied to my parents that it was even going on despite the fact that some of the incidents occurred in the presence of teachers and witnesses.

IMHO the school had a big problem admitting that stuff like that might be occurring among its students, plus one of the students involved was somebody they considered a “nice girl” when she was actually a manipulative snake who instigated a lot of negative stuff with many different people. I avoid her to this day because I don’t think she has changed much.

The fact that the priest is involved suggests to me that the school is afraid of liability or really negative PR should somebody get seriously injured or commit suicide due to bullying on his watch.

Public schools are probably just as bad if not worse, in some cases way, way worse.
 
Well I went to a public school and can only speak from my personal experience. I graduated in 2007 (right before all this against bullying stuff started) However, I can only say I was never bullied or say or heard of anyone getting bullied in my entire life. Everyone, even the kids some thought of as being the more weird or crazy kids, had their group of friends. Things like the big kid taking peoples lunch money was a TV trope, not a reality. But then all this anti-bullying stuff started up so maybe my experience is not the rule. Of course this was also all before social media became a thing.
 
I know people who graduated in the late 90s and early 00s who were physically attacked at school and in one case suffered a broken bone injury that is still messed up.

Bullying exists. If your school didn’t have it then count yourself lucky.
 
I think the problem is your typical school is big, impersonal and has very little supervision. My secondary school years were absolutely awful and I dread having to send my potential children to school.
 
One of my best friends in high school suffered it, and I did a bit, just by association. We went to a rural Catholic school. For several months one year, she began receiving really demeaning anonymous text messages. The school attempted to address it, but the problem is that we never found out exactly who was doing it. We had our suspicions, but could never prove it. Some of my schoolmates could be very mean, but they were “good kids” who did well in sports, so a complaint wasn’t always addressed well.

I work now with Latino families who wish to enroll their children in a Catholic school in the city. I have no personal experience, but I have heard many complaints from parents that their kids are being bullied in the public schools, which is one of the motivating factors in wanting to make the transfer. I know it exists in Catholic schools too, but in my work experience, it seems to be much more prevalent in the public schools.
 
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Both of my sons and my daughter, to a somewhat lesser extent, were bullied at a small, Catholic school.

The administration also had assemblies. The teachers had meetings. Parents were notified. Children were, in one instance, suspended for a few days.

What disturbed me most were the popular kids that could have been influential in stopping the bullying did nothing. They did not bully, but they did sit there at the lunch table as it went on. This was a small school. A word from them to knock it off would have gone a long way toward ending it. Instead, they did nothing.

Everyone just sits by and watches, saying nothing so they don’t become the next target.
 
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Unfortunately that is what happens (bystander effect).

I was bullied too. Classmates don’t want to speak up because they don’t want to be seen as the ‘goody two shoes’. I remember being forced to tell people in my class that I was close friends with the girls that bullied me so they won’t get in trouble (some people suspected something was off)

Thankfully that ended. I’m actually quite good friends with the girl that bullied me the most. She’s a nice girl now, lol.
 
I think teachers need to be more proactive. A lot of kids feel tremendous pressure not to be a snitch.
 
Bullying is a big problem today, everywhere…and most of it has to do with the ease of impersonal communications via the internet.

We see it in snarky personal and professional emails, blogs, chatrooms, and social media (including this site).

We have a tendency to say things to people that we would not have brave enough to say to their face, and much of it is bullying…it is rampant throughout society…just 1 year ago, nobody would have even guessed that there would be so much of it from a person occupying what was once the most respected office in the world.
 
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One of my kids was over the line with regard to a classmate. This classmate rubs my kid the wrong way, they were in four classes with each other, and my kid was driven nuts by listening to the classmate ramble on or not get things in class. My kid was repeatedly critical and apparently really hurt the classmate’s feelings (and I don’t think the classmate was wrong to feel that way).

I got an email from the administration that a couple of other classmates were worried about the situation, so I suggested that teachers move them further apart (a teacher had previously refused, saying it was good for my kid’s soul to sit next to classmate) and not to put them in small groups together. We’ve also told our kid that if the classmate says something dumb in class discussion (which apparently happens pretty regularly), it’s the teacher’s job to correct classmate.

We’ve also told our kid to budget criticism of classmate. One criticism per day is the maximum, and once it’s spent, there’s not supposed to be any more criticism. So, choose wisely. (One per day may sound like a lot, but our kid has a tendency to do criticism sprees once irritated by somebody, so one a day is a substantial cutback.)

(It’s a very small school, so the kids spend a LOT of time with a small pool of other kids.)

I haven’t had any further complaints.
 
I have to say that there is potential for an autism spectrum kid to rub other kids the wrong way through being over-critical, persnickety and not balancing negative interactions with enough positive interactions.

What we’ve told kid is that relationships suffer if the ratio of positive to negative falls below 5:1 and that if you get too far away from that ratio, other people will just tune your criticism out.
 
Bullying happens everywhere. Personally, I found it worse in the homeschool community because there was no authority. If Sally homeschooler wanted to bring her miscrents to a library program or a museum program, etc, there was not much that could be done.
 
Hereiam said:
We have a tendency to say things to people that we would not have brave enough to say to their face, and much of it is bullying…it is rampant throughout society…
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It really amazes me that otherwise mature and responsible adults do not see their behavior online as “bullying” when it clearly is. I have been on many forums where someone who had annoyed people or gotten on the bad side of one of the popular people became a target, and hours of posts and threads were dedicated to making fun of the person. In some cases I have known many posters to be nice, kind and generally ethical people in real life, besides being over 30 years old which is old enough to know better. I asked a couple of them offline about their behavior and they all had some reason why the person in their opinion deserved this treatment.

I am not a super sensitive “snowflake” type, so all this was pretty blatant to even be getting my attention. A couple times I spoke up on people’s behalf because it seemed like the right thing to do and I myself became a target and got ostracized and made fun of myself for a while.

It’s given me a very jaundiced view of Internet humanity and most “friends” (though it wasn’t the only thing that made me think that way). It also seems to be a universal behavior. I’ve been on forums for probably half a dozen completely unrelated subjects and seen the same thing happen on each with totally different groups of people.
 
Bingo! Exactly what is happening to my son. I’ll explain in another post.
 
First, God bless you all and thank you for the replies. I can’t call what is happening to my son bullying, per se. It involves one girl who has way more than a crush on him (crushes are a whole new world to my son). She sort of wants him as her possession. My son gained a lot of confidence in cyberschool and as an altar server, so he made guy friends quickly in high school. He told goofy jokes and was self-deprecating, so he endeared himself. A lot of girls found him cute/handsome/whatever (as a mom, I can’t really comment to this), but many girls were forward. One was especially forward but otherwise kind and helpful to him. They were paired in theology for a group project. As I wrote in a previous e-mail, DH suggested he support her and the volleyball team, so we went to a game.

Well, the father of the girl did not like the fact that his daughter was paying attention to my son. She didn’t have her best game (so said DH, who played the sport more than I did). But, DS cheered on the team and congratulated her on their win and we left. Then, all Hades breaks out. The girls dad accused my son of scaring his daughter, starting and approaching her too much. They are still in 1 class together, as well as lunch and homeroom. The school has denied our requests to change homerooms. Even my son’s therapist couldn’t convince them. She started vicious rumors about him (all unfounded, with several boys talking to the admin about her behavior) and was suspended from a state tournament game. The team lost. Actually, they beat themselves because they were probably rattled that she was suspended.

This all started in October with said girl calling son a sexual predator who tried to rape her in the girl’s bathroom (that earned her the suspension) and the latestest being that son is a member of ISIS and an Islamic terrorist. She has banded her own little group to target son in the hallways. The group includes her older brother, who slapped son quite hard. He’s been kicked, punched, shoved, and elbowed. He now has a maze pattern he follows in the hallway to avoid retaliation.

This girl is still what we fell obsessed with him. She will try to persuade anyone who attempts to befriend my son that he is a sexual predator and terrorist (this is directly mostly at the boys he hangs out with). But, as Irishmom said, nobody will come forward and report what she’s doing to son because they do not want to be the next victim of her wrath. Son is scared of her brother and stressed at school. My mom died suddenly the day after Thanksgiving, and we can’t even mourn her loss or help my dad as much because of school issues. His grades are suffering, and he—like many spectrum kids do—plays these incidents over and over in his head.

Despite multuple disciplinary actions against her, she is still attending school and playing volleyball. Her dad still thinks my son is the anti-Christ. His grades have suffered to the point where we feel we must pull him for his own protection and to have the ability to learn in a stress free environment.
 
Never mind. Should have read the thread.
 
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I had the worst time at school, was bullied to death, I remember being hit on the head repeatedly with tennis balls during a p.e lesson, I cried, then a girl took me to the teacher, the teacher then whispered in my ear. Stop attention seeking.

I’ll never forget that, now im 29 I look back on it with utter shock.
 
Domer90 said:
My son just re-entered the brick and mortar system. And while the problems he’s having are somewhat unique, he has told me about his principal, a priest, calling spontaneous assemblies to address bullying, especially among his freshmen classmates. We’re seeking a transfer for him, and several other kids either have or talked about transferring.

Are schools not handling this problem,
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No
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Domer90:
is it the family not instilling values or both?
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Both
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Domer90:
I would love to hear your thoughts, as I gave a bullying lecture about 2 years ago and it still seems to be tolerated way too much in Catholic schools (sorry, I cannot speak for public).
Click to expand...
It’s everywhere. As father and grandfather of girls as well, they seem to be particularly tough on each other…big time.

I’m stunned how vicious girls can be to another on the target list.
Social media is a huge magnet in that it is soooo popular, therefore, making it much to blame because there are no breaks to what someone says, and news is broadcast far and wide to everyone in seconds… Without reaching kids consciences, showing them the consequences of their bad actions towards another person, hopefully reforming their consciences correctly, then this problem will only get worse. None of the bullies would ever want to be a target themselves.
 
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