Strollerderby

I am a teacher.  Not only are the kids bullies, but their parents are too.  We are so afraid of law suits that schools don't do anything even though there are laws!  I send a bully to the office and because it is "test" week at school, he was returned to class and nothing happened.  He not only bullied a student on the playground, he screamed cuss words at me and told me there was nothing I could do.  I got NO backup from the administration.  It is not that teachers DON'T want to do something, it is that when we try to, we get no support, we get threatened by the parents of the bully, we are accused in the local web site of picking on good children.  I have been doing this a long time and I want the schools to do something too.  I have a bully in my class right now and everytime I send him to the office they call his mom and nothing happens because there is no one at home to watch him if he gets suspended.  Teachers are tired of it too but many have basically just given up.  I am an old fashioned strict-tow-the-line kind of teacher and so they tend to put these kids in my room a lot.  I would LOVE a solution or at least support.

Right on, Grammy!

When teachers are paralyzed in their own classrooms to take action, nothing will happen. As long as a bully in one kid's eyes is an angel in the parents' eyes, the school will be too immobile to do anything. I've seen this firsthand as a high school teacher myself and as a parent. When my daughter was in 2nd grade, there was a bully in her class. Despite numerous phone calls to the teacher and principal from many parents, the principal could only use "positive" disipline. So while my daughter was complaining of stomachaches in an attempt to stay home, this girl got to be the principal's "special helper". The kid moved out of the district at the end of the year; I have no idea if these positive reinforcement efforts had any affect. It's a frustrating situation all around.

My nephew isn't a bully, but he has a ton of emotional problems, probably brought on my a completely non-caring dad (my ass of a brother) and a psycho mom.  This is the kid who tried to kick me in the stomach two days before I gave birth to my second son.  Everyone in my family except my aunt and I came up with excuses for this troubled kid.  I don't know how a school can do something if the parents are willing to do nothing.  But they need to grow a couple too.  My nephew was allowed to stay in school after going after a teacher with a desk chair.  WTF????

The minute any school decides to "grow a pair", the parents run off to whoever is higher up than a principal--a school board, etc. They complain and threaten to go to the local media, and the school board caves and forces the building administration to go back on their decision. I've seen it time and time again. Public education in many districts in this country is crippled by a dark rain cloud of fear that hovers constantly--a fear of lawsuits, a fear of cut funding, a fear of bad press.  Teachers can't do anything when they have no power. Principals can't do anything when keeping their jobs depends on having a lower number of suspensions than they did the year before.

I know the original post was about a preschool. Perhaps a different set of rules is in effect for privately run buildings like most preschools and daycares presumably are. But they're still vulnerable to the same threats of lawsuits and bad press that paralyze our public school administrators. Sometimes, the kid who's a bully has a parent who's a bigger bully. I've heard kids throw around the phrase "I'm going to sue you!" to adults who attempt to discipline them, and I'll go out on a limb and say they're repeating something they heard at home. Trouble is, this is one phrase that really CAN scare the crap out of adults.

This is an incredibly complex issue. Maybe schools should include parents on a discipline advisory board to cover their butts a little more. But would anyone bother to volunteer? The school where I taught had to beg parents to get involved... another layer of complexity.

At my son's first daycare there was a bully. I spoke with the director a few times about it and she told me that she had spoken with the kid's parents, but that the parents refused to listen and deal with the situation. The bullying continued and I finally told the director that I would be pulling my kid out of the school if she took no action. Apparently a few other parents had said the same thing.

So the kid was moved from the 3 year old room into a class with 4-5 year olds kids and an extra assistant to do diaper duty for this one kid. I guess the director thought that might humble him a little. I don't know if this kid was disruptive in the class, but apparently he was intimidated enough to not bully the older kids.  Expect on the playground the kid was still seeking out and bullying the younger kids.

The parents all complained again. I think the kid eventually got pulled from the school, just because his parents were so offended by the constant conferences they were having regarding their kids' behavior. I don't think the kid ever got any help, so he's probably a bully somewhere else.

Anyway, if you have a bully at your school, you really need to organize as many parents as possible to consistenly confront the school director or principal in the hopes I getting something done. In public school, maybe  you can even bring up some stuff about how stressed out kids have a harder time learning and doing well on tests, so its in the school's financial interests to do something.

Bear with me -- or is it bare? I can't never remember -- but I am two "choking hazards" into Strollerderby's

or you can just find out where the family lives and let the air out of all of their car tires every so often. They'd eventually get the message.

Are bullies in school a fact of life now? Apparently they are : a recent study indicates that 90% of schoolkids reported being bulllied, while almost 60% of kids report being the bully, at least from time to time. Is this sort of behavior rampant? It