Might delete later.
I received a new ms from my son’s teacher that he got beat up in school and bled from the nose. My son said he was punched and kicked while on the floor.
My son is very innocent and is not brightest out there. From what I gathered is he opened a curtain where the rest of the boys are changing clothes and some boy got mad and beat him up. He is not aware he is not supposed to open the curtains while people are changing, however the violent reaction he got from one kid is not normal in my opinion.
Teacher said he made the boy apologize to him, but as a parent, I am not satisfied. What should I do?
Just to add context, I’m talking about 2nd graders here.
28 comments
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Talk with your son.
Talk with the teacher.
Talk with the parents of the kid.
That’s the end. If it happens again involve the principal and do what you think is necessary.
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> Teacher said he made the boy apologize to him, but as a parent, I am not satisfied. What should I do?
I mean…what more do you want? For your kid to get a couple of free penalty shots in? Apologizing is pretty much all that can be done, I’d think. Maybe a lesson from the teacher about how violence is not the answer. But sometimes drawing attention to something is the last thing you want, especially if you’re a kid just trying to go about doing your own thing.
The main thing to do is document everything and stay as in the loop as possible. If this is a one-off incident where a child lost their temper and gave your kid a bloody nose then there is nothing to be done. If that child, or others start targeting your son for repeated bullying and abuse, then it’s time to get more involved, but again, start by communicating with all parties and leaving a paper trail.
If you are not satisfied with how the school/teacher handled it, you might as well make a complaint to the city BoE haha
I have a 3rd grader. For some reason, 3rd seems to be where they start getting into scuffles. Here is the process at our public school –
-teacher calls; explains
-parent calls your home, apologizes
That’s about it. The kid that gave my son a hard time apparently has repeated behavioural issues. My son is physically strong kid. He just didn’t want to fight back because he felt the other kid was kind of dumb and weak (emotionally). The next week, some other kid gave him a hard time because he said something in English/Katakana instead of Japanese. That resulted in nothing. Point being at this age be prepared that this stuff will come up.
If it were me, I would be a bit pissed, but see if it happens again. A pattern is what would really concern me. A single incident, less so.
Go listen to George St Pierre talk about his childhood bully.
Where you from by the way? Maybe more cultural elements at play or not understood.
Here is what I would genuinely recommend:
1) sit your boy down and explain how he was NOT in the wrong and shouldn’t feel ashamed.
2) figure out the age of the other boy. If he is a couple years older than your boy then I would follow up with teacher. Size can be a huge issue between a couple years at that age. If he is the same age go to next step.
3) Explain to your son what you expect him to do in that situation in the future. If he is hit first then what do you want him to do? Fight back? Walk away? Etc. The reality is that as a man he will experience this again in the future without your support most likely.
4) Enroll your son in a martial art to build his self defense and confidence up.
Just my opinion, but gotta teach him to fight. This ain’t gonna be the last time he’s gonna be challenged.
Meanwhile, in American public schools, everyday someone gets beat up and we are happy if no one gets shot.
It’s fine to protect your son and make sure the administration is handling it properly, but don’t worry about emotional scarring too hard. It is actually a valuable lesson to learn not everyone can be trusted to behave rationally, but no matter what your family has your back.
Being a helicopter or monster parent can be as bad as an inattentive one. Letting the administration know clearly that you expect this never to happen again is enough action.
I would certainly insist on speaking to the other set of parents and get them to clarify 1) how they intend to address their child’s behavior, 2) how they intend to make sure that their child never does the same thing again, and 3) IF the same thing happens in the future, what will they do about it.
It might work better if both your kid and the aggressor were present in the meeting together with the parents. It would more compellingly communicate to the aggressor that SOMEONE has your kid’s back and that there would be definite repercussions should he attempt the same behavior. During the session the parents will need to verbally account, in front of their kid and directly to you, the logical steps they intend to follow through to address the son’s behavior. Whether or not there is violence in the other child’s home is not your responsibility; the thing that the hitter needs to clearly comprehend is what the consequences would be if he dared to attempt the same thing again.
It seems the teacher is aware and made an effort to solve it instead of just brushing it under the rug. The teacher probably gave that kid an earful already. That’s at least something and there is probably not much more you can do for now.
If something happens again, I would certainly be more persistent and try to force a meeting with the other parents to talk it out. Talk to your kid and be aware of any bullying that might be going on.
It’s assault. File assault charges. Document everything. Fuck these bullies. Go see a lawyer. I have zero tolerance for shit like that.
I’ve seen Japanese parents freak out for much less.
Have a talk with your son on things allowed, behaviors he should look out for, and how to defend himself.
Ohhhh lord. My son (we haven’t met for years now sadly) is developmentally challenged and if he had been beaten up there would’ve fucking hell on. I would’ve been absolutely livid and probably unstoppable. But that’s me and you seem like a smart and calm dude.
I think what other people are saying about teaching your kid to fight might not be great because maybe he doesn’t want to fight. Hurting people can be just as traumatizing as being hurt imo.
I think that you had a talk with him is the best thing tbh. These experiences will keep happening and he’ll keep learning. I was bullied through most of my school life and now I’m a total cunt. Wait…
In seriousness though, it’s probably best to wait and see what happens and just check in with your lad on the daily. If there are ever any patterns, follow up.
Let me kick off by saying that as a parent you’re on the right side here. Your default position should always be that your child is a little angel incapable of doing any wrong, and even if something terrible happened it was clearly a misunderstanding or an innocent mistake.
However, do me a favour here and pause for a moment and contemplate what you would if you had two kids, both of them perfect little angels, and one of them pulled open the curtains in a public place while their sibling was changing and they got thumped by their sibling. Pause for a moment and actually seriously contemplate this scenario. Neither of them is “bad”, because they’re both perfect little angels, and clearly this is all just a misunderstanding. How would you resolve the situation? Please, actually think about this.
Why am I asking you to do this? Because this is the position the principal and teacher are in right now. They’re acting *in loco parentis*, which means that they’re acting as the parents to both kids, both of whom are now perfect little angels and this is all just a tragic misunderstanding and a teachable moment.
What would you do if these were both your kids? I’d deal with the bleeding nose, make sure there was no permanent damage, and then explain why what they did was embarassing to their sibling, and that they owed their sibling an apology. Then I’d pull the sibling aside and tell them that hitting their sibling was not on, that violence isn’t acceptable, and that they over-reacted and owed their sibling sibling an apology. Then I’d make them apologise to each other, and that would be that. Lessons taught, apologies made.
Why is this important? Because clearly you want the teacher and principal to do something differently, but you’re not seeing things from their perspective, and that’s going make communicating with them difficult.
Just to be clear, I think that your initial position here is entirely correct, and as a parent your default position should be that your child is a little angel who deserves a slice of cake, and the other child is clearly a little demon who deserves to be banished back to whatever hell they crawled out of.
However if you walk into the principal’s office with that attitude you’re going nowhere fast, because their default position is going to be that of dealing with two siblings who had a “misunderstanding”, and that this was a teachable moment. The lesson was taught, apologies were made, and they handled the situation perfectly.
What I’d suggest is that you walk in and **thank** the principal and teacher for their handling of the situation. Perhaps present them with a box of biscuits or something for the staff room in general, and say that you appreciated their handling of the situation in such a fair and even-handed manner.
Now that they’re off balance (but in a good way!) ask them for a small “favour”. Explain that when you were initially informed you misunderstood a little and thought that your son had been seriously injured. This worried you and caused you unnecessary distress. So in future could they please email or text you when an incident happens with just a brief summary. Then you can use translation software to be clear about the meaning, and avoid any unnecessary worry.
What am I up to here? You want to document these incidents in case of recurrence. But getting a Japanese school to document this sort of stuff is nigh on impossible. So instead you need to approach this from a different angle. You’ve just made it **extremely difficult** for them to say no. Oh there might be some tooth sucking and token resistance about privacy, and again you can be the “reasonable” person in the room and say that you understand and that you’re not asking them to name the kid responsible or anything, just that you really would like it if they could agree to text or email you in future when there is an incident just briefly summarising what happened to avoid miscommunications and worrying.
You’ve just made it extremely difficult for them to disagree. Firstly, you got them off balance by complementing them. Then you gave them a gift, which they accepted, and now they “owe you”. And finally you presented this as a reasonable request to prevent miscommunication and worrying, rather than “I want written documentation to prevent a potential pattern of bullying”.
Oh sure, they might see the writing on the wall, but there’s very little wriggle room here for them without them coming across as the “bad guys” and as unreasonable.
You’ve now got everything that I think is reasonably achievable out of the situation. The teacher will want to avoid having to send that damning text or email. So they’ll be watching the kids like a hawk, and will adopt a more proactive stance against any repeat incidents. And if they don’t? You’ll have a paper trail (once you print out those text and emails) to take to the compulsory education division if there are any repeat incidents. No bureaucrat likes being confronted with a paper trail. It scares them shitless.
And I think this is the best outcome that you can hope for. I know that as a parent what you actually want is for the little demon who hurt your angel to be in stocks and pelted with rotten fruit, but realistically that isn’t going to happen. The principal and teacher think they handled this perfectly. And if you contemplate this from their perspective I think you can see where they’re coming from. Your goal here is to appear the reasonable and considerate parent in the equation, to make them feel positively about you (and by association your child), and to gather ammunition in case this becomes a recurring problem.
I’ll definitely get downvoted for this but you should enroll him in a martial arts / self defence class.
Not so he can batter the next kid, but so he knows how to at least minimize damage to himself. Many people think going to a martial arts class means learning how to attack but learning how to defend yourself and bind the attacker in such situations is a crucial skill.
As for this, seems about done but if it were me I’d push to arrange a meeting with the parents (and maybe a teacher present) and get an apology and a promise that it won’t happen again. What your son did was wrong but getting battered red and blue for it is beyond wrong
I would suggest to call a meeting between the faculty, you and your kid, and the perpetrator along with their parents. Maybe the perpetrator has it rough, but they need to take responsibility and learn that what they did was not the correct course of action.
Let the two speak their sides of the story. You don’t need to point fingers at this time. Letting them communicate is part of the learning process.
As a side note, the school doing nothing is also unacceptable, as they should have rules in place regarding violence at school.
I would talk very sternly to the other boys parents
Teach your son to hit back.
If your kid ain’t the bright bulb then help him become the strongest one, boxing school my guy. He might end up having a good fight IQ. Then when he does dumb shit, he will be respected enough that his peers will tell him nicely
Everyone telling OP to get the kid to learn martial arts when the problem is OP’s kid not knowing common sense/courtesy. Gender aside, opening a curtain during time for changing is just wrong. I’m not advocating for violence, but the other side of the coin is to teach your kid common human decency.
Poor kid. He made a mistake and the way that was responded to was totally unnecessary. I agree with everyone else to not let this pass and involve the parents of that child. Organize a meeting between them, you and the teacher and put the responsibility to prevent this from happening again by asking them what they will do to make sure that this child is not a violent threat to your child. If they know that there’s a parent closely watching if his kid is safe at school, they are more likely to take more action to prevent this.
I think it’s time for your son to enter a dojo. I recommend jiujitsu. In my experience the dojo I’m at, every once in a while the talk about philosophy of violence and when it’s acceptable to use, I consider this important because a bully with training is a terrible thing. Not saying your kid would be a bully but we humans have these pesky things called emotions that sometimes make us do bad things. I hope it works out. Also i would add that getting beat up or vanquishing a bully can be formative and veeery valuable lesson about social interaction.
In my opinion every single person in the world should get beat up at least once, it’s important to learn about power imbalance in our society. Not advocating violence I’m just saying it is very human. Hope your son can learn from this and maybe, if he’s getting bullied he can vanquish a bully. I’ve never had a more exilerating feeling than the time I beat the snot put of the guy who kicked my ass for 3 years. Also, terrible people exist and being able to protect yourself and others very wise.
Best wishes
I think talking to their parents is the most realistic choice. If they’re “normal” parents then they’re usually tough on their kids if they brought 恥 to their community.
First thing first talk to your kid then sign him up for boxing
Teach him violence isn’t the answer but it’s the fastest route to solving problems with people who lead with violence
Then talk to the parent if it happens again talk to the parent in front of the kid bully they parent repeat as necessary
Only second grade? Holy shit… I’m so sorry. I don’t know how I’d react but you seem to be handling it amazingly well. Good advice here, document, be proactive. I’d immediately be wary that the kid is from an abusive family
Yeah, I don’t get the responses from people here treating this incident so nonchalantly. Either they don’t have kids or don’t have fatherly feelings towards their kids if they do have them.
Punching and kicking a kid on the floor making them bleed is a serious matter. Who cares if that kid apologized because the teacher forced them too? You should have a meeting with the teacher and/or Vice Principal to tell them your displeasure and would like to speak with his parents. He is only in the 2nd Grade and this boy has many years ahead to possibly snap at your son again or other students.