Shave the heads of the administrators and the school superintendent - and keep their heads shaved until the kid beats the heck out of cancer.
And then, make the so-called adults volunteer 4 hours a week to any cancer hospital for 20 years.

At least.

This is crazy.

This is common zero tolerance Beth. There is tolerance for neither perps nor victims. Even when it is clear who was the victim it they usually get treated the same as the aggressor.

Yeah, what Beth said. Shameful behavior by the administration.

Then perhaps a law suit is in order!
If I was of child-bearing age, I'd plan on paying for private school or home schooling.

I wonder what relationship, if any, bullying has to parenting? Are bullies just as likely to come from "good" parents as they are from "bad" parents, or are they likely (or even much more likely) to come from "bad parents"? I suspect the latter but perhaps that's not the case.

In my personal case, I was never a bully nor, I'm certain, were my two brothers or two sisters. And we had "good" parents, parents who taught us to treat others respectfully. Furthermore, while it's possible that some of my eight nieces and two nephews were bullies, I'd be dumbfounded if I found out they were, and they all had/have "good" parents.

Beth - you make a good point; but, I wouldn't want someone like those administrators around cancer patients.

I get that you are hoping they will learn something; but, they most likely won't.

They remind me of the Muslim Imams who recently stoned to death a gang-rape victim because she "committed adultery."

In their mind she was guilty for having sex outside of marriage and that was all they saw. It didn't matter that she wasn't a willing party to the rape - they just saw what they wanted to see. Nothing more.

Some people are stupid and there is no fixing them.

Firing isn't good enough. Put the administrators in prison.

Better yet, give victims the right to sue and/or prosecute the bully for assault, just as if they were adults. This would do wonders to make the law respectable again. You can't expect kids to think much of the law when only their opponents can ever use it.

The school (and our country) is run by alleged adults.

One suggestion I've seen elsewhere is to have a lawyer draw up documents putting the school and everyone working at the school on notice that they will be held legally responsible for the child's safety and for preventing him from being bullied.
If a bully attacks him again, they will be held collectively and individually liable for damages.
And then send a copy to everyone working at the school.

I wonder what relationship, if any, bullying has to parenting? Are bullies just as likely to come from "good" parents as they are from "bad" parents, or are they likely (or even much more likely) to come from "bad parents"? I suspect the latter but perhaps that's not the case.

Posted by: JD at June 6, 2015 2:41 PM

I don't know for certain, but it's long been rumored that most bullies either 1) have abusive parents, or 2) have parents who more or less advocate the kids' bullying of others, or 3) have parents who worship their kids and would flat-out deny that that their kids would ever do anything wrong even if God himself caught the kids red-handed in the act of, say, shoplifting.

In Judy Blume's 1970s book "Blubber," I would guess that the main bully, Wendy, who is a straight-A student, falls into the third category.

In Roald Dahl's short story "The Swan" (do not read if you're more sensitive than most people) it's clear that Ernie, at least, falls into categories 1 and 2. (I'll admit that I had to wonder just how typical it would be in the UK, in the 1970s, for someone like Ernie to come from a home with a father, but had the father not been there, it's pretty unlikely that he would have gotten a rifle for his birthday, given that he already had a criminal record for breaking a kid's arm - and then there would have been no story. Besides, I'm sure Dahl didn't create the father out of thin air, given that he was well-known for creating nasty adult female characters rather than nasty adult males. In fiction, I mean.)

Personally, I think that no adult at school should get more of a punishment than the bullies' parents, one way or another. Aside from those cases of kids who need to be taken from their parents permanently, when are we going to stop acting as though parents can't be held responsible for, at least, getting kids into serious treatment and onto any psychiatric medication they need BEFORE they grow up to be cold-blooded serial criminals? Sometimes a "phase" isn't one - and you'd think we'd all know that after decades of analyzing the lives of many notorious criminals. Yes, some future narcissistic criminals are good at hiding their true natures - but who said parenting was easy?

Sorry, but this is where you go full-on lawyer, and if you can afford it, get publicity. This school administration is so fearful of bad publicity that they throw out the victim with the transgressor. You can't appeal to their humanity because it seems they've gotten rid of it ages ago. Children always had a strong tendency to bully, but now it's either uber-pc "remember you're special, just like everyone else", no competitive games. Or it's 'Lord of the Flies' without the island.

Plus, on top of going full lawyer, the kids parents need to volunteer on school board member's campaigns. In high school, I literally threatened to get the athletic director fired because he was being a jerk to students, since my mom had managed 2 of the 6 school board members' campaigns, and my elementary and middle school principals, who liked me and my mom, were the assistant and superintendent, respectively.

Bullies come from crappy people, almost always. The parents who simply can't be bothered to correct them as they grow. An acquaintance of an acquaintance posted on FB several months back that her kids were being mercilessly bullied at their new school. Girls knocked her daughters lunch tray out of her hands, then laughed and called her a dog when she knelt down to pick it up, boys invited her son out to play, then hid in the woods and threw rocks at him, that sort of thing. I was SO angry, on her behalf. "I'd rather slit my own throat than raise people who do that" was part of my response, and I would. But I won't have to, because when my toddlers yanked someone's toy away, or bit, there were swift consequences followed by showing them the expected nice behavior. It continued as the ages and behaviors grew. You get the behavior you tolerate, including from your own kids. And if you tolerate shitty, they will produce more shitty. Ugh. Mean people suck. Crappy parents suck worse.

Quite a sad story, momof4.

I realize I was giving fictional examples, but I think they were pretty realistic, mostly. Here's another famous one: Marv Hammerman in Betsy Byars' "The 18th Emergency." In that book, there's no mention of Marv's parents, but one thing we know about Hammerman, aside from his habit of beating up boys who haven't even provoked him, is that he's flunked school at least twice, since he's 14 or 15 but still in sixth grade - and he's clearly sensitive about it. So my guess is that while his parents may or may not have belonged to the above categories, they were almost certainly neglectful, at least.

BTW, as a kid, I misinterpreted Byars' line "There was an unwritten law that it was all right to fight anyone in your own grade. The fact that Hammerman was older and stronger made no difference. They were both in the sixth grade."

That is, I thought that meant the ADULTS in the school came up with that rule! But, for all I know, that may well have been the case in some schools.

Quite a sad story, momof4.

I realize I was giving fictional examples, but I think they were pretty realistic, mostly. Here's another famous one: Marv Hammerman in Betsy Byars' "The 18th Emergency." In that book, there's no mention of Marv's parents, but one thing we know about Hammerman, aside from his habit of beating up boys who haven't even provoked him, is that he's flunked school at least twice, since he's 14 or 15 but still in sixth grade - and he's clearly sensitive about it. So my guess is that while his parents may or may not have belonged to the above categories, they were almost certainly neglectful, at least.

BTW, as a kid, I misinterpreted Byars' line "There was an unwritten law that it was all right to fight anyone in your own grade. The fact that Hammerman was older and stronger made no difference. They were both in the sixth grade."

That is, I thought that meant the ADULTS in the school came up with that rule! But, for all I know, that may well have been the case in some schools.