Thursday, March 10, 2011
Bullying
I just found out that my son has been a victim of bullying all year long. Not only has he been bullied, it seems the counselors, vice principal and teachers are aware of it. My son was hit for no reason last week and his friends spoke up for him and no one is doing anything. A little over a year and a half ago my niece killed herself for the same reason. There was a group of girls that bullied her for several years. The police became involved at one point, and yet still she was bullied. I am tired of a system that allows this to happen. My son will not be a statistic.
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Some helpful advice from someone who has been there. My son was bullied for years in elementary and had trouble expressing his anger. That anger and fear is what caused him to turn to gang type friends in middle school. He felt like he had more protection. He is also Bi-polar and dyslexic so we were dealing with that on top of it. I cannot count the number of times I was at the school dealing with behavior issues because my son had no other adult to advocate for him. He realized that his choice of friends was intensifying the problem. He became very withdrawn, was on meds and in counseling and he started getting threatened that he was going to get jumped. I had text messages from this thug on my sons phone that I took to the principle as soon as I found them. The kid was threatening to kill our family. The school did nothing. My son started taking a little swiss army knife to school with him (I didn't know for a while) but it came out later that he did it because he was scared this group of kids was going to beat him up. The situation escalated, one of the boys threatened him at my sons locker and my son told him if he touched him he would stab him. My son ran to an adult, no one helped him. My son was expelled and I didn't fight it because I felt we had no rights. At the expulsion hearing I read the 32 page report of my sons statement and the statements from students and teachers that were interviewed. It was beyond painful to read because my son was screaming for someone to help him, he did what I taught him to do...go to an adult and they will help you. No one helped. They all testified that he was visibly shaken and crying and upset, but also testified that they had never had any problems with him. My son was expelled for possession of a two inch swiss army knife which he never even showed to anyone (as reported), but had in his backpack and threatened to use it on this punk that had been taunting him the entire year. Yet that punk sent texts to my son and threatened him and our family and he received no punishment. My sons life has never been the same. He went through a lot of therapy, had to move to New Mexico because none of the school districts would admit him in Colorado and even after NM got a hold of his expulsion file, they denied him entry to their school. I can say happily today that he is in Job Corps in NM, he is a dorm leader, has won an award from the county for best essay about his life story, has successfully passed all his GED tests and drivers test and has been noted as showing most improved. Now, my 6 year old has been bullied because he is academically advanced, very small for his age and is a sensitive and caring little guy. I don't tolerate it, and I will NEVER allow this to happen to one of my children again. My 6 year old has been accepted to a GT school and won Aurora Scholar. I hope being in the new school with kids of his caliber with eliminate the bullying. The schools do not want to be bothered with these situations. They want to shuffle the problem from one person to the next and in my oldest sons case, he was the victim and he was made to be the perpetrator. Advocate for your son and don't take any crap from the administration. They will walk all over you if you let them. Bullying has become and epidemic, especially with the expansion of social networking. Keep us posted here about what is going on and stay close to your son so he knows he has someone in his corner. Good luck.
ReplyDeleteI have been trying Angie. Thank you so much for your post. I have taken him to therapy and have spoken with the counselors, which is funny because they are saying the same thing that they can do nothing unless my son comes forward and he doesn't want to get his butt handed to him so he stays quiet. For the most part this new school has been wonderful for him, however I am concerned about the bullying. I am glad to hear from his girlfriend and friends though that it is nost very often and it is only when he wears outrageous outfits to help with one of his clubs that he is in. Still, no bullying should be tolerated at any level. Yet when I try to ask him about it he shuts off. I am at a loss at this point. I don't know really where to go from here.
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