<p>“A suburban mother has filed a lawsuit claiming an elementary-school student bullied and beat up her son, a third-grader at the same Mount Prospect school.” …</p>
<p>New horizons in litigation.</p>
<p><a href=“Mom sues third-grader and parents for alleged bullying”>Mom sues third-grader and parents for alleged bullying;
<p>Well, maybe it will force more parents to take it seriously if their kids are bullies.</p>
<p>Good for her! No one should have to put up with that!</p>
<p>Sounds more than appropriate. It was assault and battery by the bully, and the public school had a duty to provide a safe learning environment.</p>
<p>Except as a an ex-teacher, I know how hard it is to stop the bullying. Education, class discussions, etc. are all great, as are consequences - but it is hard to give consequences unless there are witnesses to actions, and believe me, bullies are sneaky about bullying and do it out of sight and intransit times. When it is “he said vs he said” the principal is not going to allow you to suspend the student, and even if he/she does, in a few days student x is back. It’s a hard situation for all involved, because as teachers you get all kinds of students with all kinds of issues: anger issues, adhd, add, oppositionally defiant, impulsive, and just plain mean - and rarely, sociopathic. You can’t police every minute of every day. :-(</p>
<p>If owners are held accountable for their sociopathic dogs, then parents should be held accountable for their sociopathic kids.</p>
<p><<<</p>
<p>me, bullies are sneaky about bullying and do it out of sight and intransit times.
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<p>then schools should not discourage kids from recording these situations.</p>
<p>One teacher that I know kept denying that her “pet” was a bully. when two letters were found written by the bully, the teacher grabbed one and destroyed it, and the victim-student promptly shoved the other into her bra to keep the evidence. The whole thing blew up the school with angry parents. (I was baby-sitting the victim while her parents were out of town for awhile so I was privy to everything because the parents gave me permission to act on their behalf during their absence.</p>
<p>+1 for the mom and kid. </p>
<p>mom2, surely you must know that the actions by that teacher, if as described, are going to be an anomaly. I know a lot of teachers and they are as frustrated and horrified by bullying as parents are.</p>
<p>Yes, because the destruction of hard evidence is extreme. however, the belief that a favorite honors student coudnt be a bully is not unusual.</p>
<p>The teacher reacted that way because she had a long history of believing the bully’s sweet-faced claim of innocence. She didnt want egg on her face.</p>
<p>Not every teacher is honorable when faced with losing-face. </p>
<p>My older son got an F because the teacher insisted that he never turned in his notebook for a notebook check. Son insisted that he had. Teacher was very nasty and insisted that he hadn’t. He called me up and i brought it to school, WITH her hand-written comment on it as to how wonderful it was (that was thankfully the only proof that he had turned it in…usually she didnt write a comment)</p>
<p>On the other hand, another teacher told my other son that he hadn’t turned in a paper, which he knew he had. This teacher knew that my kids always turned in homework, so she just asked him to resubmit. Later she called and deeply apologized…she had forgotten that she had given his essay to another teacher to read because she had liked it (when the other teacher returned it his teacher realized her error). We were grateful, but we did wonder if there were teachers out there that wouldn’t have admitted to finding the misplaced assignment after insisting that she had never received it.</p>
<p>there are some awesome dedicated teachers and some lemons…as in every profession.</p>
<p>Bullies are not a category. This stuff happens between two individual people and each of them will usually have plenty of classmates lining up to say the other was at fault. Sometimes, the alleged bully has more of these because “bully victims” tend not to be the most popular kids in the first place. It’s not like most “bullies” are just mean to everyone. They’re not.</p>
<p>often the bully has a posse who will defend him/her because THEY dont want to become a target.</p>
<p>Sadly, sometimes the bullies are the students the teachers like best. Mom2’s story is totally believable to me.</p>
<p>^Absolutely they are. And some teachers are bullies at heart themselves. Some of the worst bullying I ever recieved was from adults. </p>
<p>According to this article - <a href=“Fourth Grader Sues Fellow Fourth Grader For Bullying – NBC Chicago”>Fourth Grader Sues Fellow Fourth Grader For Bullying – NBC Chicago; - the mom apparently worked for the school district, and was fired in response to the lawsuit.</p>
<p>Flossy, what you say flies in the face of my experience and that of many, many others I know, and most writing on the subject. There ARE kids who tend to bully others. The victims tend to be shy, not as popular, easy targets. I was bullied several times in my childhood–believe me, it was not a two-way street. It was one or more kids enjoying making another kid miserable. Your view is outdated and helps perpetuate the problem. </p>
<p>Hmm. I don’t know what you are reading, exactly, I agree the victims tend to be easy targets. And, never said it was a two-way street. What I said was that bullies are not bullies to everyone. They’re not.</p>
<p>What? You’re references to “alleged” bullies and putting victims in quotation marks were random labels? It seemed pretty clear to me you were questioning whether bullies are a thing, or just the natural reaction a “regular” kid might have to an unpopular kid.</p>
<p>Just because they are not “bullies to everyone” doesn’t mean they are not bullies. I think that’s pretty important to point out. It definitely IS a category.</p>
<p>Well, no I didn’t say it was a natural reaction and I don’t think that at all. Again, I don’t know what you’re reading because it’s not what I posted or even close, really. They are bullies to the kid they are bullying, obviously. And, as others have noted, they may well be the teacher’s favorite kid so it’s not as though they have a sign on them saying “bully” or something. And, an investigation by the school is usually going to end up with conflicting stories all around. I was not questioning whether bullies were a thing; just saying the thing is a little more complicated than a bad kid that everyone should be able to pick out of a line-up. It doesn’t work like that. And, sometimes it’s very subtle stuff that isn’t even necessarily breaking any rules. You’re making stuff up and attributing things to me that were not said. It’s a little odd, actually. But, whatever.</p>