Mom grabs bully's arm and gets arrested

rjs330 · Mar 12, 2023

A mother went into a school and confronted her 12 year old daughters bully. When the billy tried walking away the mother grabbed the bully's arm. Teachers intervened and the police arrested the mom for assault.

Of course there are a lot of people concerned that this mom was able to wander the school in search of the bully. She could have had a gun and killed her.
We've had conversations about hardening the schools. And this school proved to be too soft. The school should have metal detectors and guards at the entrance. The school should have parents wait in the office and have students meet them there so they are not wandering the schools.

But there is another picture here that is being ignored. The bullying. I bet the school has an anti-bullying policy. Yet this kids is bullied anyway to the point where someone feels they have to intervene. This is just another case of school failures to protect kids from bullying. As long as schools only give lip service to anti-bullying it is never going to stop. You have to stomp on bullies hard. Automatic suspensions and their friends, they always have a group around them, have to be pulled into the office and given a stern warning that if anyone retaliates against the victim they will face the same suspension. And it doesn't matter where it occurs. If a victim is injured the bully should be charged with a crime as well as face a year long
Suspension. I have no tolerance for bullies.

The IbanezerScrooge · Mar 12, 2023

Like, I agree with most of what you're saying here, but I do think treating bullies as criminals from the start rather than troubled children is problematic. They should be offered counseling and guidance, before we slap handcuffs on them. Of course, the situations have to be assessed individually and if there does seem to be great physical danger to the victim then more serious actions should occur.

IceJad · Mar 12, 2023

rjs330 said:
A mother went into a school and confronted her 12 year old daughters bully. When the billy tried walking away the mother grabbed the bully's arm. Teachers intervened and the police arrested the mom for assault.

Of course there are a lot of people concerned that this mom was able to wander the school in search of the bully. She could have had a gun and killed her.
We've had conversations about hardening the schools. And this school proved to be too soft. The school should have metal detectors and guards at the entrance. The school should have parents wait in the office and have students meet them there so they are not wandering the schools.

But there is another picture here that is being ignored. The bullying. I bet the school has an anti-bullying policy. Yet this kids is bullied anyway to the point where someone feels they have to intervene. This is just another case of school failures to protect kids from bullying. As long as schools only give lip service to anti-bullying it is never going to stop. You have to stomp on bullies hard. Automatic suspensions and their friends, they always have a group around them, have to be pulled into the office and given a stern warning that if anyone retaliates against the victim they will face the same suspension. And it doesn't matter where it occurs. If a victim is injured the bully should be charged with a crime as well as face a year long
Suspension. I have no tolerance for bullies.

The problem with many American schools today is the lack of quality teachers and school administrators. We cannot stop bullying from happening but we can make the environment safer and friendlier to bully victims. All these need to be done by the school, but unfortunately American teachers today rather be preoccupied with themselves and their ideology than actually caring for the students.

Bring back discipline teachers who can and will enforce school rules. Who will punish students who transgress against the rules. Who will call the parents in and tell them their child is misbehaving. But actually good teachers in America today have their hands tied behind their backs by administrators. To follow extreme coddling of all students even misbehaving ones. They can't even act to protect bully victims else they face disciplinary action for not following the administrators policies.

FireDragon76 · Mar 13, 2023

In general, it's not a good idea to allow angry adults into school to manhandle children, regardless of what they have been accused of doing.

FireDragon76 · Mar 13, 2023

IceJad said:
The problem with many American schools today is the lack of quality teachers and school administrators. We cannot stop bullying from happening but we can make the environment safer and friendlier to bully victims. All these need to be done by the school, but unfortunately American teachers today rather be preoccupied with themselves and their ideology than actually caring for the students.

This isn't an accurate view of American teachers. Most aren't getting paid much commensurate to their educations, and they are increasingly the targets of bullying themselves. Teachers, as a result, are more likely to be demoralized.

dzheremi · Mar 13, 2023

Yeah, just like shouldn't be the parent's place to go into the school and start physically confronting their child's bully, it shouldn't be the responsibility of the teachers to get involved in physical altercations happening between students, either. That's not what they're there for.

I think that the growth of zero tolerance responses to bullying might actually be making the problem worse. Hear me out, please: I am not saying that bullying should go unpunished, but I do think that especially if both kids involved are pre-pubescent, and hence very unlikely to be able to seriously physically harm each other by getting into tussles in the schoolyard, intervening in a heavy-handed manner can (not does, but can) do more harm than good by creating a situation where the bullied party gets in the same amount of trouble as the bully (which definitely encourages more extreme reactions, since everything is punished the same, in addition to feeding into the sense of helplessness and unfairness that the bullied party probably already feels about their situation not being handled appropriately), and also by sending the message that if somebody wails on you every day, the appropriate response is to just let it happen, because you wouldn't want to get in trouble for violating the 'zero tolerance' policy by fighting back. As someone who got bullied a lot as a kid (elementary school through junior high, with only a few sporadic incidents in high school), I don't know that I would've been able to make it through those years in any kind of mental shape if it hadn't been understood at least on the part of my parents that when somebody punches you because you're an easy target (in my case, short and with a physical disability), you're not in the wrong for defending yourself. I did still get suspended on occasion (this was slightly before the rise in 'zero tolerance' policies, which as far as I can remember did not start popping up in my school district until the latter half of the 1990s, when I was in high school), and I never got the message that the suspension itself was somehow 'unjust' (this was also thankfully before the rise of 'my kid can do no wrong' pseudo-parenting), but my father used my time stuck at home to have important talks with me about what happened, why it happened, what I could've maybe done differently in response to it, what it means to pick your battles in a context where being seen as weak might encourage even more bullying, etc. Looking back on these conversations 30+ years later, all I can really say is that I hope that parents or other trusted adults in children's lives are still having them, because they're very important to help kids process what is happening to them and to develop effective coping strategies so that they don't feel so hopeless that they end up in serious fights when they are a little older and bigger, or even worse, reacting in a Columbine-esque manner to real or perceived bullying or unfair treatment.

rjs330 · Mar 13, 2023

FireDragon76 said:
In general, it's not a good idea to allow angry adults into school to manhandle children, regardless of what they have been accused of doing.

I think we all agree with that and that alone does not address the real issue of why they felt they had to defend their their child that was being victimized by a bully.

rjs330 · Mar 13, 2023

FireDragon76 said:
This isn't an accurate view of American teachers. Most aren't getting paid much commensurate to their educations, and they are increasingly the targets of bullying themselves. Teachers, as a result, are more likely to be demoralized.

You won't get any argument from me. Teachers are not paid enough. That's for sure and it's not just the education but the responsibility they carry of caring for and educating out children. They should be paid way more. And they could be if the administration wasn't so huge and didn't take up so much money.

Teachers are often bullied by their students. We've seen plenty of videos on that. Kids who refuse to listen, be obedient, and try to learn. That is on US. It's our society that has created the atmosphere that allows kids to act like they do and refuse to learn like they do.

We allow disobedient and uncontrollable kids in the classroom. What kind of society have we created when we have to have special teachers in the classroom just to keep an eye on one kid?

rjs330 · Mar 13, 2023

dzheremi said:
Yeah, just like shouldn't be the parent's place to go into the school and start physically confronting their child's bully, it shouldn't be the responsibility of the teachers to get involved in physical altercations happening between students, either. That's not what they're there for.

I think that the growth of zero tolerance responses to bullying might actually be making the problem worse. Hear me out, please: I am not saying that bullying should go unpunished, but I do think that especially if both kids involved are pre-pubescent, and hence very unlikely to be able to seriously physically harm each other by getting into tussles in the schoolyard, intervening in a heavy-handed manner can (not does, but can) do more harm than good by creating a situation where the bullied party gets in the same amount of trouble as the bully (which definitely encourages more extreme reactions, since everything is punished the same, in addition to feeding into the sense of helplessness and unfairness that the bullied party probably already feels about their situation not being handled appropriately), and also by sending the message that if somebody wails on you every day, the appropriate response is to just let it happen, because you wouldn't want to get in trouble for violating the 'zero tolerance' policy by fighting back. As someone who got bullied a lot as a kid (elementary school through junior high, with only a few sporadic incidents in high school), I don't know that I would've been able to make it through those years in any kind of mental shape if it hadn't been understood at least on the part of my parents that when somebody punches you because you're an easy target (in my case, short and with a physical disability), you're not in the wrong for defending yourself. I did still get suspended on occasion (this was slightly before the rise in 'zero tolerance' policies, which as far as I can remember did not start popping up in my school district until the latter half of the 1990s, when I was in high school), and I never got the message that the suspension itself was somehow 'unjust' (this was also thankfully before the rise of 'my kid can do no wrong' pseudo-parenting), but my father used my time stuck at home to have important talks with me about what happened, why it happened, what I could've maybe done differently in response to it, what it means to pick your battles in a context where being seen as weak might encourage even more bullying, etc. Looking back on these conversations 30+ years later, all I can really say is that I hope that parents or other trusted adults in children's lives are still having them, because they're very important to help kids process what is happening to them and to develop effective coping strategies so that they don't feel so hopeless that they end up in serious fights when they are a little older and bigger, or even worse, reacting in a Columbine-esque manner to real or perceived bullying or unfair treatment.

You make some good points.

I do think teachers should step in when they see it happening. Teachers are not ignorant. They know good and well who the bullies are and who they are bullying. I've seen this first hand. The schools know too.

I have no issue with a zero tolerance policy if it's done right. What kind of nonsense is it to punish the bully and the victim who fights back? The bully should be suspended from school period.

Another poster mentioned counseling. Well that sounds.good to me. How a bout the bully gets in school suspension and counseling. I dont know maybe there's violence in the home etc.

But I'm telling you Ive know plenty of bullies that came from good homes.

No bullies should not be tolerated or coddled. Give them all the counseling in the world and if that helps great! When they understand how to control themselves that's better for everyone including themselves.

durangodawood · Mar 13, 2023

rjs330 said:
...I have no issue with a zero tolerance policy if it's done right. What kind of nonsense is it to punish the bully and the victim who fights back? The bully should be suspended from school period....

In so many cases "who started it" is purely he said / he said matter with no actual proof of who started it - until we make schools, after school hangouts, and the walks home complete surveillance zones.

ThatRobGuy · Mar 13, 2023

The IbanezerScrooge said:
Like, I agree with most of what you're saying here, but I do think treating bullies as criminals from the start rather than troubled children is problematic. They should be offered counseling and guidance, before we slap handcuffs on them. Of course, the situations have to be assessed individually and if there does seem to be great physical danger to the victim then more serious actions should occur.

In many ways, trying to stop bullying in all forms, in a Jr. High setting, is a bit of fool's errand. You're never gonna get rid of all of it.

It has some resemblances with the notion that you're going to stop all young people from "fooling around" with abstinence-only education.

Now obviously as you said, there are degrees of bullying. Being called a name in the hallway isn't the same as physical assault...but none the less.

And while I understand what you're saying about "not wanting to immediately slap the cuffs on someone and treat them like a criminal" on a first offense, there has to be a line in the sand somewhere with regards to some of this stuff.

While it's very true that some bullies are that way as the result of coming from a troubled home (where they, themselves, are being abused and repeating the pattern because it's "what they know"), I don't think that's the case for most forms of bullying, and in a lot of cases, accomplishes nothing more than giving certain bullies a level of empathy and leeway that's unwarranted in the form of a "giving them a few freebies before they get any real consequences".

It's been 20-something years since I've been in High School, but the majority of bullying that happened at my high school was in the form of either spoiled kids or upper middle class jocks who got so used to getting everything they wanted and having people kiss their backside because they were good at a sport that they thought they were allowed to get away with anything (and they were right in a lot of cases, good luck getting the team captain of <insert sportsball team here> in trouble for anything if there was an "important game" coming up).

People (even from the best supportive homes) at ages 12-17 can be hormone fueled, prone to impulsive behavior, and look to "assert themselves" to "fit in and be considered cool" or rebellious no matter how objectionable the behavior.

And the way many "zero tolerance" initiatives are structured in a way that inadvertently favors the bully.

It's better to nip those behaviors in the bud earlier than later. It's better to get the "high school version" of the consequences of physical bullying and running your mouth (disincentivizing that behavior) than the adult version.

rjs330 · Mar 26, 2023

durangodawood said:
In so many cases "who started it" is purely he said / he said matter with no actual proof of who started it - until we make schools, after school hangouts, and the walks home complete surveillance zones.

You are talking often of one off instances. But you are extremely naive if you think bullying is only he/said she/said.

There are a lot of witnesses to these instances. The kids all know who is bullying who and so do the teachers. I've seen this first hand and more than once. Bullying is never a one time thing. It's always an ongoing situation and there are always a lot of people who know what's happening.

Clamp down on the bully, give them in school suspension and counseling and if that doesn't work, you are done with school until you learn to control yourself.

Brihaha · Mar 26, 2023

rjs330 said:
You are talking often of one off instances. But you are extremely naive if you think bullying is only he/said she/said.

There are a lot of witnesses to these instances. The kids all know who is bullying who and so do the teachers. I've seen this first hand and more than once. Bullying is never a one time thing. It's always an ongoing situation and there are always a lot of people who know what's happening.

Clamp down on the bully, give them in school suspension and counseling and if that doesn't work, you are done with school until you learn to control yourself.

While I can agree with most of the post, this seems to apply to adults in America too. Look at Mr Trump and his legion of admirers. All Americans are witnesses to his continual bullying. Citizens and politicians alike know who is the bully. Trump’s bullying is not a one time thing.

Americans emulate their role models. Has anyone other than democrats or prosecutors ever clamped down on this bully? Any accountability at all, counseling, suspensions etc.? Is Mr Trump done wrecking America until he can control himself? How can schools deter or prevent kids from acting exactly like the former leader of the free world? It's very disingenuous to cheer for a bully who is a leader while admonishing kids for the same behavior. No wonder kids in America seem so confused today.

Say it aint so · Mar 26, 2023

Education starts at home. I just cringe when I hear it's the teachers fault.

rjs330 · Mar 26, 2023

Say it aint so said:
Education starts at home. I just cringe when I hear it's the teachers fault.

That sounds cliche. It's also naive. Do you know how many kids do things at school and the parents have no idea and would not approve if they did know?

rjs330 · Mar 26, 2023

Brihaha said:
While I can agree with most of the post, this seems to apply to adults in America too. Look at Mr Trump and his legion of admirers. All Americans are witnesses to his continual bullying. Citizens and politicians alike know who is the bully. Trump’s bullying is not a one time thing.

Americans emulate their role models. Has anyone other than democrats or prosecutors ever clamped down on this bully? Any accountability at all, counseling, suspensions etc.? Is Mr Trump done wrecking America until he can control himself? How can schools deter or prevent kids from acting exactly like the former leader of the free world? It's very disingenuous to cheer for a bully who is a leader while admonishing kids for the same behavior. No wonder kids in America seem so confused today.

Please stay on topic. This is not a Trump thread.

Say it aint so · Mar 27, 2023

rjs330 said:
That sounds cliche. It's also naive. Do you know how many kids do things at school and the parents have no idea and would not approve if they did know?

Hmmm..."Do you know how many kids do things at school and the parents have no idea". Really? I am a parent and certainly was a kid, so yes, I know. I also know way too many parents have no interest in the things kids do at school thinking, hey, that's the teachers job. For too many parents school is that place their kids go to between 8am to 3pm when they aren't on their phones or their play station. I recall about only half of the parents actually attend parent teacher conferences. So yes, I know way to many parents have no idea. You call it a cliche, I call it reality, education starts at home.

rjs330 · Mar 28, 2023

Say it aint so said:
Hmmm..."Do you know how many kids do things at school and the parents have no idea". Really? I am a parent and certainly was a kid, so yes, I know. I also know way too many parents have no interest in the things kids do at school thinking, hey, that's the teachers job. For too many parents school is that place their kids go to between 8am to 3pm when they aren't on their phones or their play station. I recall about only half of the parents actually attend parent teacher conferences. So yes, I know way to many parents have no idea. You call it a cliche, I call it reality, education starts at home.

Sure it does. But then it needs to continue at school. What is it exactly you are trying to say? That it's parents fault the kids a bully? That the school has no responsibility to stop the bully?

What's your issue here that you are really arguing for or against in regards to bullying at school?

Say it aint so · Mar 28, 2023

rjs330 said:
Sure it does. But then it needs to continue at school. What is it exactly you are trying to say? That it's parents fault the kids a bully? That the school has no responsibility to stop the bully?

What's your issue here that you are really arguing for or against in regards to bullying at school?

Yes. School + Parent participation = Education. Too many just look at a statistic of a failure, and just blame the teacher. It's starts at home. And yes, if someone is the parent of a bully, it's the parent's fault. And yes, the both school and parent have a responsibility to stop it. Problem is way too many parents see their child as if they are their peer, their friend, and not the child that needs what all children need, and that's behavior correction.

rjs330 · Mar 29, 2023

Say it aint so said:
Yes. School + Parent participation = Education. Too many just look at a statistic of a failure, and just blame the teacher. It's starts at home. And yes, if someone is the parent of a bully, it's the parent's fault. And yes, the both school and parent have a responsibility to stop it. Problem is way too many parents see their child as if they are their peer, their friend, and not the child that needs what all children need, and that's behavior correction.

I think you are missing something important. The educators know and do nothing. Tha parents are only at fault IF they know or are made aware and they do nothing. We've already established that parents often do not know what their kid is doing. Not all bullies come from bad parents. However all bullies continue to exist because of bad educators. Because bad educators know and do nothing. If the parents are made aware and do nothing then certainly they bare responsibility too.

But don't blame the parents until they know.

There are plenty of schools who do nothing and don't tell the parents anything.

You can't lay that at the parents feet.

Mom grabs bully's arm and gets arrested

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