How to Deal with the School

There are many approaches to this issue. There is no one size fits all. These are some guidelines to use if your child is getting abused at school. This GREATLY depends on the schools bullying procedures.

Once the abuse is reported to you by your child:
1. First of all, commend your child for coming to you about this problem. Stay calm and gather as much information as you can from your child. Who was involved including witnesses? When and where is the abuse taking place? How often? What exactly are they doing to you?

2. Immediately contact either the teacher or the school principal depending on where the abuse is taking place. I suggest phone calls and letters/emails. You MUST document all your contact with the adminstration. This will make them more accountable especially if the situation escalates.

3. Ask the school aminstrators to do an investigation. Witnesses are VERY important. From this point, it will be up to the school's policies and procedures. Learn these polices and procedures and act accordingly.

4. After the investigation, if is determined that the abuse is taking place, hopefully the school will contact the accused bully's parents. This is the better scenario because the bully's parents are hearing it from the school and not an emotional parent. Some parents have no idea their child was engaging in bullying behavior.

In most cases, if the accused bully parents are not delusional, the parent will jump right on the issue and resolve it quickly. I have seen some parent make their kids write an appology letter to the kid they abused and read it in front of the class. Problem solved!!

5. Other times, the accused bully's parents are in denial or simply do not care. In this case, this parent was a bully themselves and do not have the empathy to care that their kid is abusing another. The school adinistrators may need to call them in for a meeting and try to get them to face the problem. Perhaps in house suspension with anti bully training might be required to get the bully to learn what they are doing is wrong and hurtful since they are not learning it a home.

This is really going to depend upon if the parents care. If you are not getting satisfaction from the administration, then that is a whole other issue and perhaps another blog topic. Do NOT give up. There is still plenty you can do.

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