i actually met him in a local pub 15 years later, by this time i was 6ft and pretty big, so i went and stood in front of him and asked if he was still in the nf, he left, typical bully, he could only pick on 14 yr olds when he had an audiance of his little hangers on, now everyone knows why my spellings rubbish 😀

If you take shit you'll be given shit.

I'd ask your lad to give the bully an initial warning, followed by a reminder of the warning, then lamp him hard.

Then when they pull your lad he can explain how he asked for help, asked the bully to stop, and just got fed up of taking it.

SB

I got bullied once twenty years ago at secondary school. The local "thug" had been picking on me for weeks, but being a "swat" and prefect and all that, I was not one to make a scene or retaliate, preferring to simply avoid him as much as possible. Unfortunately for him – and I remember this as vividly as yesterday, he sort of just "smirked" at me as we passed in the languages corridor just as everyone was waiting for the after lunch classes, teachers, pupils, etc, hanging around and I just lost control and straight left jabbed him straight on the nose – blood everywhere, him on the deck, chaos, teachers restraining me, his mates screaming threats. I got frogmarched to the heads office to be "dealt" with – "you'll be suspended for this Masson" etc, etc. The head admitted he'd have loved to do the same, allowed me to leave school early that day to avoid trouble and said no more would be done about it. A few days later, me and the thug crossed paths and he shook my hand and said no hard feelings! I went on to be a Para!
My dad never advocated any form of violence, but only said that you have to stand up for yourself. Now a dad of two young boys, I'll try and instil in them an understanding of what is acceptable behaviour, not to use violence as a first resort, but to never be put down by anyone.

i have never been a violent person but self defence is fine in my book. if the bully hits your son, then he's responsible for the consequences. trouble is that bullying isn't necessarily physical. either way, sticking up for yourself is essential

i was always a shy lad and tried to avoid confrontation where i could, which at the time may have prevented the odd scuffle but it doesn't build self confidence

my advice for your son would be to stick with his mates – not in a gang warfare kinda way mind! and also stick up for other people who are also being given a hard time. solidarity brothers!

No he shouldn't hit the school bully as he's a wimp and will get the get his butt kicked.

Take him to one side and coach him to be assertive and some finishing moves… 😈

I'm not one to advocate violence generally, and spent a lot of my youth avoiding conflict, but in some circumstances I found it the only way. There's only so many times you can outsmart or out-talk people, or walk away before it causes you long term mental problems! I'd accept stick for a while and generally people got sick of trying after a week or two, having been 6ft and a lean 13-14st since the age of about 14 it seemed people liked to pick on the gentle swatty big guy. It really surprised people when he flipped and retaliated with a beating, especially in a visible place with plenty of people, teachers were happy that what I'd done must have been justified and would give me minimal punishment and it would generally clear any agro for 12 months.

Bullying at school is about not being the weakest. You don't have to be the strongest to avoid it, but not being the weakest is vital – it's a natural part of school life and lots of people take turns at the bottom and learn how to progress, it's only when people take it to extremes in either direction that it becomes an issue IMO.

Being a victim for too long can be seriously unpleasant and it takes a lot of courage to stand up to someone bigger than you in that situation, but *generally* the bigger guy will get one hell of a shock if the smaller one flips and goes "postal".

I'd ask your lad to give the bully an initial warning, followed by a reminder of the warning, then lamp him hard.

I reckon thats about bang on. If your son could marmalise him, how / why is he being bullied? Name calling? Give the bully back what he's dishing out with the confidence that IF it comes to it, your son could defend himself. Sounds like he's getting away with stuff he shouldn't be.

I once retaliated at school and hit the bully hard enough to break my finger! **** hurt too, but couldn't tell anyone how I'd done it. Didn't have a problem with bullying after that though.

Anyway, go in, see the head, ask to see their anti bullying policy and document the steps they are going to take to sort the bully out and escalate to teh Governors / LEA if they don't

I'd ask your lad to give the bully an initial warning, followed by a reminder of the warning, then lamp him hard.

That's just begging for a physical confrontation anyway, might as well just hit him.

IME schools are reluctant to admit to having a child bullied & will just try to brush it under the carpet.Both my lads were bullied at one time or another.School was informed – they listened to us & then did **** all about it !
Eldest lad was being bullied by 3 different kids so I took him to martial arts(turns out he was good at it too),he got some confidence & put each one of them on their ar5es,no more problems.
With my youngest lad it wasn't quite so easy as he's a quiet lad & everyone seemed to think he was there to be picked on,it was only verbally btw.Basically one kid started it & everyone joined in so he wouldn't start on them too.Tried a few ways to stop it but he's just not into hitting people(other than his big brother,he knocks lumps outta him!).So in the end I got his big brother to have a word with this kid,whatever he did it stopped after that…

One thing I have noticed though is as bullies get older they grow out of it.My lads are 16 & 17 now,both are now good mates with the lads who bullied them back then in primary school….

Give a B-I-G kid a tenner to grab this bully alone, lift him up by his neck and say

'this is a warning – if you ever touch my cousin **** again, I'll tear your f**king head off!'

If your lad is confronted by the school authorities, he just denies everything …. quite rightly!

Proven fact – a bully when confronted with sufficient force will move to an easier target! Worked for meeeee in sixty-threeee! 8)

Sorry to say that the only way to deal with bullies is to give them a slap. END OF DEBATE!

Oh, isn't Britain lovely!

Btw before I say anything I am 15 so I am still at school
Whether or not your son should punch him or not depends on the type of bully. Will the bully have mates to back him up? Does your son have mates to back him up. It is horrible being bullied and if it has gone so far that your son refuses to go to school, then I think it is reasonable that your son should punch him. I don't think he should punch the bully so that he is badly injured. Just wind him or something. That way he won't go crying to the teachers! 😉

Oooh suggestions for the type of violence???
Has to be the headbutt every time, no question.
Guaranteed devastation and immediate gameover (if connected).

Headbutt, naaa, too much chance of messing it up and injuring yourself.

Personally i found the swift and unexpected application of a chair to the head works first time every time.

I was 14 at the time i hasten to add.

And the wee toerag really had it coming !

And strangely he never troubled me again. Go figure.

My Son was Bullied when he first started High School after trying to get the school involved with no success i told him to sort it out he hit the Bully twice 2 black eye's , we got a phone call from his Guidance teacher & the Bully's parent's ,no Police involvement & no further problems with the Bully or any others JOB Done 😉

I'm sorry to say that my experience of bullying is much the same as others here – unfortunately it was violence that worked in the end.

At Junior school the red mist descended and I had to be dragged off by two teachers – Since the other guy was 'the hardest kid in the school', I became the 'hardest kid in the school' although I only realised this when I was about twenty.

At secondary school, where the bullying was worse, when it became too much I was alot more calculating. I dropped the guy in the playground infront of his cronies, let him get up and pop one on my jaw – It was a risk to take, but he was so shocked he didn't put that much into it. I didn't react and just stared at him and he backed off.

Next time I met him in the school building I helped him down two flights of stairs backwards and made sure he knew it was me.

No problems after that.

If the same happens to my kids, after giving the school some time to act and recording their actions, I'll be advising them to do the same.

Its already been said – its not about making yourself super tough, its about not being the weakest.

2 suggestions for the OP:

(a) Either your lad drops the bully in front of as many people as possible; or (b) you drop the bully's dad in front of the bully/the whole school.

Either way, the bully gets embarassed, and in (b) his dad might give him a kicking too for getting him beaten up.

My oldest lad got bullied hwne he started high school this year. It was fairly low-level – intimidation and threats – but it did escalate to physical once. To say my lad was terrified is understating it. We went to the school and to be fair they did deal with it. After a couple of weeks, the bully decided to try his hand again. In the meantime my lad had been getting boxing lessons and he was a bit more confident in himself. When the bully came at him he just knocked his hand away and made as if to punch him but stopped just short of throwing the punch. It did the trick to the extent that the bully is now trying to ingratiate himself with my lad. It seems to me that violence (or in our case, the possibility of violence) is how to deal with bullies.

Its amazing how many people have beaten up bullies on this thread. In my experience bullies are normally big and hard. I tried to fight one at primary school once and got beat the sh1t out of.

My bully was the same height as me, thinner and had a select pick of targets rather than the broad spectrum approach.

At all my schools, the big hard kids were also the ones that excelled in sports and were too busy playing them at break times to worry about bullying people.

If your son has the courage to fight the bully (well done, by the way, if he does) then maybe he also has the courage to stand up tall toe to toe and tell him that he's prepared to fight him.

The upside is that there's a (marginally) lower chance of getting hit, there's the possibility that the bully might say "fair enough" and stop the behaviour (because they only pick on those who are not going to stand up to them) and if a fight does break out, it (probably) won't be your son who started it.

Finbar, I think it comes to a point where the most dangerous people are the ones who feel they have nothing to loose. In my case, I was going to get a decking regardless, so I decided that I was going to start taking them down with me. Simple as that.

Bullies aren't usually the biggest, hardest or strongest lads in the school, they're just the ones who are best at being intimidating the other kids. If you can reverse the game and make the bully feel intimidated, it probably won't come to fisticuffs.

in my experience bullies are normally big and hard

I have to agree with that. The idea that if you hit one they'll run home and cry for their mummy is laughable.
At secondary school the bullies were all from the council estate, brought up on fighting, stealing and educationally a waste of space. I'm not sure what value there would be in telling your son to strike out. It's not something you can teach and could make the situation worse.

As a teacher, our hands are tied as stated above.If we do not have the support of parents we are stuffed.Your best course of action would be to escalate it to school board level, or whatever the system is in England and Wales.Be warned, these wheels grind slowly.I am also suprised he has not at least been excluded.
I DO NOT CONDONE THE FOLLOWING COURSE OF ACTION…Plan B would be to sort him out, he is hitting other kids because nobody has stopped him,no parents,empty threats from school etc.However a swift application of Clarks Startrite to the undropped testes will focus his thoughts.If the school are not dealing with numerous complaints about bullying they are not going to do much about what is obviously retaliation.

difficult one. Aged 9, I was pretty weedy and small (hadnt hit the growth spurt that eventually turned me into the biggest and hardest kid in the school) I was being bullied by an older kid (11/12 year old) that lived local – all summer holidays and into the 1st week of term. Verbal and physical bullying, until in the end I snapped and decked the little scrote in front of almost the whole school (all gathered round in the baying fight fight type mod that seemed popular in those days). Now this particular boy's dad was a local bobby, so around comes dad to 'have a word' with my folks for laying out his son and threaten me with 'police action' – unfortunately for him my god father was chief super at the time, a quick phone call saw daddy suspended and passed over for promotion for a very long time – never made it higher than sergeant and have been told by my god father his threats and behaviour towards me 'fu@@ed his career up big time'.

Now I have my own son, I think I would follow through with official channels (school, police, then LEA and if nothing done the press) so its all recorded, in the mean time invest in some boxing/martial arts classes – teach him some fighting skills and the proper control restraint to use them effectively to 'defend himself' – if he can play full contact rugger then he must be reasonable hard but in control

I'm not really adding much to the conversation here, but i was bullied at points in my life, and i admit, like im sure alot of people on here have, ive also been the bully. In my experience, it only ended when i hit back. One time, some lads i was kind of friendly with, decided to try to set my blazer on fire, with me in it. I'm not sure how serious they were, but they were certainly surprised when i started swinging at them with a glass bottle. Never bothered me again, this kind of thing happened a few times.

I'd teach your son how to punch properly, but not in the face ( it looks much worse if someone has a bleeding nose, than if you give them a good kidney shot/ kick to the balls).

I was bullied at school, I snapped eventually, launched a haymaker, and it connected. He didn't bully me again. In hindsight he had lots of problems himself.

I'd second the martial arts/defence classes. Quite often the fear of pain is worse than the pain itself, overcoming that fear works wonders.

Has he punched him yet? pics?

Firstly, well done to Jnr for being adult enough to tell you that he is being bullied.most kids would keep quiet for fear of being bullied more.
Your`e right about "back in our day" we gave the bully a wack and that normaly sorted things but this would need to be done as a last resort nowadays.

At secondary school the bullies were all from the council estate, brought up on fighting, stealing and educationally a waste of space

Thinking back to the bullies at my secondary school, two got addicted to heroin, one got expelled for bringing a knife to school and slashing a load of PE mats (last i heard of him he was doing 3 to 5 for burglary). One relatively successful one works for a local garage and looks like he lifts cars with his bare hands.

Did no-one else have nutters in their school? The kind of kid who didnt give a toss what they did or what the consequences were? I got into a few tussles with bullies but usually lost because I knew that if I twatted them one they'd just go mental and start attacking you with chairs etc… One of them is doing time for murder, another hit my friend on the front of the face with an iron bar – busted face, multiple fractures etc. I honestly don't know what can be done, as a kid, with that kind of kid until they do do something 'beyond the pale' so to speak. Essentially they have much less to lose, compared with someone who wants to do well at school, has a supportive family etc… In my experience they were used to being hit enough that even if someone did retaliate properly, they'd always have to be watching their back when the bully was around for a totally unprovoked but vicious attack. Pretty grim, and I was in a very decent school.

My son was being bullied on the school bus (he was small for his age) one day he waited until he got of the bus and laid the bully out with one punch, he just went up to him and smack! The next day when the bus pulled up I was waiting in the car and watching, my son came of the bus and the bullies big brother was waiting to see to my son, and my son laid him out, needless to say no one bullied my son again. But it could have gone the other way and went Pete Tong. My suggestion is to take your son along to your local Judo club, it builds confidence and control when it comes to confrontation, that’s what I done and my son became Scottish Champion and British bronze medallist. This was when my son was 12 or 13 he is now 23 and planning to join the Police.