this is only my second post on here so go gentle please.
My teenager is in year 11 & for the past 3 years has been bullied relentlessly at school. The abuse is verbal, physical, text and on FB. It has been getting worse and worse over the last year or so.
The biggest issue we have is finding out who is doing all this because our teenager is terrified of naming names for fear of things getting worse. It's got so bad that we now have a morning ritual of convincing our kid to carry on attending school. This is such an important year with exams etc
Any one been through this before ?
Hi, I'll answer this more tonight, but can I ask whereabouts in the country you live?
OK, I'm home now so can spend some time on this.
There’s quite a lot you can do – the one thing you don’t do is put up with it, as it’s totally unacceptable. You haven’t said whether you have a son or daughter, so I’ll assume a boy simply for convenience, it doesn’t affect the answer.
Firstly, is there anyone at his school that he can trust completely? He needs to build a support network, people he can talk to who will keep the information in confidence – it doesn’t have to be one of his own teachers, any other teacher, dinner lady etc will be just as good. Basically, he needs to start to regain control and feel empowered, and talking to someone is a start.
Next, you need to speak to the school – they legally have to have an anti-bullying policy. Even if they don’t know who the culprits are, if they are aware that your son is being bullied, they can be more vigilant for anything that’s going on which they may previously have dismissed as nothing out of the ordinary.
Then contact the local education department, they should be able to provide support, and they’ll do it quite quickly – there may be support groups that you simply unaware of, so if you and your son can see that others are, or have been in the same situation, then it’s easier to talk.
I’m not an expert on facebook, but I do know that you can block individuals, so make sure he does this – anyone who is bullying isn’t a friend, so while his friend count may go down, the number of real friends won’t.
As for texts, I don’t know about other phones, so there may be other solutions, but if not, I recommend getting an Android phone and installing Handcent in place of the standard messaging – this allows him to blacklist numbers so that he doesn’t see, or get notified of the text messages (they are still received, and are stored by the normal messaging system but there’s no need at all to look there). The normal android also allows you to block specific numbers from calling, if he’s being called and bullied.
Whatever you do, don’t just let it happen – every action you take may not only help him have confidence for later on in life, but will show him that you believe in him and support him. Make sure that he knows that it’s not his fault in any way.
I'd still be interested in knowing whereabouts you are in the country.