Being teased in class - move seat or work on coping skills?

I’m guessing your son is 9 or 10 being in 4th grade. I think that’s too young to expect him to stand up for himself with no teacher intervention. You might not need to request that the teacher move him, but at least make him/her aware of the problem. At that age, a teacher telling the bullies to leave him alone may scare them enough to make it stop. I don’t think getting a teacher to intervene is running away from the problem. If you think about it, the kids being mean have more of a problem than your son.

Kay

I agree with Kay.

I am going through a similar issue with my 5th grader. We discussed how to ignore the deskmates but I also sent an e-mail explaining the situation to the teacher. I mentioned to the teacher how we were addressing it at home and asked if he could possible keep an eye out for it.

Heres to hoping the behavior stops here cause if it doesn’t, I’ll get more involved.

Bravo to your son for being able to bring this up with mom. You cannot imagine how many kids suffer such bullying in silence, thinking that adults can’t or won’t help. I agree with contacting his teacher since she is probably unaware that this is happening. Help your son understand that ignoring only works if his body language doesn’t show that he’s upset— and coach him in some “positive self-talk”— things he can say to himself to help keep his cool. Encourage him to find a couple of “nice” kids in the class to hang out with during recess, etc. — they are more likely to leave him alone if he’s in a group. I wouldn’t hesitate to involve the teacher and administrators if it gets worse— our district has a policy against bullying and students are disciplined for such behavior.

bullying - its ugly, its unacceptable and it is very damaging. look at www.bullying.org and www.schwablearning.com for information.

Absolutely, go to the teacher. School has to be a safe place for kids - physically and emotionally. If you don’t get an immediate, positive response from the teacher then go on up the ladder. When they tell you there is nothing that they can do -produce the reams of info from bullying.org.

Ending bullying is not easy. It depends a lot on school culture and values and those are difficult to change. It requires real committment from schools and districts but they are beginning to get the picture through liability issues. The psychologist, Micheal thompson (author of ‘Raising Cain’ has some very insightful things to say about it. He has consulted with many schools on the issue.

This not an issue to ignore - it is very damaging to LD kids. This is not an issue for a 4th grader to handle alone. Your instincts are very accurate on both accounts.

Good luck

Good luck

Thanks for the suggestions. I did send the teacher an email explaining the situation and requesting that my son be moved immediately. I’ll also try to work on the body language and effective ways to ignore other people.

Fortunately he has made a very nice friend in class and I’m extremely thankful for this. My son started going to this school a year ago so he doesn’t have many friends there. He doesn’t make them easily and unfortunately I didn’t realize how extremely difficult moving would be on him.

One thing which may or may not be a positive thing socially is we’re considering pulling him out for a few weeks (while going to Lindamood Bell). I hate to do this at the beginning of the year, but my son’s school won’t have any reading intervention this year and I think he needs much more intensity than I can give him after school. I’m hoping it will give him a little boost of progress and maybe even help his confidence a little. unfortunately, it may set him back socially. I could kick myself for not doing this during the summer! :-(

Both…

Moving his seat is the short-term answer, but it will have its own ramifications. This will be especially hard if the teacher does not handle it correctly.

Teaching him coping skills is the long-term answer, because the day will come when he has to fend off the bullies on his own or else our self-centered society will chew him up.

What kind of personality does the teacher have? Is s/he one of those ones who tried to deny that anything like this could be occurring in his/her room? That your boy brings it on himself by being different? That he is lying about it for some other reason?

Ideally, the teacher will whole-heartedly agree with your (correct) notion that persistant bullying is wrong, and will arrange to “catch” these boys herself, so that he is not further victimized. (If they think he tattled to Mommy and then they got into trouble they will likely carry a grudge against him for quite some time, saw it happen repeatedly to kids when I was in school many moons ago, have no reason to think human nature is any different these days.)

Good luck and let us know how this turns out.

These are great ideas. I would also get yourself inside that classroom pronto. Not that you have to do anything to the bullies but make your presence be known.

Having your parent involved in the class is a sign of strength.

You might want to very nicely introduce yourselves to these boys as well, never letting on of course that you were told anything. I make a point of going straight up to one particular known bully in school, looking him straight in the eye and giving him a big smile making sure to ask how his folks are doing. This kids stopped bugging my so after I started to do this. You know what they say, keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.
You also help to model social skills which can make your child feel more confident.

I am strong and therefore my son is percieved as strong. Worked with one bully of a teacher once too!

Ok Laura,

Here’s my two cents for what its worth. My recommendation would be to make a personal visit to the teacher, get to know her a little, get to know whether or not she has a handle on what’s happening in the classroom, etc. From past experience, I’ve found the more personal contact I have with the teachers the better. It makes it easier to discuss potentially explosive situations like this. Even better than personal visits is time in the classroom volunteering (I don’t remember your personal situation) if at all possible. Volunteering allows you to get to know the students as well. I wasn’t able to volunteer in the classroom last year but did work for the teacher at home and it made approaching her with any problem or concern we had easy. The one drawback I found to not volunteering was I didn’t get to know the students in my son’s class.

Do talk to the teacher though. If you can’t talk to the teacher in person, talk via telephone. The last avenue I would choose to use until I got to know the teacher better is e-mail. This comes from the days I spent working in the high tech industry. We often worked long distance via conferences, conference calls and e-mail. I discovered that the least effective way to talk about something emotional was e-mail. It is too easy to get the wrong impression or come to the wrong conclusion when communicating this way. Straightening out a bad situation can be even more difficult later. Facial expressions, body language and inflections in the voice make it much easier for you to determine the reality of the situation. Even working by conference call was more effective than by e-mail.

My son had a similar problem and I asked him if he’d talked to his teacher and he told me no. He came to me for help like your son is coming to you. Yeah! And even better, you are concerned. This is the time when you teach them how to handle life’s sticky situations. He doesn’t know how to handle the situation and needs your help. I don’t know how long the problem has gone on but I don’t think it shouldn’t be allowed to continue indefinitely. Sometimes they only go on for a few days but, If it doesn’t stop I would take action. If not you, who?

After school each day I ask my children several questions that I hope can’t be answered yes or no and they often lead to conversations about how to treat others and how to react to how they treat you. Unfortunately it isn’t the same in every situation but now is the time for them to learn to deal with these types of problems. Arm your son with the appropriate armour. Remind him daily, that he is a very special person. Kids need to hear it just like grownups do. Kids can be cruel. And, the teasing, etc. doesn’t necessarily go away just because you grow up.

Fortunately, for this year, my son has a very kind and caring teacher (I had heard he was and requested this particular teacher).

On Monday I took my son over to LMB for testing (6 hours!!!), so he didn’t go back to school until Tuesday (yesterday). Afterschool I picked him up and asked him about his day and he seemed much happier. He told me he was moved to another seat and there are 3 boys he sits near and they all seem very nice. He has also made a good friend in class. A boy who is very similar to himself. In fact this boy is one of the first kids my son met in this new neighborhood, and they hit it off wonderfully when they first met, but both boys never remembered each other after that first encounter. They are both in the same karate class and were on swim team together, but they never noticed each other until now that they are in the same class at school (and because his mom and I pointed it out to them at Karate!). It’s kind of strange how similar they are. Except this other boy doesn’t have reading difficulties like my son.

Nevertheless, I’m still concerned that my son learn how to deal with all of this. I don’t think it’s going to stop. He’s a very gentle, kind boy and he is also “different” (immature and naive). I really will need to work more with him on this issue. I agree that volunteering in school is tremendously important. Although my son doesn’t have the strongest sense of people, I’m pretty intuitive and after the first few moments of working in my son’s class last Wednesday, I had a sense there was something going on with the boy he sat next to. It’s funny how us mom’s sometimes just know these things.

Sometimes I think even more important than dealing with the academic challenges of LDs — is the lifeskills (social, people, etc). That’s really it.

Hi Laura,
My daughter was being called stupid everyday. So, we worked on replys it couldn’t be more then 5 words due to memory issues,so we found lines that would workand she felt like she had a come back and they still didn’t stop. So we met with the teacher and principal.
It helped for a short time but it started again when school started so, we are once again trying to think of verbal come backs.She doesn’t want me to go to the teachers or principal.
I told her it has to be handled no one has a right to speak to you like that you are a good person with feelings and theyare wrong not you.

I have her in Karate for focus and self defense, hopefully she won’t need the self defense part but I want her to feel safe and happy and respected.
Good Luck, I know it is hard to see your kid suffer.
Willow

How many students in his classroom? Unless there are many,many students in the room - this shouldn’t be happening.

I wouldn’t have the teacher just move his seat. I’d certainly tell her this is happening and kindly ask how she thinks it best to handle this? As a teacher myself, I wouldn’t want this happening in my classroom and I’d be pretty put out with those two boys and I’d want to have a long talk with them.

You do not send your son to school to have him teased by other students. You send him to school to be safe there and to learn. What kind of classroom environment does this teacher want? A free for all when her back is turned or a classroom where students treat each other with a decent amount of respect? Not every student has to like every other student but they do have to speak respectfully to each other - at least in my class.

Those two other guys need some guidance from their teacher and some feedback on their inappropriate behavior.