Two moms, two school bullies and two different ways to deal

Two moms, two school bullies and two different ways to deal


Deborah Leblanc is suing the St. james Assiniboia School division for the mishanding of the bullying of her son Bryan.


One Manitoba mother of a bullied child is taking the issue to the courthouse, while another is taking her kid to kickboxing lessons.

Earlier this month, Deborah LeBlanc filed a lawsuit against the St. James-Assiniboia School Division in Winnipeg, claiming her son\'s junior high school did not protect him from a bully.

The suit alleges that in May 2008, another student attacked Ms. LeBlanc\'s 13-year-old son Bryan in school, grabbing him by the throat and knocking him unconscious as his head hit the floor, which left the boy with neck injuries and possible brain trauma.

People shouldn\'t have to turn to violence to prevent violence, Ms. LeBlanc says.

But another mother in the city thinks otherwise. The mom, who has asked to remain anonymous, has enrolled her teenage son in kickboxing classes and has given the boy permission to kick the snot out of his bully, according to the Winnipeg Free Press.

The kids that are being bullied should have some kind of retribution, she recently told the newspaper.

Both situations are examples of just how difficult bullying can be for parents to deal with, experts say.

It can be very frustrating, says Debra Pepler, co-director of PREVNet, a national network that addresses the problems of childhood bullying.

As a parent, you\'re most interested and concerned about your child\'s safety. And so it\'s frustrating and very emotionally demanding and taxing when a child isn\'t safe.

Dealing with bullying can be challenging because often children are reluctant to raise the issue with parents, and teachers may not acknowledge the problem, she adds.

But there is a series of steps parents can take to address the issue, Ms. Pepler says.

First talk to your child about it. If children come forward with any facet of bullying then I think the parent needs to explore with the child what he or she has done to stop the bullying and whether that\'s been successful.

From there, Ms. Pepler says, parents should discuss the bullying with the child\'s teacher or principal, who may sometimes be reluctant to acknowledge the full extent of the problem.

If necessary, she says, contact the school board.

There\'s a ladder, basically, that you climb, says Robert Frenette, co-founder of BullyingCanada.ca, an anti-bullying website.

It starts with talking to teachers and principals.

From there, if it gets into criminal harassment as well, which technically bullying is, they can get police involved, Mr. Frenette says.

Parents should absolutely not tell their kids to respond with violence, Ms. Pepler says.

News of the mother who has advised her son to dole out retribution on the playground has shocked anti-bullying advocates.

I\'m a little taken aback by it, Mr. Frenette says.

It\'s definitely an initiative that has gotten out of hand. There\'s other methods that they can go about curbing it, and violence isn\'t one of them.

While standing up to bullies may have been a traditional way of dealing with the problem, it will only make things worse, Ms. Pepler says.

If the child responds aggressively, the bullying lasts longer, she says. Clearly, this is not a good strategy.

I\'ve always told my kids, go to an adult and report it, Ms. LeBlanc says. But she adds that there are probably many people who stay silent.

I think there\'s an awful lot of bullying and violence going on that people either just don\'t want to come forward with or think if they come forward with it it\'s not going to go anywhere anyway.

Ms. LeBlanc\'s son has been home-schooled since January and is expected to attend a new school next month.

Sometimes parents may need to put their children in a different school, Ms. Pepler says.

That is a last resort, but it is something that parents do. If you feel that a school isn\'t being responsive and protecting your child and you\'ve done everything that you can possibly do to protect your child, sometimes changing context can work, she says. However, that may not be an option for people living in rural areas, Ms. Pepler adds.

Above all, parents whose kids are being bullied must be diligent in seeing the situation resolved, Ms. LeBlanc says.

Take it as high as you have to, she says. If you go to the principal and you\'re not getting answers from there, go to the school board, take it to the police, take it to lawyers. You have to get it stopped.

8/31/2009 12:04:10 AM
Bullys are a fact all through life.

Learn to deal with them early and thereby set up a confidence level in yourself.

I was a military brat and attended different schools in different provinces regularly. It was a fact of life that in the smaller communities you would be a target at school and in the playground. You were constantly the outsider.

The number of times I ran home with a group in hot pursuit were numerous.

About grade 6 I learned that it was much better to stand up and give and take early and establish that you would not just stand and take it. My approach had to take place off the school grounds but usually had the desired result. While still not accepted always, nor winning the scrap they usually respected you and generally left you alone.

Bullies often come with suits and ties and again it is best to take a stand early.

In later life there are no teachers to run to and the VP is often the bully. 5 0 Report Abuse

IRL_troll 8/29/2009 10:48:45 PM
Teaching kids to rat out their aggressors does nothing but breed in them an unhealthy trust of and reliance on authority. These kids have a rude awakening coming when they find out that those same authority figures are the biggest bullies of all, that the reason they hold such power is because no-one ever stood up to them -- whether it\'s your boss demanding you work unpaid overtime, your government demanding you obey arbitrary and tyrannical laws, your school board demanding your kid be sedated and streamed into a Special Ed class, your phone company jacking up your rates on a whim, or your husband beating the snot out of you for burnin\' his vittles, there will always be bullies to deal with in life. These people who think a childhood bully can be dealt with through Big Mommy Authority are either deluded and childish, or they are willfully ignorant and wish to sow the seeds of obedience in the younger generation. Bullies cannot be empathized with. The Mom and Pop store can\'t go up to Wal-Mart and say please stop bankrupting us with predatory pricing and starvation wages, and tbe Polish immigrant can\'t say to the RCMP please don\'t taser me, I only want to find my way out of this airport and visit my mother, your schoolyard bully can\'t be told he\'s hurting someone\'s feelings. He needs a swift kick to the testicles.

It\'s a harsh world out there and most of it is spent alone, without anyone to fight your battles for you. Authority figures are useless at best. You have only yourself to rely on and you\'ve got to be tough, both mentally and physically, to survive. Big Business and the government certainly don\'t care if your feelings are hurt, and neither does your kid\'s bully. 6 4Report Abuse

Avi 8/29/2009 6:26:17 PM
My friend\'s son was bullied in grade school... her husband went to the bully one day and told him that if he bullied another kid again, he was going to beat up the bully\'s dad. The kid panicked and eased up on the bullying.

I don\'t have kids myself, but I love that story!

I was bullied by a group of popular kids in grade seven, I kept making up excuses not to go to school until one evening my mom came into tuck me in and we had a good talk... I told her what was happening and her advice was to stand up to the main bully, we even practiced the scenario. The next day I went to school feeling empowered, the bully started with her dirty looks and nasty comments and I confronted her, gave her one good push and was never bothered by any of them again! (I did however cry afterwards). 8 0 Report Abuse

Conqueror 8/28/2009 8:18:55 PM
I taught my kids at an early age not to hit first but if they GOT hit first to hit back and hit HARD. My daughter was about 5 or 6 when I was in the upstairs bedroom looking out on the playground of the complex we lived in at the time. She was all alone and nobody around and suddenly I saw the neighbourhood bully kid heading determinedly straight for her. I frantically pulled on the window to open it just as he got there and whacked her. What happened next was a thing of beauty I will never forget. She hauled off and whacked him back *hard* and he turned around and went running back for home. 10 0 Report Abuse

Peter_K1 8/28/2009 5:26:29 PM
I was picked on (i don\'t know if you could call it bullying) by a former friend until I punched him. After that I was left alone. I\'m a small guy but just standing up for yourself can work.

I don\'t advocate violence but sometimes it\'s the only option left. I lived in a small town and couldn\'t change schools or avoid the confrontation. 11 0 Report Abuse

WINNIPEG -- A Winnipeg mother has sent her bullied son to learn kick-boxing and given him a green light to “kick the snot out of” his alleged tormentor when school starts next month.

The mother, who asked not to be named, said a bully has been tormenting her son for years.

“He’s now taking kick-boxing and feeling very good about himself. It’s about time he took a stand and stood up for himself,” said the boy’s mother.

“He has my full permission to kick the snot out of [the other boy] if he comes up to him.”

Both boys are in their early teens, and have attended the same school in Louis Riel School Division.

The mother said she has met for years with school officials to try to stop the ‘tormenting,’ and even went to the bully’s house and threatened his parents that she would get a restraining order if the bullying didn’t stop.

She has not yet done so, said the mother, who came forward after reading that another mother, Deborah LeBlanc, had filed what could be a precedent-setting lawsuit against St. James-Assiniboia School Division over the alleged bullying of her own son.

The mother of the victim in Louis Riel S.D. said the bullying has included physical abuse, humiliation such as pulling down her son’s gym shorts and underwear in front of the entire class and, more recently, anti-Semitism.

“His parents don’t give a crap,” she said.

Her son is not athletic, he’s smart, but quiet, which doesn’t give someone else the right to pick on him, the mother said.

“The kids that are being bullied should have some kind of retribution.

They need to know along with the parents that something is actually being done. It seems that everyone is afraid of actually giving these kids a consequence,” she said.

Louis Riel School Division superintendent Terry Borys said that the school has been working with both families to try to resolve a difficult situation.

Provincial privacy laws preclude his discussing details of individual situations, said Mr. Borys.

But, he said, school divisions have to discipline those who take revenge, just as they have to discipline bullies and try to change their behaviour.

“That’s not necessarily the popular view of some parents,” Mr. Borys said. “Unfortunately, some parents choose to do this.

“When parents work with the school, the schools generally do a good job of dealing with the problems,” said Mr. Borys.

This isn’t the first parent to enrol a child in martial arts to learn to fight back, but the school system doesn’t encourage ‘Wild West’ tactics, said Keith Thomas, risk manager for the Manitoba School Boards Association.

“As far as this Wild West scenario, toughen the kid up, take karate or whatever, that’s not what we want,” Mr. Thomas said. “The kid is going into those courses for all the wrong reasons.”

A parent should never go to someone’s house to confront other parents over alleged bullying, said Mr. Thomas -- deal with it within the school.

“We have trained people in the schools, and they usually know how to defuse it,” Mr. Thomas said.

Winnipeg Free Press

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The mother said she has met for years with school officials to try to stop the \'tormenting,\' and even went to the bully’s house and threatened his parents that she would get a restraining order if the bullying didn’t stop.
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Strong Supporter of This Method
August 26, 2009 - 11:27 AMFlag this as Inappropriate
I am almost 30 but just as it was when I was in school from K-12 schools still have their heads in the sand and hope things will just sort themselves out. I was bullied because I was easy going, good natured, polite and was attentive in class. Mr. Thomas and Mr. Borys along with their colleagues are as delusional as the people employed in the school system in Saskatchewan when I was in school. Having one or more kids bully a person on a day to day basis only to have the teachers tell the person being bullied to try and talk it out with the attackers is moronic. Talking doesn\'t work, if anything it serves as further entertainment for the bullys along with letting them know that their actions are working and ends up encouraging more antagonistic behaviour. My parents got me into Karate, to give me more confidence as it was greatly suffering from on going physical, verbal and mental attacks. Karate also taught me respect for ones opponent, the idea that respect must be earned, self disipline and got me into amazing physical shape as I earned my Black Belt when I was 17. When kids learned that I was in Karate, at first it was a joke to them, but as my confidence grew kids began to leave me alone. I always made sure to conduct myself in a respectful manner, and had been told by my Karate club that anyone found out starting fights at school would be kicked out of the club. We were told though that we were allowed to defend ourselves though if someone were to try to hit us as it\'s within our rights under the law to defend ourselves without using excessive force.

God forbid a bully gets the tables turned on them and instead of beating someone up gets a dirty lickin themselves. Parents these days are too wishy washy regarding punishment and society is scared to put it\'s foot down and say no that\'s not acceptable behaviour and such behaviour will sometimes have a reaction that they aren\'t going to like. Dealing with bullys at a young age is better than waiting for them to grow up into ignorant self centered adults that are jerks to everyone around them or end up doing something that lands themselves in jail or worse dead.