even moderators need help sometimes

[Guest guest]

Hi all,

We moved from small town North Dakota last summer to get my son away from

bullying. He was suicidal and I actually homeschooled him last year and then we

decided we needed to get him out of the community. I also needed to leave the

community as I had filed a complaint against our school district with the Office

of Civil Rights. So we now are in a town of 70,000 and my kids are at a small

Christian, private school. Well, I feel like we are back where we started in

that the bullying exists just as much at this private school as it did back

home. My son gets hit, poked with mechanical pencils, verbally harassed,

physically harassed, etc. He has told people to stop. I have involved the

administrator. Some stuff has gotten better, some has not. Nick is a 9th grade

excellent student. He is friendly and outgoing, he is compassionate, his

teachers love him and consider him an asset to the school. He is only mildly

athletic (sports are pretty important at our school). I'm thinking about

switching him to the huge public highschool here next fall. We are touring it

Thursday morning. He doesn't want to leave the small school and he thinks he

can help affect change, however, I think the school is too far behind with

regards to dealing with bullying. I had some red flags before we started the

school from various people in the community, but I just believed they had an axe

to grind against private school. The school has many cliques, even amongst the

parents.

Nick is easily irritated. He doesn't want to be punched, poked, jostled, etc.

He loves people but he has short fuse for this stuff. He is now 6'1 " and he is

not taking this stuff " lying down. " While I don't blame him for lashing out,

he's not helping the situation. One parent I confronted said, " Nick is a very

physical boy and she had seen him grab a kid by the neck at her house. " When I

asked Nick about it, he said the kid he grabbed had already hit him 3-4 times

and the mom hadn't seen that. Nick is not a liar and is not a mean kid. Every

time he physically does something to a kid, he comes home and tells me about it,

what led up to it, etc.

Am I teaching him to run away from situations if we try another school? I'm

going to run out of options. Many kids have left this school BTW for bullying

reasons. Other kids come to the private school because they have been bullied.

Why can't kids keep their damn hands to themselves? I've had it. I want to go

" postal " on these kids myself.

Anyway, scheduled counseling appts. for both him and me next week. His

counselor that I previously arranged for him to see is a specialist in OCD and

he didn't think there was any problem with how Nick wss handling the bullying.

He doesn't see Nick all worked up and mad at home. Nick is not dealing with it

well.

Guess I need support till I can get into a counselor next week.

I don't understand why Nick is a target for this behavior. Sometimes I'm just

so depressed and wonder what I did wrong in raising him to be a victim.

Thanks group,

Becky in N.D.