My daughter used to come home from preschool every day with a report on her bully. "She didn't let us play with her today," I'd hear. She couldn't have made me feel more helpless if she'd tied my hands behind my back and shoved a dirty gym sock in my mouth. It's that memory of feeling like I was failing my kid that came straight to mind when I heard a dad was taking the controversial step of filing for a restraining order against his fourth grade son's bully.
Robert Casteel's methods are getting a lot of criticism today. After all, he went to court and convinced a judge that another kid should have to stay at least 20 feet away from his 10-year-old son. How you make that happen when two kids both go to school in the same building in the Jurupa Unified School District is anyone's guess.
I'm sure educators around the country are watching this case in horror.
But when I listen to Casteel talk to ABC News, I don't hear a dad who is just trying to make life hard on the staff at his kid's school. I hear a dad who knows what it's like to wake his kid up in the morning and have absolutely no choice but to send him to a place where he feels unsafe. Casteel says his son Christopher's bully brought a knife to school and threatened to kill him. No surprise the poor kid was terrified to go to school!
Part of sending our kids off to school every day is trusting that the adults we're entrusting to care for them will protect them from tormentors. It's not always easy for these surrogate parents. My daughter's bully used words, not her fists, and my daughter did not report it to her teacher. On loud buses, in crowded cafeterias, bullies have learned how to make their moves without being detected.
When it happens, we, the parents, don't have much recourse. We have to depend on the school to now make it stop. And if we're not satisfied with how they deal with it, what is there? We can call the other kid's parents, but often a kid is a bully because of what they're learning at home! We can't go to our kids' school every day to act as bodyguards, either.
So what else is there? In Casteel's case, the bully was given a five-day suspension, but he's back in the classroom, and who knows what he's got up his sleeve next. But at least this dad can feel like he's done everything he could to keep his little boy safe.
Have you had to take drastic measures against your child's bully?
Image via cogdogblog/Flickr
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Comments 62
Florida has a stand your ground law, where you can pretty much kill a bully if you feel threatened. This young man Jorge Saavedra recently fatally stabbed his bully who got off at Jorges bus stop and said today is the day we fight. http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/state/stand-your-ground-defense-upheld-in-murder-charge-against-jorge-saavedra-in-stabbing-death-of-teen
I am so glad FL has this, I hope this serves as a scary warning to anyone who feels like being a bully!
my daughter had a bully and we tried everything and the school did nothing, so finally i went to the news. the last straw for me was when she tripped my daughter going down the stairs of the bus and made her fall and crack her head open on the curb. i told the school that they either expell this child or else, well they got the or else. the madia had a frenzy on them and they finally did expell the kid.
Bullies have always been around. I remember getting picked on at a young age. Sometimes I'd tell the teacher, and other times I'd just give it right back to them. But it truly seems like bullying is only getting worse. This story, along with others you hear in the news, are terrifying. I am so worried for my son. He's only 5 years old but I cringe at the thought of him being picked on and no one at the school stepping in and doing something about it. We shall see. But more power to any parent who stands up for their kid and takes actions, no matter how drastic, to let the bully AND school know that this is just unacceptable.
Thankfully I was never bullied....but if I saw someone being bullied...I reeeeaaaally layed into the bully. I mean to the point where I'd make them cry and show them how they were making the person they were picking on feel. Thankfully, thats how most kids in my school were. Wish kids would all stand up for each other!!!!
That was also 7 years ago :/ I agree with nikolita that is seems to be getting worse.
Sometimes you have to lower your standards and talk a language that the bully's parents understand. If that means saying "watch out or else i will kick some a$$" then so be it. Shame on the school for not doing anything.
You make the mistake of assuming (we all know what that stands for right?) that other parents are reasonable beings. That schools have the time to care, teach and referee. They'd rather not know about it.The police? Said it was not their concern and to talk to the school and parents which I already had done. The other parents attitude was so- can't your kid fight her own battles and handle a few names? Let them work it out they said. Ya, right. A few days later a young girl hung herself because of them!! My understanding (this is not direct) was that the parents of the bullies (the ring leader) thought the dead girl was an idiot and that their daughter had zero responsibility for the girl to have done such a drastic thing. This same brat started to call my home to harass us. We moved. It was a drastic move, leaving my home that I loved but I loved my kid more.The day after we moved?? She stabbed one girl and nearly killed her and did in fact kill kill the second girl. The two girls found the ring leader alone and let into her about causing the other kids death. The school board are now being sued. The rotten apple taken out of school and the posse ejected out permanently along with her.
I only wish I had told them I knew how to dispose of bodies and was not afraid of jail time.
Of course the school is trying to cover their asses. We live in a sue-happy nation, so schools are afraid to take any drastic action against the bully because there generally is no hard evidence. If the bully is punished purely because the bullied spoke out, not in the presence of a faculty member, then the bully's family can turn right around, sue the school and accuse the victim of being the bully. The only way to get things done is for the parents of the bullied to step in, but it's an all around tricky situation.
We literally had to take one child to court for smashing my SS's head into a bus window, causing his head to split open & require 4 staples. The school didn't even report it, since "it wasn't on school property". Our son was assaulted 3x before this by 2 other boys, while his school did nothing about it! Thankfully, we moved out of the area into a MUCH better school system that takes quick action on these type of issues. They still have issues- first week of kindergarten, my daughter was told by a classmate to 'show him her butt or he'd kill her with his pocketknife' (which he didn't have)! Shocked the hell out of me! What shocked me more was that the offending kid came from 'old money' and his mother looks like a model from some yuppie catalog. *shakes her head* The school removed him from her class immediately, but now other kids have to deal with him, and he's still acting out. Kids with mental health issues aren't just found in lower-income families, and they have just as much right to a good education as our kids, but how can we protect BOTH without hurting either?
A restraining order isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Seems the only thing people understand these days is money, so I'd pull my kid out of the school, have the little nut job arrested for assault and sue the snot out of his parents and the school district.