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Wow, thank you for all the kind words. I had a meeting yesterday afternoon about the incident with the school. I was told that all the boys involved with the prank were spoken to and the boy who did the pantsing was suspended for two days, in school-not home. I think it is not severe enough but I really am not a big trouble maker to begin with. I know that there are some very extreme rules about bullying and for the most part they are there for very good reasons. I hope that these kids have learned a lesson about bullying and peer pressure. I am a believer that suing a family or school or causing a 13 year old to have a record that would ruin his life is not the answer. This said I am not sure that just suspension in school will teach much of a lesson either. I hope that his parents have enough sense to set him straight. Luckily my son is well liked and seems to have forgiven the boy who did this, they are more friends than enemies prior to this happening. I bellieve it was just a 13 year old prank.
My son did return for the last part of the day yesterday after the meeting. I feel you can not hide from problems. Sitting home would have made him think wild thoughts about what the whole school was thinking. Better to face your fear and laugh at your enemies and Never let anyone see your weakness. Well he did this and seems to be ok. Not sure if he is burning with embarrassment inside, but we will watch him. He seems to have a nice group of friends watching his back and I told him if anyone goes beyond a slide remark and make you upset than by all means go to the principle/guidence counsilor/teacher and report him for bullying. The school seems very concerned about his welfare and theirs I am sure, but like one poster said--how is this the schools fault? If a teacher was there, what could have been done to stop it. If my son was a girl being pants by a boy then this would have been sexual abuse--in this day and age I would think that the sex of the children would not matter--boy or girl,a very private part of my child was exposed, unwillingly to others. Yes I am very mad and want revenge but what really comes out of that will not help my son get over this and move on quickly. I am sure that today there will be new gossip about something else.
Thank you again for all your kind words and advise. I will watch for distress and I think that helping him work on his physical looks are unfortunately important at this age, but by no means the answer. I believe a kind soul, witty personality and confidence in who you are, sells you better than how you look on the outside.
Wow, thank you for all the kind words. I had a meeting yesterday afternoon about the incident with the school. I was told that all the boys involved with the prank were spoken to and the boy who did the pantsing was suspended for two days, in school-not home. I think it is not severe enough but I really am not a big trouble maker to begin with. I know that there are some very extreme rules about bullying and for the most part they are there for very good reasons. I hope that these kids have learned a lesson about bullying and peer pressure. I am a believer that suing a family or school or causing a 13 year old to have a record that would ruin his life is not the answer. This said I am not sure that just suspension in school will teach much of a lesson either. I hope that his parents have enough sense to set him straight. Luckily my son is well liked and seems to have forgiven the boy who did this, they are more friends than enemies prior to this happening. I bellieve it was just a 13 year old prank.
My son did return for the last part of the day yesterday after the meeting. I feel you can not hide from problems. Sitting home would have made him think wild thoughts about what the whole school was thinking. Better to face your fear and laugh at your enemies and Never let anyone see your weakness. Well he did this and seems to be ok. Not sure if he is burning with embarrassment inside, but we will watch him. He seems to have a nice group of friends watching his back and I told him if anyone goes beyond a slide remark and make you upset than by all means go to the principle/guidence counsilor/teacher and report him for bullying. The school seems very concerned about his welfare and theirs I am sure, but like one poster said--how is this the schools fault? If a teacher was there, what could have been done to stop it. If my son was a girl being pants by a boy then this would have been sexual abuse--in this day and age I would think that the sex of the children would not matter--boy or girl,a very private part of my child was exposed, unwillingly to others. Yes I am very mad and want revenge but what really comes out of that will not help my son get over this and move on quickly. I am sure that today there will be new gossip about something else.
Thank you again for all your kind words and advise. I will watch for distress and I think that helping him work on his physical looks are unfortunately important at this age, but by no means the answer. I believe a kind soul, witty personality and confidence in who you are, sells you better than how you look on the outside.
I think you are handling this whole thing beautifully, familymom. Your son sounds like such a great kid!
Wow, thank you for all the kind words. I had a meeting yesterday afternoon about the incident with the school. I was told that all the boys involved with the prank were spoken to and the boy who did the pantsing was suspended for two days, in school-not home. I think it is not severe enough but I really am not a big trouble maker to begin with. I know that there are some very extreme rules about bullying and for the most part they are there for very good reasons. I hope that these kids have learned a lesson about bullying and peer pressure. I am a believer that suing a family or school or causing a 13 year old to have a record that would ruin his life is not the answer. This said I am not sure that just suspension in school will teach much of a lesson either. I hope that his parents have enough sense to set him straight. Luckily my son is well liked and seems to have forgiven the boy who did this, they are more friends than enemies prior to this happening. I bellieve it was just a 13 year old prank.
My son did return for the last part of the day yesterday after the meeting. I feel you can not hide from problems. Sitting home would have made him think wild thoughts about what the whole school was thinking. Better to face your fear and laugh at your enemies and Never let anyone see your weakness. Well he did this and seems to be ok. Not sure if he is burning with embarrassment inside, but we will watch him. He seems to have a nice group of friends watching his back and I told him if anyone goes beyond a slide remark and make you upset than by all means go to the principle/guidence counsilor/teacher and report him for bullying. The school seems very concerned about his welfare and theirs I am sure, but like one poster said--how is this the schools fault? If a teacher was there, what could have been done to stop it. If my son was a girl being pants by a boy then this would have been sexual abuse--in this day and age I would think that the sex of the children would not matter--boy or girl,a very private part of my child was exposed, unwillingly to others. Yes I am very mad and want revenge but what really comes out of that will not help my son get over this and move on quickly. I am sure that today there will be new gossip about something else.
Thank you again for all your kind words and advise. I will watch for distress and I think that helping him work on his physical looks are unfortunately important at this age, but by no means the answer. I believe a kind soul, witty personality and confidence in who you are, sells you better than how you look on the outside.
Good job, Mom. The best thing you can do at this point is help your son learn to be resilient. When something bad or unpleasant happens to you, you address the situation and move on.
Wow, thank you for all the kind words. I had a meeting yesterday afternoon about the incident with the school. I was told that all the boys involved with the prank were spoken to and the boy who did the pantsing was suspended for two days, in school-not home. I think it is not severe enough but I really am not a big trouble maker to begin with. I know that there are some very extreme rules about bullying and for the most part they are there for very good reasons. I hope that these kids have learned a lesson about bullying and peer pressure. I am a believer that suing a family or school or causing a 13 year old to have a record that would ruin his life is not the answer. This said I am not sure that just suspension in school will teach much of a lesson either. I hope that his parents have enough sense to set him straight. Luckily my son is well liked and seems to have forgiven the boy who did this, they are more friends than enemies prior to this happening. I bellieve it was just a 13 year old prank.
My son did return for the last part of the day yesterday after the meeting. I feel you can not hide from problems. Sitting home would have made him think wild thoughts about what the whole school was thinking. Better to face your fear and laugh at your enemies and Never let anyone see your weakness. Well he did this and seems to be ok. Not sure if he is burning with embarrassment inside, but we will watch him. He seems to have a nice group of friends watching his back and I told him if anyone goes beyond a slide remark and make you upset than by all means go to the principle/guidence counsilor/teacher and report him for bullying. The school seems very concerned about his welfare and theirs I am sure, but like one poster said--how is this the schools fault? If a teacher was there, what could have been done to stop it. If my son was a girl being pants by a boy then this would have been sexual abuse--in this day and age I would think that the sex of the children would not matter--boy or girl,a very private part of my child was exposed, unwillingly to others. Yes I am very mad and want revenge but what really comes out of that will not help my son get over this and move on quickly. I am sure that today there will be new gossip about something else.
Thank you again for all your kind words and advise. I will watch for distress and I think that helping him work on his physical looks are unfortunately important at this age, but by no means the answer. I believe a kind soul, witty personality and confidence in who you are, sells you better than how you look on the outside.
I agree with everything you said, and I think you handled it perfectly.
I believe she is trying to give tools for the boy to use to empower himself. Redirect his objectives. This often works and helps people take some control of a situation themselves, which is probably just what he needs.
Things aren't always as easy as telling your child others are mean and they are nice, sometimes they need to take control themselves so they are brave enough to get through these kinds of situations. Especially at an age where having mom or dad go into the school and punish another kid to save theirs isn't actually helpful anymore. It can be just as embarrassing.
Pantsing someone is meant to humiliate. He needs to build himself up and move on. If strength training would help build his self esteem, it might be a good thing. At his age he won't buy the mommy will make it better statement, IMO. The hardest thing at that age is it's sort of up to you to handle it. That's the scary part, IMO. What ever works, I'd help him do it. Worth a shot. A personal trainer or karate instructor might be better than his mom in building confidence. You know, Karate Kid kind of thing. It's mental and physical.
I'm so glad I virtual school my son at home right now. Young beasts can really be a burden, your not required to be up for the challenge anymore.
Good luck to you op, just ask your son what he wants to do about it, whatever it is, I'd go with it. If he doesn't want to go back, so be it, he is old enough to school online and skip the horror, if he wants to build up, go back and face them, so be it. I would think it would be his call at this point, it's his deal, it's happening to him. More might have happened leading up to this ordeal. Never know.
Kudos to you, for Virtual Schooling your son at home! He'll be the one who makes it to adulthood with his soul intact. It's a far more natural way of growing up, and seems to be shaping a great many outstanding people.
And thank you for understanding what my post was about: the OP giving her Son the tools to empower himself.
I was given some tools for self-empowerment. Maybe I should thank a few of them (again), right now: Thank you, whoever stocked the library at our wretched school, and gave me the resources to look up edible/medicinal wild plants I could find in the woods. Thank you for subscribing to magazines nobody read but me. Thank you for having the classics nobody but I ever opened.
Thank you, nice white ladies who worked at our school, for buying me my two little suitcases (and most of their contents), and driving me off to college (after helping me apply to college). My 'own people' told me I was ugly and crazy and worthless, and needed to "stay at home with some babies". But you gave me the tools to be something more. And thank you, nice white people, for giving this little Indian a free ride for her first degree.
Thank you, sweet angels at pre-registration, for guiding me into Economics, when I'd never even heard of a 'Major', and was standing there in shock. And thank you for letting me take Bodybuilding 101, even though it was not officially open to entering freshmen. What a chain of events you started, when you gave me that tool for self-empowerment!
Thank you, to those who provided free biofeedback training, free Modern Dance workshops, free classical concerts on campus... For someone who'd just crawled out of a patch of hills between two big swamps, those introductions to a bigger, better world were life-changing.
Thank you, to whoever decided to have recordings of the British Royal Family, in the speech/sound lab at the Library. DH and I might have been the only ones who used them. But listening and repeating, over hours and years... allowed us to shed our lower-than-White-Trash accents: a vital step in our self-empowerment.
Thank you, Jake Stein, founder of Steinmart, for standing there in your store, patiently pricing marked-out-of-stock items from Saks Fifth Avenue, as they were pulled out of the boxes from New York. Long after you'd waxed wealthy, you put on those sales, as a way to help the people of the impoverished Mississippi Delta. Thanks to you, pricing those treasures at pennies-on-the-Dollar, I (who had previously only known used K-Mart clothing from thrift shops) was able to dress myself and my Husband in silk, cashmere, and Sea Island Cotton. These were tools for self-empowerment you virtually gave away. You changed my life.
Because Jake Stein made it possible for me to dress myself in Pucci, and DH in Armani, we caught the eye of those at school looking for bright young things eager to help themselves. Thank you (Governors, Senators, U Presidents, their Wives...) for the jobs on and off campus.
Thank you, Governor, for cosigning on our loan, when we, too young to do so on our own, bought our first apartment building near campus. That was a seriously big self-empowerment tool. We didn't let you down, though, did we?
Thanks to my Decorator, who helped us gentrify our building...and the next building...and the next (we lived in units of those buildings)... Working hard for NOTHING...empowering yourself in the process. I trust I've compensated you enough in the intervening years. Anyway, thank you for the innovative solutions, at a time when our materials budget was ZERO, and we were digging through debris piles and garbage, for things to use.
And thanks to the Kids, for first taking over running the household, then household finances, then oversight of the business end of things...while still in school. And thank you for faithfully crawling along behind me, scrubbing our buildings, as I was crawling along scrubbing, myself. And thank you for never hanging out with scuzzy people. Thank you for always dating 'up'. Thank you for making my biggest problem with you being acquisition of a bigger breakfast table, and more place settings in our breakfast patterns, to accommodate the perplexing number of pretty blondes in our home, some mornings (You guys can pick one apiece, or marry all of them. Every one's a keeper.). You kids freed time for us, and are empowering us to forge into new territory.
And thank you to our (dry) county's Boss Bootlegger, who gave me my first 'real job', as a little girl. I showed up at the edge of their yard, one day, and offered to pull weeds for his Wife, in exchange for enough money to buy corn meal (and her old copies of Town & Country). He was amused: "That little thang's got some MOXY!". And soon, I was riding the back roads in his black Fleetwood Talisman, sitting on the rear armrest, counting the cash as his lackeys handed it in... keeping the books. I was so proud. That relationship probably saved my life, as bullying in school turned violent, and other kids died. The mean kids still screamed insults, but knew that actually touching me might possibly, conceivably, get them wrapped in chains and sunk to the bottom of the swamp.
So, yeah! I know about empowerment, and the difference it can make to a bullied child. Me, I'll take action over platitudes, any day.
Kudos to you, for Virtual Schooling your son at home! He'll be the one who makes it to adulthood with his soul intact. It's a far more natural way of growing up, and seems to be shaping a great many outstanding people.
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This is as far as I read. I fail to see how avoiding other people is a "more natural way" to grow up. Everyone has to learn to interact with all kinds of different people. virtual schooling can be a good temporary option in some cases, but it only delays the inevitable.
My son did return for the last part of the day yesterday after the meeting. I feel you can not hide from problems. Sitting home would have made him think wild thoughts about what the whole school was thinking. Better to face your fear and laugh at your enemies and Never let anyone see your weakness. Well he did this and seems to be ok. Not sure if he is burning with embarrassment inside, but we will watch him. He seems to have a nice group of friends watching his back
I think you're absolutely right that sitting at home would have just made things ten times worse. His poor brain would have been racing and conjuring up the worst possible scenarios. And starting a law suit would have just dragged things out for him (though I do think 2 days in school isn't enough of a punishment).
Just remind him that the worst punishment of all for a bully is not having any power. As they say, the best revenge is living well.
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