One of my biggest fears as a parent is not finding out that my son is being bullied, but rather finding out that my son IS the bully. My hope is that by raising him to be self-confident and respectful of others, it will never happen.
But what if it does? How do you handle it when someone tells you that your child is bullying or beating up on kids and disrespecting authority figures? No one wants to believe that their child is responsible for that sort of behavior, but if you deny it instead of confronting it, doesn't that just exacerbate the problem?
I recently read this article about a 5-foot-10, 220-lb gym teacher who claims he was assaulted by a 50-lb, 6-year-old student. It seems ridiculous when put into those terms. How could a little boy possibly beat up and inflict real physical damage on a much larger adult?
That's exactly what the boy's parents said. "How could my little boy do so much damage?" said his father. "That is a terrible thing to say about a child," is how his mother reacted when she heard the teacher's lawyer refer to him as a "tiny terror."
I agree, that is a terrible thing to call a child. But what if it's true? How do you handle it if you discover your kid is bullying kids and lashing out at adults?
Photo by Flickr member sethph88, used under a Creative Commons License.