Is My Son Being Bullied Or Is HE The Bully?

by Sharon
(Ireland)

We have just discovered that our 5 year old little boy has been hitting other children in school. When we ask him why, he doesn't want to talk about it but eventually he said that the other boys had hit him so he hit back. We went to the school straight way to discuss this with the teacher, she told us that there are a group of 4 boys who fight with each other all of the time and that our son was one of the 4.

We have talked to our son and told him that he must tell an adult if somebody hits him and that he is not allowed to hit other people. That was just this morning, we thought no more of it and felt the situation was now resolved, however during play time today our son scratched a boys face and bit his forehead, we are shocked at this as he does not display this type of behaviour at home or with his childminder, when we asked what had happened, our son said that he had been pushed by this boy and that he went to tell the teacher, he says that nothing happened and that the other boy then pushed him again so he was angry and had a fight with the boy.

I know our sons behaviour is unacceptable and we are trying to teach him not to hit out. What does concern us is that whilst we are dealing with this at home we are discovering that the same names keep coming up of children in his class that incidents occur with, we have also noticed that our son has been reluctant to go to school each day and says he hates it but wont say why, his personality has not changed and he is very loving and well behaved outside of school.

We are very worried that he is being labelled a bully yet we do not know for sure if he is defending himself or is the instigator of the fighting, we cant get him to open up with us and he does not want to talk about it at all, all he tells us is that these boys are hitting him first. I have also witnessed one of the boys come up to my son and tell him he was going to kick him in the yard later. Can anyone offer us advice with this? We have 2 older boys and have never had to deal with this type of situation with them so this is new to us.

Thank you
Sharon & Dave