There’s a story on all the cable channels today about the father of a handicapped child who got so upset and enraged over his child being bullied that he got on the school bus, asked his child to point out her tormentors, and verbally blasted the kids hazing his daughter.

Teams of ‘experts’ are analyzing the situation.  The dad was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.  He said he had complained to the school and nothing was done.  He will now stand trial.  We don’t know what will happen with the daughter or the boys who were throwing stuff on her and pinning her ears back.  The daughter has cerebral palsy and it has been reported that she is on suicide watch.

First off, let’s look at all the sides.   The father is frustrated.  He reports his concern to the school and the horrible behavior towards his daughter continues.  Most of it apparently is happening on the bus.  He is so upset over his inability to protect his child that he loses it and cusses out and threatens the kids who are perpetrating the problem.

 

The school has heard the complaint.  We don’t known their side but let’s examine what might have happened.  The boys causing the problem might have been called in and read the riot act.  However, who is going to make sure  that this behavior stops?  Who rides the bus home to see that it doesn’t happen?  Can you throw the kids off the bus on the say so of 1 parent?  Do schools who are already understaffed have the manpower or the skills to do a full investigation?

Probably the person who is going to get the blame will be the bus driver.  Now we all have heard  bus driver stories.  Some drivers are excellent and make friends with  kids for life.  Others are …[bad word], miserable human beings.  The fact remains that they have to drive a bus and maintain order and discipline in a vehicle that is like a moving trailer.  In other words, the job is herculian and underpaid.  How many of us can drive and control even 2 kids? 

I fault the bus driver for not slamming those doors shut and not allowing the father on the bus.  That was all within her control.  Her only other recourse was to report the kids and recommend  bus suspendion or call the police and hold every one on the bus  when the first bullying incident started.

This is a complex issue.  Its not easy to second guess when you don’t know all the facts and when split second decisions must be made.  Schools have an obligation to see that all students get due process. 

I side with the Dad.  His first duty is to protect his child.  The fact that his child is handicapped really shouldn’t even be an issue. No one’s child should be bullied.  The child being handicapped just ups the ante. 

Meanwhile, 2 those who bullied the girl in Massachusetts will stand trial.  Perhaps  if more kids understand that the American people are not going to tolerate bullying, then some of it might stop.  It is a serious problem and many a child is being scarred for life because of our inability to put a stop to this outrageous behavior.  The consequences for bullying must  be stern and extreme if necessary.  There are too many ways for bullying to occur.  What used to be playground related and too and from school in nature now can go on 24/7, thanks to social networking and electronics. 

We need to treat bullying as a crime and attach criminal penalties.

23 Thoughts to “What’s a Dad to Do?”

  1. Bear

    I understand the father’s frustration, but Yelling at children isn’t the solution.If the bus is the problem, find an alternative method of getting her to school or talk to the parents of the bullying kids.

  2. Bear, you are probably operating on the yesteryear channel. Talking to parents just doesn’t work. The man probably doesn’t know who the parents are and the school will never give out that information.

    Back in the old days that would have worked for sure. And if any of us as kids were caught picking on a handicapped kid, we wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week.

    Still on the dad’s side here…but not saying he handled it in the best way. The best way is to get the due process out of the way real fast and throw the little bastards off the bus for the year. Let THEIR parents deal with transportation. Riding the bus is NOT a right.

    All school buses need to have a camera. I also think all buses that carry handicapped children should have an aide. I am not sure there shouldn’t be an aide on all school buses. How can a person drive and know what is going behind him/her? Its an unrealist and often dangerous expectation.

  3. Second-Alamo

    I say put the fear of God in the little bastards, they deserved it!

  4. I think that is what the dad tried to do. Look where it got him. Poor guy.

  5. kelly3406

    The school district is probably the real culprit here. If someone complains of bullying, then the administration needs to take action to prevent it from happening again. Part of that prevention should include notification of the bullies’ parents. I would want to know if my children were bullying other children (especially if it involved handicapped children).

    I bet it came down to a bureaucratic issue. The father may have notified the principal, but school buses might be handled by a Transportation Division. So the principal would have to notify the Transportation Division, which would then have to take action. This multi-division notification would result in delays and perhaps no action at all.

    Just a hypothesis, but maybe not far from the truth.

  6. Kelly, we are missing info. We don’t know to whom the father complained. We aren’t even sure the administration knew there was a problem. We don’t know if the buses had cameras.

    You can’t just throw kids off the bus without due process. What if it were your kids being accused of bullying? You have to have some ‘proof.’

    I would want to know also. I just thing people don’t understand the legalities involved.

    I knew a woman who was beside a bus from the school where she held classes. (she wasn’t a teacher. The kids on the bus threw stuff out of the bus onto the hood on her car-stuff like trash, torn up notebooks, soda cans etc. She got out, flashed her school badge at the driver and chewed the kids involved out to a fare thee well. Her job was on the line. She came close to being fired for doing that, even though her car was damaged and she had business with the school where the kids came from. If I recall, she said the kids’s parent had a fit.

  7. Slowpoke Rodriguez

    I’ve thought a LOT about bullying lately, searching for answers, and I’ll say, they don’t come easy. Having the dad confront the kids isn’t going to work. The kids know Dad won’t do anything serious and they won’t like having the dad fight the daughter’s battles. In this particular situation, where the kids were bullying a disabled girl, the right thing to do here is to have the bullies and their parents noted by the school officials, then displayed in a public square (preferably in a pillory) for a good dose of public humiliation. That way the parents and the bullies should become aware of how disgusting and utterly without worth they are. The parents of the bullies would have a real interest in explaining to their little brats that their behavior has consequences. I think the root of this is parenting (or lack of), and THAT’s where the answer lies. The school should only be held responsible for identifying the bullies.

  8. Slowpoke Rodriguez

    I had a school bus driver once (an older lady) who had zero problems with pulling the bus over, getting out of her seat and coming back to do a very impressive drill sergeant routine with the kids. It worked! But these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if that bus driver was attacked in some way. I have no issues with cameras in busses to help the bus driver and school officials identify the bullies, then onto the pillory as mentioned above.

  9. My question is about the bus driver. He should not have let that man on the bus. The father could take the child, after presenting ID, but, having an angry man on a bus is not a good idea.

    That said, it is now the school’s responsibility to handle bullying in the school. As for ID’ing the children, the school, at least mine, has a school directory of parents. Most are in it. There are ways of finding out the parents, including finding the child’s last name and calling every one in the district with that name. I’d do it.

  10. My mother just told me about this. I am sick and furious and hope he sues the hell out of the school system.

    Florida schools suck. This is just one more piece of proof.

  11. @Slowpoke Rodriguez
    But the bullies names won’t be released because they are minors. There’s the old grapevine method, of course, but that’s not always accurate and could implicate some kids who weren’t involved.

    I think this is kind of like a hate crime. The kids should go to Juvie for awhile.

  12. BTW, I also hear the bullies put condoms over the girl’s head. Is that true?

  13. Oh, here it is:

    “His daughter has been subject to her peers throwing unwrapped condoms at her, uh, pinching her, hitting her, taunting her for almost a month now,” Alexander said.

    The girl is on suicide watch.

    http://www.wftv.com/news/25047891/detail.html

  14. anona

    Did anyone ever see the movie Serial Mom?

  15. Emma

    Yelling at bullies only serves to pump up their adrenaline and feed the high that they get from witnessing the frustration and powerlessness of their victims.

    The best solution involves lawyers and courts. The parents of bullies are often so impressed with their kids’ assertiveness that they will rarely see that the

  16. Emma

    Yelling at bullies only serves to pump up their adrenaline and feed the high that they get from witnessing the frustration and powerlessness of their victims.

    The best solution involves lawyers and courts. The parents of bullies are often so impressed with their kids’ assertiveness that they will rarely see any problem.

  17. Emma

    Sorry for the duplicate. All thumbs with the iPhone.

  18. I didn’t see the story in print when I put it up.

    The fact that it has gone on for a month alters things somewhat. My first impulse is to ask why the bus driver didn’t report the kids. We still don’t know who the father reported the problem to. Did he talk to an administrator or to a secretary or the bus driver? If he talked to an administrator and nothing was done, he needs to start asking some serious questions, hopefully with his lawyer.

    The students abusing the girl should have been put off the bus permanently. If the abuse went on anywhere else, then they should have been expelled.

    In this area, parents’ names would not be released to other parents over something like this. The liability and privacy issues would prevent that from happening. The school would call the perps’ parents in, usually separately.

    Emma touched on something to consider–there are parents out there who would applaud their kids for stuff like that. Its the same reason they applaud their kids for cussing out bus drivers and teachers. No class.

    When I was a kid, I got thrown off the bus for a week because I, along with 2 of my smartie pants girl friends, talked back to Mr. Cheek. He reported us, the school threw us off, and I told my mother the night before the sentence was to begin. She didn’t say much. However the walk home and the the money I had to spend from my allowance to pay for the public bus resonated. She drove me in the morning and in the afternoon, I was on my own. Even taking public transportation part of the way, I had a good 2 mile walk home. Jeannie got 2 weeks. She said ‘damn.’

  19. Whoever said that father should have never been allowed on the bus is totally correct. A driver has total control over that from within the bus. Unless he had a crowbar, he wouldnt have gotten on. It sounds like the driver should be the first to go. Why was the abuse gong on for a month.

  20. kelly3406

    Moon-howler :
    You can’t just throw kids off the bus without due process. What if it were your kids being accused of bullying? You have to have some ‘proof.’

    I never said that the kids should automatically be thrown off. My statement was that the school should have take action to prevent further bullying. There are many ways to do that: Have an administrator ride the bus; ask the school bus driver stop the bus and call administrators if further bullying occurs; install a camera on the bus; have parent volunteers ride the bus, etc.

    Because violence has become such a hot-button issue, students have essentially lost the right to defend themselves. That being the case, the school had better do something to prevent further bullying after it has been reported.

  21. Kelly, I sometimes comment to a person and continue on with a comment. It was a conversation…not an accusation. I would be all in favor of throwing the kids off the bus permanently if there were due process.

    Now I am responding to your suggestions. Administrators cannot ride the bus every afternoon, too many other kids misbehaving. I like the idea of having the driver stop the bus and call the administration. i would throw in calling the police also, just for good measure. And I think all buses should have cameras and the film should be archived for at least a year.

    As for violence, I think I would tell my own kid that they are to fight back if they feel they must and we will deal with the consequences.

    Is this the place where I throw in that I have had a kid jumped in a 4 on 1 situation in a public school? It wasn’t a case of bullying. It was a case of testosterone and the way certain ethnicities do challenges. However, I haven’t let that incident blur my sense of fairness, I hope. At any rate, my kid almost lost an eye over the incident. Even though it wasn’t recent, I have probably just outted myself all over Manassas.

  22. marinm

    If I was on the Jury I’d let the father go with the Court’s appologies. I acknowledge what he did was wrong but a judicial penalty won’t serve the interests of Justice.

    The father could’ve (before he acted) filed suit against the parents of the kids that were bullying…that would’ve gotten those kids’ parents attention REAL quick. Name the Principal, the School Board, etc as co-defendants and ‘see what sticks’.

    It might get tossed but if nothing else you get everyone’s attention and you document that a problem is occuring.

    The idea that the disabled student should get alternative transporation because she’s being victimized is horrific and reprehensible. The idea that she and her parents should turn the other cheek boggles my mind.

  23. Many disabled students do get alternative transportation. Not sure why this one doesn’t.

    The wheels of justice turn slowly. I expect the father just wanted to go out there and protect his little girl. And those kids need to toughen up. He yelled at them and threatened them. BFD. It sounds like they can dish it out but can’t take it.

    I would dismiss also. And the perp kids would not ride the bus for the rest of the year–minimum.

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