What to Tell My 3 Year Old Son About Bullies

That is a tough situation! I don't have kids old enough to deal with bullies yet, but I was a teacher for 4 years before becoming a stay-at-home mom and I did deal with many situations. There are SOOOO many great books out there about bulles (Ex- Mean Jean the Recess Queen) that I would read to my kids. I love reading those books to kids, because it really helps them to relate, etc... Also, make sure you talk a lot about it. Let me know if you need some book recommendations.

I hope everybody isn't offended by this but I find that children who attend daycare regularly are so much more forceful than my children that it's often not even worth trying to play where there is a bunch of them. If your kid isn't the aggressor in a situation and he ends up in a fight you should be on pretty stable ground when it comes to confronting the mothers. I wouldn't back down, they're like people who don't use turn signals - totally oblivious to their affect on others, absolutely rude and dangerous.

We have encountered a couple of problems with my youngest daughter at school, she has been hit by kids at school a couple of times and spit on once. Once she was hit hard enough to leave a bruise that lasted more than a week. Her school has a 10:1 Student to teacher ratio but they still don't see everything. I told her that Toby would likely leave the class shortly (which he did) but in the mean time she was not to allow him to get away with it. She has quite a temper at times and she's quite strong so I told her that he was taking advantage of her (which made her mad) and if it happens again to either tell the teacher or to just whale on him as hard as she could muster and then go tell on him(realizing, of course, that I may have a conversation with the teacher about it later). I think she had maybe one more encounter with the main kid that was bothering her and haven't heard much from the other class brat since then either. She either got even or the bullying wore off. Her big sister was so mad she was ready to storm the primary class and beat the kid silly (and my oldest isn't violent in the least). We never had any issues with the class bullies with my oldest she is an incorrigible tattle tale, I actually had to tell her that "Its not good to tattle on your friends for minor infractions - it makes them mad at you."

Hi C.. We had similar problems w/ my 7 yo son. He has ALWAYS been bigger than all the other kids his age, but the weird thing was that he was getting picked on by kids his own age. I think that since he has such a sweet spirit, kids saw that and knew that they could take advantage of it so to speak. We are a spiritual family as well so my hubby told him that if someone is bothering him to tell him "peace" and make some space. If they keep doing it, THEN to get assertive back (verbally). If the kid got physical, then my husband told him to be physical back. He told my son not to be the one to be physical first and that he would need to control himself. It has actually worked out pretty well for us. Nothing has happened since Kindergarten (he's now in second grade). There wasn't any need for anything physical b/c once he started standing up for himself, kids backed off. Sadly, there ARE lots of kids who are just mean and like to bully. I hope that helps! You can always send me a message if you have more ?'s or just want to talk! It's never easy being a momma of boys (i have 3! LOL!).

Hello my son is now 4 but he is also big for his age and not really an aggressive child despite his size. We have had issues like this since he was 2 and his father also tells him to fight back. I like you don't want him bullied nor to be out there starting fights either. After about 1 1/2 of kids doing this he now is more verbal as far as telling them to leave him alone and has hit back. His dad firmly believe he should stand up for homself and not let kids push him around. I definately want him to stand up for himself but some situations I would like if he backs off and doesn't let it concern him. Like recently this kid was yelling at him just for the fun of it. He told me and I said just don't worry we are leaving soon and he went up to that little boy and firmly told him not to scream at him its not nice he said! I was kind of shocked at his assertiveness but that little boy just came back and did it even more! Well good luck just wanted to share my story with this situation