‘My son doesn’t want me to tell the school he’s being bullied'

"The reason for not telling the school is that this time, his bully is his former friend - who's become a racist." 

Henry had been acting funny for a couple of weeks when I finally asked the question: “Are you OK?”

He’d been short-tempered with his brothers; it was harder than normal to get him up in the mornings. Even though some of it is normal 12-year-old behaviour, I felt he wasn’t himself.

I thought it must be school.

“Who did you sit with at lunch today?” I asked, changing tack. 

“No one.”

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"Sitting alone wasn't normal"

My kid isn’t a social butterfly and is comfortable in his own company, but this year he’s been one of a consistent trio of friends. Sitting alone wasn’t normal.

“I’m not friends with Jacob and Aaron anymore,” he said. “Aaron wrote a list of all the things I do wrong and gave it to Jacob. Jacob got mad at me and showed me the list.”

A 10-things-I-hate-about-you-style list is mean, but that was just a precursor to what had really been going on: appalling racist jokes directed at Henry.

Henry has been the target of racist slurs before, but I thought only from the gang of bullies that torments a lot of kids. We reported that and the bullies were punished.

I had no idea Jacob was joining in.

Image: Supplied

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"How did I not realise?"

It astounds me how much a child can hide without the parent realising anything is wrong.

I know it’s natural for some distance to form between mum and kid as they get older, but how did I not realise he was hurting this much?

This all unravelled before October school holidays when 12-year-old Sydney girl Charlotte O’Brien took her own life after experiencing horrific bullying. Teen mental health was on every parent’s mind.

“What were these ‘jokes’?” I asked.

“He told me, ‘Get back to the cotton fields’ and made whipping noises. He said, ‘Your skin is as black as your jumper’.”

I was baffled. “We’re not black… ” I started to say, as though the biggest problem was that Jacob should have referred to his mental library of Asian racist slurs not black ones.

“I told him to stop. I said it hurts my feelings,” Henry continued. “But he still did it.”

I felt heat rise up my body to the top of my head. “I have to tell the school.”

“No!” Henry’s teeth were gritted. He was serious. “I don’t want you to.”

Reporting is traumatic for the kid being bullied

The reporting process at Henry’s school would be a bit traumatic, but being autistic, Henry found it “like torture”.

“We have to go to the deputy [principal]’s office and he asks us all these questions about what happened,” Henry said. “Once he told me I shouldn’t act different so they don’t bully me.

“We have to talk about it over and over, and then they make me write down my side.”

Let’s recap: first kids have to relive their trauma in the presence of a scary authority figure. Then they’re given the feedback that maybe if they were a little less themselves, they wouldn’t be bullied.

I know Henry is no angel – I’ve seen him antagonise his brothers and other kids – but when he’s “acting different”, it’s about neurodiversity.

But the last reason for not telling the school is that this time, his bully is his former friend.

I get it. He’s a child with few friends and those relationships are precious. But what kind of a friend calls you names and doesn’t stop when you tell him it hurts your feelings?

And yet, my son feels loyal to this boy. Maybe because they were friends; maybe because he imagines a future where they reconcile and he no longer has to sit by himself at lunch or walk the overwhelming halls of his high school without a single ally.

At the end of our conversation I asked him, “Do you feel better?”

“I do actually.”

“Can I tell school?”

“No. And I’m not going to change my mind,” he said and retreated to his bedroom.

This isn’t a story with a tidy ending – I still don’t know how to play it. So, I’ll put it to you: what would you do in my shoes? Would you tell, or protect the trust between you and your child?

Originally published as ‘My son doesn’t want me to tell the school he’s being bullied'