I was talking to a mum about her little boy. He had been very happily attending Nursery until this new boy started. The rumour was that he had been to several schools before this one, but no-one knew why he had had to move on. Boy 1 suddenly became quite unhappy and didn’t want to go to school. He cried, curled up in a ball, had to be lifted into the car etc. But he didn’t, or couldn’t explain why. He was subdued when he came home too, wouldn’t talk about everything he had done and who he had played with.

Finally Mum went into talk to the teachers. It seemed that her son had been having a bit of difficulty with the new boy [that's how school put it]. The new boy had been nasty to him: he had hit him and pushed him, taken toys from him and generally been mean. Mum was both upset and angry , she cried at school to think that her son had been victimised like that and asked what school were going to do? Well: they had spoken to the new boy. One of the things that a lot of people don’ get is that it is not good enough to say ‘Play nicely’ or ‘Don’t be mean’, you have to  be explicit about what that means. If the naughty boy has no other understanding of how to make social contact but has learned that by behaving like this, he can ensure adult attention, then hen eeds to learn just how to make a different sort of relationship.

Mum and school determined and agreed a way forward and Mum went away. Things seemed to improve. Boy 1 was now able to talk about his feelings. His Dad suggested that he could hit the naughty boy back – but he didn’t want to, he is sure that hitting people is not kind [though he makes an exception for his brother and sister]. In the end he decided he would just keep out of his way. This has been fairly effective for Boy 1 and he is back to being his happy self about school.

But the naughty boy is now unpleasant to other children. He goes up and shouts in their ears, he ‘strangles’ them, he tries to trip them up. Mum of Boy 1 worries – chool have said to her that Boy 1 seems happy again but the school have not done what was agreed and the little bully will only become bigger and less happy [as well as making some others very unhappy indeed]. I suggested that for the sake of all of them, she goes back to school and nags them into fulfilling their part of the bargain. It is relatively easy at Nursery to gloss over difficulties and allow the child to leave for the next school. But they have an obligation to all the children including the naughty one, and should meet this obligation by doing whatever necessary to improve the situation.

It was busy today. I had booked in too many people and had just finished my second case in a suburban clinic when I had a phone call from the secretary. The Mum of the afternoon girl had phoned to ask me to ring her. Lily is almost fourteen. She is chubby partly as a result of medication, partly because her family tends to enjoy their food. She is a lovely bright girl with stacks of imagination and a pretty low self-esteem as a result of minor but persistent bullying. The last time I had seen her was at the end of the holidays when we had done some work to enable her to prepare for the return to school and I had left feeling confident that she would be able to go back and to enjoy school.  Apparently she did. But her Mum phoned to tell me that some little beasts had taken fotos of Lily in the changing rooms and had sent them round school. All credit to Lily in that she had told a teacher but ……. Lily looked subdued when she came in. I wondered if she would tell me herself – this is a shaming thing to tell and she is a private person – and she asked if her Mum had phoned me. This was both subtle and effective. She did not need to declare her hand, but gave me a way in to the subject. So then we discussed it. She had been changing, wearing bra and pants when they had taken the fotos. These girls were not her friends, but they had sent the fotos to some people and these others had remarked on it.  Her friends were horrified. Her boyfriend wanted to kill them!!! Her parents were mad. Even the teacher sounded cross. We used all this to validate her position – Lily said she had been very upset at the time and had wanted to die. In fact she had only gone to the teacher because she was crying so much she could not stay in class. And then we talked about how this had made her feel, and how, in fact, she could take genuine comfort that everyone (but Mark????) thought the girls were particularly stupid.  By the time she left, she seemed to have accommodated to an awful experience. But colleagues and I were left talking about an appropriate way forward. The school has a policy of handing Phones in before PE, but patently need to police their return. Should the two naughty girls be punished beyond a detention and their parents being informed? Should the police be informed so that they can go and frighten the perpetrators and point out how much hurt they caused. How could Lily and her Mum salvage something out of the experience? Lily’s personal wish was possibly to chop off their fingers but she appreciated this was unlikely to happen. Her Mum is planning to push the school towards a more appropriate policy regarding mobile phones. In any event, as is always the case with bullying, they need at least to be kept informed about what is happening if Lily is to have any confidence in the school’s ability to protect her.

Sometimes I wonder whether someone ‘Up there’ is organising things. After Little Andy last week, in two days I have seen three boys who are tall – look older than their age. Two are 11 and one is almost 12 and has gone to Secondary School. For all of them, size is an issue.  Being small is a problem. Being tall brings its own problems. People expect you to be sensible, as sensible as you seem to be old. Other children call you names like ‘Fatboy’ or ‘Fats’, they bump into you ‘accidentally’, they surround you and push. The boys were big in the sense that Alsation puppies are – big hands and feet, the sort of boys that will make big men. It worried me that one of the boys said ‘I am trying to eat healthily’ as if his size was disproportionate. This is how eating disorders can begin. All three can be angry and their mothers are afraid that this will cause trouble.

Inevitably, tall people are much easier to spot fighting across a playground or classroom; it’s much harder to hear the smaller child who has said something quite impertinent and hurtful. Although some of our discussion is about how the boys can be proud of their size and displace insults, we are also in each case going to talk about the issues that have led to the build-up of anger that bubbles away just under the surface. Displacing insults is good fun: Fatso is answered by Yes, I love my food, or That must be because I enjoy dinner, or even You’re ugly but I’m too polite to mention it.  Last week the girl with Tourettes was advised by her father to answer the accusation ‘You’ve got Tourettes’ with ‘You should be a doctor, I was wondering what it was’. And to those girls who call her ‘Twitcher’ or say ‘You Twitch’ she’s going to say ‘Thank you, for telling me, I hadn’t noticed’. This type of response has the advantage of stopping the bully in their tracks – there’s so little that can be said in response. It also gives the victim the confidence of being able to win in a difficult situation. But it’s all so much harder when the children have underlying issues that make them especially vulnerable. Increasing this is the case. Parents have split up with consequent wrangling and Court cases; Fathers (usually) continue a vendetta against the mother through the children, fail to pick them up, or say unpleasant things regardless of how much harm it might do to the children; new partners become difficult and challenging parents. Some children have parents who have had breakdowns or been hospitalised, others have experienced bereavements, still others have a parent with drink or drug problems.  If this is compounded by problems in school – possibly also arising from the problems at home- you have a powder-keg waiting to blow. And the next child to call him a name, or deliberately bump him, gets it.