should parents of bullies be held liable?

[SheilaT]

48. As the various replies here have shown, bullying

is a complicated problem.

I do think the schools don't do as good a job as they can to stop it.

My older son experienced bullying in elementary school. It took more the form of social isolation and ostracizing than anything else.

One evening I got a phone call from someone about a block away, asking me if someone with my son's name lived in the house. I said yes, and she said, "I have his jacket. It was tossed into my yard this afternoon as he was going home." Her house was between ours and the school only two blocks away.

We questioned our son, and found out who did the jacket tossing, and my husband called the family and said he wanted to go over and talk to them. He approached the issue by saying he was certain that their son was basically a good kid and that this was something quite aside from his usual behavior, and he knew the parents would want to know about this. They were apparently quite shocked that their kid (who had been picking on my son for a while now) was doing this, and assured my husband they would put a stop to this behavior. And as he was leaving the house, my husband turned to the kid, smiled and said something to the effect that there would be no retaliation for this visit.

That kid did not pick on my son again, although after that year we moved both of our kids to a private school.