Wholesome Wins·
CANADA'S BULLYING LAW
A Canadian father pressures a school into action against bullies by reminding administrators that children under twelve can't be charged, sparking controversy over discipline and accountability.
Should he have said that in the meeting?
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When a school brushed off a boy's bullying by saying the attackers were "newcomers," his father walked into the principal's office and told his son something they clearly did not want him to hear: in Canada, kids under twelve cannot be charged with a crime, cannot even be arrested, and at worst might end up doing community service.
"My family lives in Canada. This is important," the father said at the start of his account, because the detail mattered. His son had been getting picked on by a group of kids at school, and this was not a child who had been left unprepared. "He is a big kid and I have always told him to resolve his problems with words," the father wrote. The family's standing rule was simple: use words first, then tell a teacher, then the principal if needed, and always tell the parents.
The boy followed that script. He was already in taekwondo after school, a sport he had done since kindergarten, and he also played hockey. Still, the bullying continued. During recess monitoring, he reported the group to a teacher. The answer he got was that "these kids were newcomers and they weren't fully aware of how Canada was different from their home country and what they saw on American TV."
He took it to the principal. Same response. So he told his mom, who wanted to go confront the parents. "She wanted to go confront the parents and she likely would have ended up in custody," the father said. He stepped in and said he would handle it.
He set up a meeting with the principal and teacher, and brought his son along. "I went into the meeting with a simple goal. To stop the bullying," he wrote. The adults repeated the same explanation: the children were new, they did not fully understand Canada, and they did not know how to fit in yet.
The father asked what was being done. The answer: the school had talked to the boys, but had not brought in their parents.
That was when he turned to his son and laid out the law. "In Canada kids under twelve years old CANNOT be charged with a crime," he said. "In fact they can't even be arrested." If anything happened, "Worst case scenario" was community service.
The principal and teacher "went crazy telling me that I can't tell him that." The father pushed back and asked whether he was lying. "I pointed to them and told my kid to remember that they didn't say I was wrong," he wrote.
He told his son to come back in a week and report whether the bullying had stopped. According to the father, the school later called in the bullies' parents and put the kids on library detention instead of recess for a month.
He says he is satisfied with how it ended, even if the principal and teacher were not. His wife, though, thinks he should have told the boy privately.