So sorry to hear about his CollinsMum! My son went through a period of bullying last year, and everyone here was so very helpful with suggestions on how to deal with it. We all feel for you, and most of us have been in the same position.
My son was older at the time (seven), but I found a great book called,
Bullies are a Pain in the Brain. I found it on the Hoagies web site for gifted kids. We found the book in the library, so it was a cheap resource. Here is a link:
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/bullies.htmFive might be too young for this strategy, but we eventually explained it in terms of a remote control. The bullies were trying to push his buttons to get him to react. In our case, the bullies were taunting DS in order to get him to overreact to their threats. They could then go and tell on him. We tried to show DS that the bullies only had power over him when he reacted to them. If he shrugged it off and said "whatever", then the bullying stopped.
But there are many shades of bullying and each one is designed to inflict its own type of pain. The bullies who go after a shy kid who won't stand up for himself are very different than the ones that try to go after kids like mine who always stand up and refuse to back down. I would say that bullies will continue as long as:
1) They derive some pleasure in it. It usually stops if they don't get a response from the child.
2) If they are not in danger of getting into trouble from it. This means that they usually pick on kids who are by themselves. Kriston is right in that it just takes one other child to stand up for a target before they back down. However if you stand up for your child and they find him alone in the future, they will look for a payback.
I guess that I would hope that this type of behavior would get old fast and they would discover some other form of juvenile delinquency soon. One can only hope that the next video game, movie, or a can of spray paint would provide more entertainment than teasing a 5 year old. I will mention that there is a period that boys seem to go through (grades 5- 7? maybe longer?) were boys think that teasing other boys is as natural as breathing. My DS8 has come in contact with it quite a bit in the Jr. High class that he is taking. As long as DS teases the other boys back gently and in good fun, then it seems to be a natural part of this age. DS's 7th grade teacher says that he gives the teasing back as good as the other boys give it, and that made him accepted as one of the boys. These boys on your bus just seem to relish giving it out to a defenseless 5 year old. To me, that says that they are insecure in their own grade level and need to beef up their self image by picking on someone who won't give it back to them.
I don't know if this rambling has been helpful at all. I wish you luck. I'm probably showing my age here, but did anyone see the old, old, movie by Steve Martin called Roxanne from 1987? There is a great scene in the movie where Steve Martin is being picked on for his unusually large nose. He ends up shaming the bullies by being far more clever in creating derogatory comments about his own nose. I have always loved that scene. (the rest of the movie... not so much!)
