I'm all for teaching kids to fight back. And no, you don't stand there and let another kid hit on you. You turn around and beatvthe hell out of them. But you don't pull out a weapon. That was a punk ass move.

OP are you taking steps to keep your kids away from granddad? What grown ass man gives a child a knife and instructions to use it on another child???? :sick:

Trying to get dad to decrease his time with his son is unreasonable. Walking away may be the best thing to do. However, that won't prevent your kids from being around their brother or nutty grandpa.

I am not highly educated on law but how can the supposed bully's parents sue if the police stated that it was self-defense?

If your DH thinks this is perfectly fine and that SS doesn't need therapy, would your DH consent to go to therapy with you? A lot of times, they will listen to a neutral party more than their spouse. I am pretty sure any competent therapist would validate your safety concerns and how serious this situation really is.

Take the beating and we will deal with it later properly.
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What an asinine thing to say. Have you ever “taken a beating”? I guarantee you have not taken a real beating. If you had, you would not have said this. You can die from a beating you know. Let someone tap you in the nose one time a half strength and then tell me how you thing taking a beat would go without defending yourself. I think you are over reacting and you are using this as an excuse to get SS out of your house. And now DH is on the defensive about it. You don’t have a leg to stand on. The cops did not press charges. That says a lot right there.

Now g-pa was in the wrong to tell the kid to stab him in the stomach and go up. Ewww. But maybe g-pa was tired of seeing his grand kid get the crap kicked out of him all the time and your DH not doing anything about it.

My advice…let it go. I doubt the skid we threatening you. I think you are looking for things at this point. If his kid walked up and just stabbed someone then ok. But that is not the case here and you know it. Honestly, you are damaging your marriage right now. If you are that scared then you just need to leave. Your DH is not going to bend to your will.

This kid broke your SS's arm?? That is another twist. That is a little more serious than just run-of-the-mill bullying.

But still...

I was tormented mercilessly in grade school by one particular boy. It was so horrible, I would cry when I woke up and realized that I had to go to school that day. I stood up to my particular bully. I got him to back down and did so in a way that made others not want to mess with me either. I did not use any kind of weapon at all and nobody was in the hospital for weeks because of it!

I still think that no matter how bad the bullying, SS could have done 1000 different things than just about killing another human being.

The kid was on probation for breaking ss's arm. The school, the police and the parents were all involved. It would have been handled. He didn't need to stab and try to kill the boy.
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Well crap...nevermind. I see what kind of post this is now. Im out. Crew ya later.

I think you're trying to rationalize your desire to leave your husband with the SS situation. He's scary, so you're justified in leaving. If that's what you need to make leaving your DH OK, then you should do it... It's not mine or anyone else's to give you our blessing, or to condemn you, either.

That said, I'd be seriously pissed if DH and I were being sued due to the actions of one of my skids, even if he was well-justified in his actions (which you seem to disagree with). That alone might be enough for me to say screw it, to be honest. It's one thing to deal with legal BS from BM, it's quite another entirely to be sued by someone in the community! I would be feeling very threatened, even if my homeowner's was dealing with it. The potential financial liability would be really scary.

All that to say that if you want to leave, you should leave. If you want to stay married, I would urge you to figure out what you're really concerned about before you talk to your husband, because scapegoating your SS isn't likely to make him want to keep you around.

I mean what did you think he was going to do carrying a knife around? You might not like it but your SS taught that other kid a valuable lesson: Don't attack other people because you never know what they're capable of when they fear for their lives. You remind me of the lady who's SS fed some stray kittens to his pet snake. Of course no agrees with the violence but what would you have preferred he do? Help from grown ups? Yeah that really help all those other times. Take the beatings? Yeah that'll curb his self esteem and put him in suicidal thoughts. Now I suggest you find the blogs about the woman with SS and his pet snakes that ate the kittens if she hasn't deleted them. Your relationship will probably fall apart like hers did.

The only replies here that you like are ones that agree with your POV.

You need to step back and realize a few things.
1. Your SS was already seriously injured by this bully.
2. This bully is much bigger than your SS, therefore him "taking the beating" could have resulted in brain damage, paralysis, or even death. Unarmed retaliation was not an option because of the size difference and lack of training that may have been helpful.
3. Your attempts to deal with the bullying were ineffective.
4. You should never allow a bully to dictate where someone reasonably would be going--like the skate park. If SS was hanging out in the sewer pipes or abandoned buildings, then of course he should have not been those places, but that isn't the case according to your tale.
5. You are saying this was "premeditated" because he had the knife and planned to use it. You are looking at this wrong. He had the knife therefore he knew he had a way to defend himself if needed. He didn't go looking for a fight, the bully brought it to him. Just like people who legally carry a gun plan to use it if needed for self-defense, that is not premeditation.

This is a terrible situation to be in, but your response is worse. Support your SS.

From what I've read the problem you have with SS is this; he was bullied and decided that he was going to kill the bully, then he almost did. It was premeditated on his part and he went to that park hoping this kid would jump him so he could kill him.

You are worried because now that he's done it and gotten away with it, he will do it again if anyone gets in his way. You think something in him has changed and not for the good.

You are afraid that if he ever sees you or your kids as a threat he will harm you and claim self defence.

If that's the case, then tell your DH that. If he says you're wrong or that it's all in your head, then suggest counceling. It might help to calm you and alleviate your fears to talk to someone.

Honestly, SS should be getting counceling because as someone else said almost killing someone is going to have an effect on him and he most definitely has changed. He probably needs help working out who he is now.

There are some big assumptions about the time it takes to attack/bully someone. What if SS didn't know bully had arrived until he was jumped? What if he did have the time to leave? What if he left and bully followed him? The last question scares me and I'm not BM, BD or SM. No witnesses. Attacked anywhere. And what if he called the police? Lets say it takes the police 10-15 minutes to get there, what do you think will happen in those 10-15 minutes? You think bully would just run off. If this issue has been addressed by the school, addressed by SS' parents, addressed by bully's parents, the kid was on probation (addressed by the police) and yet he still felt it was okay to attack your SS then if SS called the cops he still had go through the bullying until the cops arrived.

This reminds me of a guy my DH used to work with. He loved guns and would have them delivered to their work shop a lot many years ago.

A couple years back, there was a story on the news about how some guy got in a scuffle with another guy and shot and killed him. It was this former co-worker. My DH said that this guy WANTED to kill someone and was looking for an excuse to get into it.

This guy was up at about 4 a.m. to go to work. A guy's truck was blocking him in. The guy was drunk and having a verbal argument with his GF. The guy tells him to move his truck. Things escalated from there between the two until the drunk guy punched this guy in the nose. The former co-worker went back in his place, brought out a gun and shot the guy. He claimed self-defense and got away with it. But anyone who knew this guy knew that he really was looking for an excuse to kill.

Should the drunk guy have moved his truck? Well, maybe have someone sober do it instead. Should he have punched the guy? Hell no. Did the guy need to go inside, grab a gun and end this person's life because of his poor decisions that particular night? I don't think so.

Is anyone getting ss some help? The debate about whether he should or should not defend himself is not the most important point imho. SS was driven to a desperate act, and the nature of the action he took is life-changing. Ask anyone who has taken a life (soldier, cop, etc.) if they are the same person today that they were before they pulled the trigger/stabbed/ran over/whatever; they will tell you, they are not.

OP please stop worrying about whether he should have/shouldn't have and focus on getting this boy some help to cope with what he was driven to do! With the proper help for him, and for your whole family, hopefully you won't need to worry about having in your home going forward.

I visit a city with a HORRIBLE violent crime rate (similar to Chicago) because I have friends and relatives there. I will not stay away and abandon my 90 year old friends that depend on me. I am often within blocks of where murders take place on a regular basis.

If someone attacks me I will if at all possible defend myself to the utmost. If one has a knife and is being attacked you do NOT slash at someone's hands. That will almost certainly result in the knife being taken away and used on you as a knife wound to the hand or arm is rarely incapacitating.

The correct self defense technique is to stab in the abdomen with blade upward and to twist and slash upwards. If the person who has attempted a vicious attack on me ends up dead or almost dead - so what. Better him/her than me.

Some people are screaming that is homicide. And they are correct. Homicide by definition is one person killing another individual. But it is not necessarily MURDER. There is such a thing as justifiable homicide (i.e. self defense).

What concerns me about this young man is not his past self-defense actions, but his arrogant attitude that he is now "untouchable". He could easily be ambushed. He could fail to successfully execute a self defense action at another time and end up dead. He could use inappropriate force to deal with words.

In my state we just had 2 kids die last year from fighting.

One was very bad as they were at a party, started fighting, both kids friends werre there, they stopped the fight but then 1 kid kicked the other in the head and he died.

This could have been your ss.

My state has 0 self defence laws. Everyone gets a charge in a fight, or whoever calls the police first.

I know this first hand from my mom. My stepdad was beating her up, mangled her finger so bad its permenantly stuck in a pointed position..and of course she fought back but HE called the cops so she has an assault charge on her background.

Trigger * i have been stabbed in a fight. My sister was 16, had dumped a gallon of tea ob my bed, so i retaliated by spraying soda in her room. Next day, i come home from work, offer to help her cleab it up and she rushed me with a kitchen knife. I got slashed on my hand, and i stomped her face once i got her down.

She never tried it again...but i do not allow my children around her because she is unstable to take a small thing to that level and i am not willing to take that risk

I think everyone can agree that any kid being stabbed is obviously not a GOOD thing, just like a kid having his arm broken and being bullied is not a good thing. Obviously neither of these things should ever happen. But saying that the ss should have never been in the park or that he should have taken a beating and then reported the bully is absolute bull.

I was a quiet, kind of nerdy kid in junior high,and even though I wouldn't have hurt a fly, I became the target of a bully. She kicked the shit out of me when I was 13 years old and for the next 3 years, whenever she was pissed off at the world I became her target. I now know that she herself had a pretty miserable life but I really don't give a shit, and I especially didn't give one then.

All I knew is that I spent 3 years changing the route I would use to walk home, eating my lunch in different places, yet knowing that she could show up whenever. I would see her coming at me across a field, down the hallway, surrounded by her pack of hyena friends who would be cackling and laughing, their eyes lit up at with the excitement of watching an innocent kid be humiliated and bullied because their pack-leader had gotten detention and needed someone to unload on. It still affects me to this day.

My family is very much a family of 'winners" and the embarrassment and shame that I felt over this made me feel worthless. I contemplated suicide several times and now I am hard-wired for stress and anxiety at the slightest hint of confrontation.
If someone I loved and trusted had given me a weapon and told me to use it, the next time she hunted me down and started shoving me around, surrounded by her buddies and with me on my own, I honestly don't know what I would have done. I DID know that I couldn't equal her strength so fighting back with my fists didn't seem to be an option. had I been terrified enough and "done" enough I might have done something I couldn't take back. And it wouldn't have made me an uncontrollable psycho (in fact I think I'm a pretty great person

Your SS does not need to be alienated form his father over this and shoved out of your family. He definitely does need counselling and he needs support. And as someone who has been there, I seriously doubt he went looking for this boy.