About Her Lifestyle

My son is in grade 1 and I am amazed at how much fighting is going on with the group of boys in his year at school.  My son has been on both sides of these incidents and so have many of the other boys.  Yesterday, a boy pushed him down in the school yard for no reason and punched him when he was down.  When he tried to get up, the kid kept pushing him down again until one of my son’s friends came to help him.  The worst part, when they were lining up to come back into school, the kid said to my son that he was “going to give him a bloody face and a scar”.  And where were the teachers during this incident??? Who is looking out for our children???  This morning, when I opened my computer, a headline popped up about how a 3rd grader shot a classmate yesterday in Washington State.  As a parent, all of this makes me feel sick to my stomach.
When I told my husband about yesterday’s incident, he automatically wanted to kill this kid.  I get it.  It’s one of the reasons I waited to tell him until after he dropped off the kids.  I am waiting for the principal to call me back and will try to deal with it in the right way.  But this begs the question, how should parents  deal with these situations?  This is not a one-time occurrence, but rather an ongoing issue.
For one, we’ve been trying really hard to coach him about walking away from these incidents.  We also have a very strict no hitting/pushing/kicking etc. policy at home.  We’ve told our son that unless he has to raise a hand to defend himself for fear of being injured, he needs to walk away and find a teacher right away.  These might be great in theory, but I don’t really feel they are working.
I did a little digging on the internet to see if I could find some good tips.  Not an easy feat.  I really didn’t find much that was constructive or things we weren’t already doing i.e.  safe home environment, building self-esteem, listening to what he has to say, monitoring his friendships, no violent media exposure, communication with the school and a strict no violence policy.  In addition, most of what I found pertained to teenagers and not elementary school children.  The comprehension level is obviously much different for these younger children and so providing coping skills is pretty challenging.
We are trying very hard to find ways to help our son stay out of trouble because the fear, of course, is that it may only get worse as he gets older.  As parents, we want nothing more than to keep our kids safe and happy.  My son is a delicious, sensitive and affectionate boy.  I will do anything to help continue to nurture this side of him and help him to overcome the challenge of school violence.
If you’re a parent who has had to deal with violence at school, I would love to hear your advice.  We may not be able to completely eliminate these incidents, but together we have the best chance of making it better.

More on yesterday’s incident:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/23/us-school-shooting-washington-idUSTRE81L27U20120223
Other links:
http://www.wrschool.net/documents/helpingchildren.pdf