A Tomah mother is done staying quiet. After neighbor children mocked her disabled son through a window of their own home, she is now taking her fight straight to the school district and calling on Monroe County to treat bullying as the community crisis she believes it already is.
The incident, which she shared on the Monroe County, WI Community Page, shook her deeply.
The kids outside were making mocking gestures and sounds at her son, a child with a disability, from just outside the window of the family home. Not at a park. Not at school. At home, the one place a child is supposed to feel completely safe.
“What I seen yesterday was not ok,” she wrote, adding that the behavior she witnessed was something she had never seen before and described it as crossing a line into what she called peeping Tom territory.
A Mother With a Plan
She did not stop at venting online. The morning after the incident, she called the school superintendent’s office directly, waiting for a callback while already drafting her next move.
Her proposal is straightforward: fine the parents of children who bully. She also suggested that kids who bully disabled children should be required to do community service, cleaning up the community they are disrupting with their behavior.
“I’m fighting for fines for adults whose kids bully,” she wrote. “True accountability needs to start young.”
Her frustration goes beyond this one incident. She pointed to Dracen, a child from nearby Necedah whose name has become a painful reference point in the region’s bullying conversation.
She also spoke about her own autistic daughter, who is approaching school age, and admitted she is genuinely frightened about what her daughter might face once she enters the school system.
“I’m terrified for her,” she wrote. “Who will protect her?”
The Community Responds
The post drew strong reactions from Monroe County residents, with many agreeing the problem runs deep but disagreeing on who bears the most responsibility.
Beatrice Seely drew a clear legal line, writing that since the incident happened at home and not on school grounds, it falls outside school jurisdiction and should be handled by law enforcement instead.
Mandi Flowers took a more direct approach, telling the mother that while she supports accountability, kids also need to be taught to stand up for themselves. “The school had two opportunities to intervene,” she wrote, referring to the idea of escalating complaints before taking matters further.
Dianne Sommers placed the blame squarely on parenting. “Empathy starts at home. It’s called parenting. Something seriously lacking in this country,” she wrote.
Pamela Jean Gowin suggested that fines alone might not be enough for wealthier families and proposed combining financial penalties with mandatory community service for both the child and the parent.
Sharon Frenz offered a broader structural solution, calling for a community panel made up of parents, school board members, and educators working together to create real anti-bullying frameworks rather than continuing to react after the damage is done.
For this Tomah mother, the debate is personal and urgent. She has cameras ready, a superintendent on notice, and made one thing absolutely clear. She is not going away quietly.
