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A father’s controversial attempt to teach his 13-year-old son a lesson about bullying has sparked debate after a viral video showed him making the boy put on boxing gloves and experience what it feels like to be intimidated by someone bigger and stronger.

The father took the unusual approach after discovering his son had been bullying two schoolmates, including a girl whom he allegedly told to kill herself.

But anti-bullying advocate Clinton Fein believes the punishment risks reinforcing the very behaviour the father is trying to stop.

Speaking to CapeTalk’s Lester Kiewit, Fein, co-founder of Bully Dialogues, said he was horrified by the footage.

“My immediate reaction was horror because what he was doing was bullying his son. And if the lesson is to teach your son not to be a bully, the worst thing you can do is to actually bully him.”

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Father’s punishment sparks tough-love debate

In the video shared on TikTok, the father explains that he raised his son to stand up to bullies, not become one.

He says he was particularly disturbed that his son had targeted children considerably smaller than himself.

He then makes the boy wear boxing gloves and protective headgear before confronting him physically, delivering what Kiewit described as light punches rather than full blows.

The father tells his son that the helplessness he is experiencing is the same feeling he inflicted on his victims.

“Does it feel good when somebody bigger than you bullies you?” he asks.

According to Kiewit, Jordan subsequently explained that he and his son had a two-hour conversation, hugged and expressed their love for each other.

The father believed the experience had changed his son’s behaviour, and the boy was expected to apologise to the children he had bullied.

But Fein questioned whether frightening a child could ever be an effective way to teach empathy.

“Fear is not going to help,” he told Kiewit.

“When you saw the fear and the terror on that child’s face, that child’s not learning anything about empathy at that point in time. That child’s learning how to protect himself.”

Fein argued that even a forced apology would not necessarily demonstrate genuine remorse or an understanding of the harm caused.

He also raised concerns about the lasting consequences of publicly sharing the punishment online, exposing the boy’s humiliation to a potentially enormous audience.

What parents should do when their child is the bully

Fein stressed that the son’s behaviour was unacceptable and that the father was right to demand accountability.

However, he said parents needed to understand why a child was bullying others rather than responding with intimidation.

“The first question I would ask is what is causing this child to bully? Rather, the second question, I would first want to make sure the kids that he harmed were taken care of.”

He suggested that bullying could be linked to problems the child was experiencing, including being bullied themselves or learning aggressive behaviour at home.

Consequences were necessary, Fein said, but they did not have to involve physical intimidation.

“This is just showing him that power is the way to address the imbalance.”

Fein’s perspective is informed by his own experience as a school bully.

He previously bullied former schoolmate Brian Schimmel, with whom he later reconnected through Bully Dialogues.

Looking back, Fein said he had concealed his behaviour from his parents, while others failed to intervene.

He explained that bullying Schimmel had become a way of deflecting attention from his own personal struggles.

“I had my own demons and my own issues that I was trying to hide. And bullying Brian was the best way to deflect.”

Fein believes that having an adult intervene and explain the damage he was causing might have changed his behaviour.

While he acknowledged that Jordan’s subsequent conversation with his son showed a genuine desire to address the bullying, he questioned why the physical confrontation had been necessary.

“That conversation should have been enough.”

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