A video of a woman confronting a high schooler who bullied her middle school-age daughter drew millions of views and thousands of comments applauding her response on social media.
Yasmine Payne posted the video on her TikTok account on Saturday.
It starts with a brief clip of a female 10th grader on a school bus angrily telling a seventh-grade student to stop recording her.
“If you don’t take that f***ing camera off me, I swear to f***king God,” the student said.
The video then cuts to the moment when Payne boards the bus to confront the student who cursed at her daughter.
She first approaches the bus driver, asking about the incident, but the bus driver says she doesn’t remember. “You should remember stuff like this,” she retorted.
Payne then asks her daughter to point out the student who cursed at her, and she tells the 10th-grader there is no need for her to bully a seventh-grade student.
“Ain’t no cussing, ain’t no nothing,” Payne tells the high schooler. “Don’t cuss out another seventh grader. Don’t cuss out an eighth-grader. You don’t cuss out a ninth-grader.”
Payne also turned to her daughter to reprimand her, telling her she should have made the incident known to a teacher or an adult when it happened. As the bus driver interjected, Payne responded sternly, “you shrugged your shoulders.”
Then, she urged other students in younger grades not to permit older children to bully them.
“Don’t let her bully y’all, ’cause you ain’t gonna bully mine,” Payne says before turning her ire on the bus driver.
“You being a bus driver, you gotta get it under control,” Payne tells the driver. “I better not get another call from my daughter or another video or nothing. And you make sure you call your supervisor because this better be the last time somebody say anything to my child.”
The video drew nearly 18 million views and over 3 million likes in the days since it was posted and tens of thousands of comments praising Payne’s response to the bullying situation.
“This video makes me so happy. This is how you stand up to bullies!” one commenter wrote.
“You’re setting such a great example for all those kids as well. Standing up for yourself and for others is one of the most important things to teach our kids,” another person wrote.
Payne posted several follow-up videos explaining what led to the 10th-grader’s outburst at her daughter and what happened in the aftermath of her confrontation on the bus.
She said the bullying incident happened on Wednesday, Sept. 4, after her daughter and a friend taking the school bus home watched a jump-scare video on a cellphone. Payne’s daughter screamed, and the 10th grader threatened to take the phone if she didn’t stop screaming. That’s when the younger girls started recording the older student who was seen cursing at them in the clip.
Payne added that her daughter told the bus driver and the middle school principal about the incident. The driver never addressed the incident, and the principal later told Payne that administrators had called the high school the 10th grader attended to search for the girl.
Payne was also told that she is banned from her daughter’s middle school for a year because she reportedly wasn’t supposed to step on the bus. The bus driver never made her aware of this rule even after she and her cousin boarded the bus to confront the student.
“I told [the principal] I accept the consequences because rules are rules. To break a rule, you have consequences, so I accept the consequences,” Payne stated.
School administrators did tell Payne that they’ve been checking on her daughter in the days since the incident.
Payne said she is still awaiting a call from the high school and plans to make an in-person visit to check on how the incident is being addressed there. She shared that the 10th grader is still being allowed to ride the bus at this time, but her daughter said she isn’t scared anymore.
