Rocky Juliano: "But Dadda, they were fighting on me"

3 Posts in 1 day ! Wow, we're playing catchup.

Last week Julian got into some sort of fight at school. Nobody saw it but I guess the story goes like this. Kiernan Aerosmith who's a bit of a quiet boy and Julian were in the hallway to the nursery playing by themselves. Then Kiernan had wanted to go back in so Julian says he got him by the neck. Julian apparently didn't like that. Something happened and the teachers Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Ellison were called. They had to split the two up. Apparently Julian was ready to scrap, which surprised me quite a bit when I heard it since he seems like a shy little guy when it comes to confrontation. Well then the teachers told them it was really bad behavior and asked them both to apologize to each other. Julian apologized, Kiernan didn't but when the teacher had tried to split them up Julian resisted.

I asked Julian about it that night and he told me that "they were fighting on me" and that he had bad behavior. I really don't know what to do. I mean on one hand I don't want him fighting but if something happens I do want him to defend himself. Never been here before.
In hindsight, I guess I should have known my boy's a fighter. When he gets in trouble and I put him in time out he tries to fight it, usually with a smile on his face.

I was talking to our really nice neighbor Fynn who is a school teacher and he said that he only worries about the kids who don't have confidence and that Julian definitely has confidence. Yet at the same time he can be such a nice kid that you wouldn't know he could fend for himself. I'm still at a loss at what to do next time. I could wait until he's 10 years old then put him in Karate, but that didn't seem to work for me (the girls would beat up on me in Karate class and the bullies outside of it so I was stuck). Any advice? What would Rocky Balboa do?