Bullying

[snapdragonfly]

Nope. Girl bullying is SNEAKY stuff. I've heard many mothers say they wish that the girls would just hit each other already instead of the emotional cruelty they use.

Though the shunning is used in both sexes. What broke my heart and was the final straw for me, was that the administration told my son, who was being picked on at lunch and in the short sort of semi recess after lunch that middle school has, to just go into the library and in effect hide from the bullies.

Yeah, because that will really fill the lonely empty hole in his heart.
GAH I have made some mistakes and not been a perfect mom but I still rejoice and congratulate myself that I took him out of that horrible school, and I only wish I'd done it sooner. He actually had a normal experience and made friends when we moved him. He was still a geeky kid - a gamer, and a band geek, and a gentle passive person in a big aggressive looking body which apparently is a real coup for bullies to pick on - but despite that he found other kids who were similar and had a group of friends, and they weren't targeted by the others.

[MisterGrey]

I'm sorry to say that I wish now I had fought back more. I rarely did because I was afraid to get in trouble, because the school system I was in from 6th-11th grade was very aggressive about getting the police involved when physical altercations between boys took place. Two times I tried to fight back were ineffectual and half hearted and in completely the wrong situations and did nothing but make the bullying worse.

But I do know that when I had a growth spurt one Summer and became much physically larger than my bullies that the level of their aggression suddenly tapered off. I also know that when I finally hauled off and slugged a guy in the face after he groped me that word got around and pretty much all of my problems stopped on that day. (And fortunately for me, because of the groping, the school quietly ignored my side of the altercation and suspended the guy for the rest of the school year).

Unfortunately this was the Fall of my final year in school so the benefits were very short lived.

ETA:

Other random thoughts on the thread:

* Someone here mentioned being bullied for wearing glasses, and when I hear stories like this from older people I wonder if some kind of cultural shift happened. Neither me nor anyone I went to school with ever got bullied for wearing glasses. Being fat, "weird," a nerd, etc, yes, but no one ever took crap for wearing glasses. My dad was worried that bullying would get worse for me when I had to start wearing them, but it turned out to be a complete non-entity. In high school, I frequently had people (usually girls) tell me that I looked like a variety of unpleasant things in my glasses, but it was always in the form of some kind of advice; people thought they were genuinely helping me out by telling me I looked like a pedophile or serial killer. (To be fair, I did not wear very flattering glasses in high school, or in the beginning of college, when people in their 20s found it perfectly acceptable to tell me the same things). But no one in my middle/high school ever took any crap simply for wearing glasses.

* Another logistical problem is teachers not wanting to get involved if they do not see bullying take place. This was my number one difficulty: Bullies never did anything in front of teachers, and teachers time and again told me-- and my parents-- that they would not intervene in a situation they themselves had not witnessed first hand. The bullies were always clever enough to never get caught bullying and clever enough to orchestrate retaliations in front of teachers so I would get in trouble-- but never them. And then I'd get bullied even worse for getting in trouble.

Years after the fact I wrote to the two teachers in whose classes most of my bullying took place and told them from an adult perspective how misguided this approach was and the pain it had caused me. Both were completely unrepentant and found it appropriate to recall that I had been a "problem" myself for once having used profanity against a group of bullies, underscoring how inappropriate profanity is on school grounds. One told me she was surprised that I had turned out OK because of all the "rage" she saw in me but felt powerless to do anything about (gee lady, where did you think that rage was coming from?), and told me she had "said several very extra special prayers" that I would turn out OK. The other was shocked that I should suggest taking action against something she hadn't seen because it could open her to legal action by the bullies' parents. When I pointed out how virtually all of the boys who had bullied me were now either in prison or had criminal records, both disavowed any responsibility for failing to discipline them and blamed their parents for failing to raise them properly.

[Alarm]

Originally Posted by MisterGrey

Two times I tried to fight back were ineffectual and half hearted and in completely the wrong situations and did nothing but make the bullying worse.

That's usually the problem. You have to fight back effectually, but most children who get bullied don't have anyone to train them into responding with appropriate force. My bully problems stopped once I got the ringleader in a headlock till he turned purple.

Originally Posted by MisterGrey

* Someone here mentioned being bullied for wearing glasses, and when I hear stories like this from older people I wonder if some kind of cultural shift happened. Neither me nor anyone I went to school with ever got bullied for wearing glasses.

I was bullied for being a four-eyes, but I do believe there has been a generational shift in that regard.

Originally Posted by MisterGrey

The other was shocked that I should suggest taking action against something she hadn't seen because it could open her to legal action by the bullies' parents.

The sad part about this is how it might be true.

[Cervus]

Yeah, of all the things I was bullied about, the traditional "glasses-braces-acne" was completely irrelevant. No one ever mentioned those things, probably because they were common among the entire student population.

[FullMetal]

Like MisterGrey, I too got in trouble for any retaliation. in fact my Jr. High Principal told me that retaliation was worse than anything that the other kids could have done. In spite of the daily beatings, and having to fight my way out of a grapple, I'd get in trouble for my struggle to survive the day... I (un?)fortunately can't remember the majority of that year, but the ones I can remember, being at my locker to get books for class, getting pinned to the floor, struggling and yelling "get off me", and squirming to get free ended up with me getting hauled off to the principal's office for a lecture, telling me how my behaviour was inappropriate, and that my fighting them off was wrong. and the fact that they were hurting me was completely acceptable of them. I was told that "I" was the bully in that situation, and that I had to stop bullying them. I eventually was transfered to another school and the bullying did not stop, and I honestly can't remember most of that year... It took an amazing act of genuine kindness to snap me out of it...

the rest of my school career I was apparently "Bullied" but none of it was ever as bad as that one year. in fact I've been asked by one of the guys who supposedly bullied me in high school, how I handled some of the bullying that was done in High School, and to be honest I don't even remember being bullied. It was by far not as hard as the year of hell (or what I remember of it anyway). And I had friends who cared about me which I think was the key to my not caring about the bullying.

[RivkahChaya]

I've worked in schools, in high schools, preschools, and elementary schools, and I want to chime in that bullying isn't just one thing.

When a child treats another child badly, it isn't always for the same reason, and a simliar situation is happening between two other children.

For example, we had this one kid at the preschool I felt was headed for real trouble, and it broke my heart. The principal tried several times to talk to her mother, but the mother got very defensive; she had a child-rearing philosophy, and the kind of interventions her kid needed didn't fit in with her philosophy. I'm totally serious.

Again, let me say that this is just one kid, and this is not going to account for every case of bullying, but I saw this kid headed for being the kid in class getting picked on ny everyone. I remember one day at lunch, she kept insisting that X thing was true, while the other kids told her that she could pretend that, or play that it was true, but it wasn't really true (and it wasn't factually true; it was something along the lines that she could turn into a particular animal). She started to shout at the other kids, and get a little hysterical and tearful, which the other kids thought was funny, and they were laughing, which just got her more upset.

Now, let me say a couple of things-- this happened in the space of about two minutes, at which point I intervened-- I asked the kids a question (what their favorite movie was, or something), and went around the room, letting each kid answer in turn, and second, these were four- and five-year-olds, who sometimes playacted at being babies, and would act whiny to make other kids laugh, so I can't say with absolute certainty that all of them know the one girl was genuinely upset (I suspect strongly that most of them did, but I do not know for certain).

Anyway, the situation was defused for the day.

The next day, at lunch, out of the clear blue, the kid brought up the same subject again, and started arguing the same thing with the whole class, making herself hysterical all over.

That isn't every kid who gets picked on. She may be even a really improbably situation that accounts for just a fraction of a percent. Personality, I think she needs to see a therapist, and that she has a real difficulty handling anxiety, which should be brought up with her doctor. Her mother was all "la-la-la" fingers in ears about it, though, because they don't even have a family doctor, they see a homeopath. Yeah. Not making that up. The mother did go for advice to someone, who told her to eliminate sugar and gluten from the kid's diet, which was a big help, I'll tell you, because a kid who is already having issues with anxiety and feeling like part of the group just needs to be the one who, instead of getting a piece of cake on someone's birthday, gets honey-sweetened rice crackers (yes, I know that honey is sugar, but I wasn't about to argue with the mother).

That's a very long story to account for one child, who doesn't amount to much of the kids who get picked on. Most of them probably have wonderful parents who live in the real world. Occasionally, some may have emotionally abusive parents who haven't taught them how to relate to people, I suppose, but some get targeted for no apparent reason. And bullies become bullies I'm sure for a whole variety of reasons. Some probably did something without thinking, once, for which they were inadvertantly rewarded, some may be the insecure bullies people talk about. Some may have a warped sense of humor. I don't know.

There's not going to be a blanket solution. The way you treat other people shouldn't be performance art, but sometimes social interactions do follow a sort of a script that both people have, and it's OK. I feel one of those situations where I'm going to back myself into a metaphor I can't get out of, but everyone has to have the same script, and agree to play the scene out.

Sometimes, and not every time, but sometimes, I think bullying may be a game where not everyone has the rules, and not everyone has consented to play, and so someone has been set up to lose, and really suffer for it.

I mean, there are times when friends kid, and especially friends who are teenagers, the language might seem a little borderline abusive to an outsider, who doesn't know the dynamics. No one really gets their feelings hurt, and five minutes later, the one who was getting teased is now teasing someone else.

I don't know where I'm going. Just, I guess, that I see this as a much more complicated problem than "Don't be mean to other people."

[thorny locust]

Originally Posted by MisterGrey

* Someone here mentioned being bullied for wearing glasses, and when I hear stories like this from older people I wonder if some kind of cultural shift happened. Neither me nor anyone I went to school with ever got bullied for wearing glasses.

Originally Posted by Alarm

I was bullied for being a four-eyes, but I do believe there has been a generational shift in that regard.

Originally Posted by Cervus

Yeah, of all the things I was bullied about, the traditional "glasses-braces-acne" was completely irrelevant. No one ever mentioned those things, probably because they were common among the entire student population.

Single data point here:

I was for at least a year or two the only child in my grade school class who wore glasses. I was verbally harassed a great deal for physical klutziness, for having poor social skills, and for general weirdness; but never, that I can remember, for the glasses. This was in the 1950's. So it may have been more place than generation.

Originally Posted by RivkahChaya

sometimes, I think bullying may be a game where not everyone has the rules, and not everyone has consented to play, and so someone has been set up to lose, and really suffer for it.

I think you've got something there. I believe I was harassed, in large part, precisely for not having the rules. I couldn't follow them, because I couldn't figure out what they were.

And I think that, at least some of the time, there are rules to the bullying itself. If you do the right thing, sometimes the bullies will stop. Unfortunately, there isn't one single "right thing" that will work in all cases; and sometimes the thing that would stop a particular case isn't available to the particular child being bullied.

[Dropbear]

Another data point on the glasses thing. When i got glasses the school bully went out of his way to be nice to me and ensure that I wasn't bullied for the glasses.

Of course he made me carry his bag home and would punch me if I scratched it - but the glasses were not an issue.

Dropbear

[Twankydillo]

Originally Posted by RivkahChaya

There's not going to be a blanket solution. The way you treat other people shouldn't be performance art, but sometimes social interactions do follow a sort of a script that both people have, and it's OK. I feel one of those situations where I'm going to back myself into a metaphor I can't get out of, but everyone has to have the same script, and agree to play the scene out.

Sometimes, and not every time, but sometimes, I think bullying may be a game where not everyone has the rules, and not everyone has consented to play, and so someone has been set up to lose, and really suffer for it.

I mean, there are times when friends kid, and especially friends who are teenagers, the language might seem a little borderline abusive to an outsider, who doesn't know the dynamics. No one really gets their feelings hurt, and five minutes later, the one who was getting teased is now teasing someone else.

I'm really not sure what you're suggesting there - it sounds like you're suggesting that the victim needs to be shown how to play along and learn how to interact with the bullies, which would be far too simplistic a suggestion.

I saw a boy being insulted by a girl the other day, and I was wincing because the boy was saying things that probably didn't help, and he was cringing away instead of standing his ground. However, while that might not have been helping, it's not like if he acted any different the girl would have said "he's one of us!" and skipped away.

It didn't happen like that for me. I'd try everything - I'd act cocky back, I could insult back far better than anybody could insult me, I'd just laugh sometimes, I'd ignore them, I'd try and keep out of the way ... Not a single one helped.

[RivkahChaya]

I wrote about the one situation I knew of, where I saw a preschooler headed for trouble, and a mother with her head in the sand. I think that kid, and maybe the whole family, need counselling.

I also knew one kid whose history I didn't know, but by the time I met her was so convinced that no one would like her, went way out of her way to avoid normal interactions. I have no idea how her situation started, but at that point, I think she needed professional help. I also think she had been in trouble long enough that she had missed out on socialization, and was "behind," so to speak, the same way a kid who has missed a lot of school will be behind academically.

Again, I have no idea how it started. It could have been one kid who didn't like her in the first grade, who had the ear of the teacher. She could have been the new kid at the wrong time, for some reason. She was small for her age, and that may have had something to do with it. Her parents were a little odd, so maybe she had difficulty with the usual "bringing people over to play" that kids do. I just don't know. I'm not saying it was her fault. If kids get picked on for wearing glasses, that isn't their fault, but it's a reason, a point of origin that can be identified, so that you can go to the other kids, and say "Hey, what's wrong with glasses? do you all know why people wear glasses?"

Which is what I was getting at.

Saying "bullying is bad," won't work if kids can't really identify bullying. It's like the FAIL/DARE thread, where some kids didn't even know what drugs were. If you identify the specific content of some of the bullying, then you can say "Here's what we are talking about," and also, maybe educate kids. I remember a time, before mainstreaming, when it was very rare to see a kid with a disability in a school, and people didn't know what they were looking at when they saw, for example, the way a kid with CP moved. Some people may genuinely not have realized that the kid couldn't help it, and being told so would put a stop to teasing in a lot of cases. But you can see how "Don't bully" isn't a clear message, when what is needed is "There's such a thing as CP, and a person who moves oddly because of it isn't trying to be funny."

Then, on the other side, you have kids who might have been left out for so long, they need help getting back in. Does that make sense?

[geminilee]

Originally Posted by thorny locust

I think you've got something there. I believe I was harassed, in large part, precisely for not having the rules. I couldn't follow them, because I couldn't figure out what they were.

I am still not sure I know what the rules are. I think Rivkah has a real point about getting so far behind that you just can't catch up, at least not without help.

[RivkahChaya]

Well, I was speaking metaphorically when I was talking about playing a game that one person hasn't consented to play, but I'm just now reminded of a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, where Calvin is unwillingly playing football in gym class, and gets tackled, then he comments that he thinks football is a sport, like ducks think hunting is a sport. It is one thing when two friends tease each other back and forth, and another when everyone else gangs up and teases one other person, and in that case, what is actually being said is irrelevant. The thing is, while there is probably a gang leader who knows very well that the group is being cruel, there may be some unsophisticated hangers-on, who really don't see the difference, when the content of what is being said is pretty much the same-- I'm talking about younger kids, I hope I'm clear, here.

And, the one being ganged upon may be thoroughly confused, because he has seen, and heard similar exchanges between the gang leader and his friends, but the responses from the leaders friends, that led to laughing and friendly exchanges, don't work.

I don't really know-- I'm working from long-ago memories, and observations of kids I've worked with. I was a hanger-on. I know I participated in stuff that didn't seem wrong in the moment, but by the time I got home from school, and had thought about it, I realized was pretty awful, and kept me up at night. A couple of sessions on exactly what constituted bullying would have done me a lot of good.

Sometimes I wanted to apologize the next day, but aside from the "don't talk to the unpopular kid" factor, I was really indecisive about whether or not to mention something again. Maybe the kid wanted to pretend it hadn't happened. Or maybe I was even wrong. Saying "I'm sorry I teased you," to someone who hadn't realized he'd been teased would be bad.

Yes, I realize now, at the age of 44, that the kid knew very well he had been picked on. But I'm talking about my 8-year-old self. If it took me half a day to figure out whether or not I'd done something wrong, then maybe it was possible the other kid hadn't figured it out.

I will say one thing-- it is harder for adults to know exactly what is going on than you would think. In one kid out of sixty at the preschool, we saw a kid we thought had genuine emotional problems, and "invited" teasing. That's an unfair way to put it, because we thought she needed professional help, and her mother just wouldn't listen (her father never came to the meetings-- he was invited, he just never showed up). Anyway, that kid was glaringly obvious. It was harder to see the social heirarchy aside from that. We had one kid who, after a year and a half, have his mother tell us she was concerned because he said he had no friends. We had no idea. He never said anything to us, he seemed to be interacting with the other kids, and we never saw any overt picking on him. We started paying closer attention after that, though.

I can tell you that bullying doesn't necessarily focus on kids who are physically different. The one kid who said he had no friends was perfectly normal looking. The one with the emotional problems was especially attractive. The one sort of funny-looking kid, who had a genetic syndrome, had big ears, stubby fingers, and had to wear leg braces and eyeglasses, was actually quite popular, and his mother said he had lots of friends. He had an invitation to go to someone's house almost every weekend. He was a really happy kid, I can tell you that.

So, watching out for the kid who is physically awkward, or odd-looking, won't clue teachers in to who is a potential victim.

[Auburn Red]

Originally Posted by DemonWolf

Unfortunatly, It's easy for the teacher to see a little teasing and assume it's "kids will be kids." But some teachers don't realize that that is just the tip of the iceberg. I used to get told, "fight back, then they'll stop."

Sometimes teachers will encourage that behavior like laughing at some of the bully's jokes or in one memorable moment in my bullied past, gossip with the other students about the bullied kid..... like when they're on an overnight field trip and the bullied student is sleeping in the next room, somehow this supposed adult would think it's alright to gossip with the bullies about why this student "deserves to be made fun of." I still can't think of that trip or that teacher with anything but rage

[Lainie]

I had a couple of teachers who seemed to care very much about being popular with the popular kids. Rather pathetic, really.

[flightsuit]

Going back to the OP, if some teacher really did have a class perform that exercise (highly doubtful), that teacher was sending one very messed-up message.

I was bullied as a child, and it was horrible, but... scars that never heal?

Please.

To suggest that people can't move on and heal from being abused is to dis-empower victims of abuse.

[Saint James]

The best solutions are the toughest - because they involve fixing the whole social system. Or at least shifting it. In a dysfunctional system, there are many who are uncomfortable but unwilling to speak up because they are afraid of becoming targets themselves. There are also those who participate because they want the positive attention of the crowd, even if they don't really feel good about it. You end up with what might be called the Abilene paradox, few people actually want the bullying, but most go along with it out of fear.

(I half-suspect the horrors of Nazi Germany came about in part because of this paradox taken to it's logical extreme).

Successful anti-bullying programs work on those in the middle - getting the reluctant participants to downgrade to bystanders, and getting the bystanders to speak up. If you can shift the middle just a little, the immense power of peer pressure becomes a positive force to discourage anti-social (in the clinical sense) behavior.

Unfortunately, systematic change is tough even under the best of circumstances. And we live in a society where bullying is not strictly limited to children (even though some of us would love to pretend so) - workplace bullying happens too. Schools are among those workplaces. Some teachers bully students (having power over them makes it relatively easy to abuse that power. Student's word against teachers almost always favors the teacher with administrators - and sometimes with parents too). Personally, I consider teachers who bully to be traitors on par with crooked cops - but I'm opinionated like that. Even worse are administrators who engage in bullying. There's an old business saying that 'stuff' flows downhill. The politicians and public put pressure on the administrators, some administrators take it out on the staff/teachers, and some teachers then take it out on the kids. While I suspect/hope that there are only a few truly sadistic teachers, I suspect that 'burnouts' are far more common. Those who go through the motions but have more or less given up.

Really, these problems are in a very real way a microcosm of societal problems as a whole. Problems we would rather pretend don't really exist - or are someone else's fault. Standing up to workplace bullies can cost you your job. And the next employer can't know enough about the situation from any neutral reliable source to make an informed judgement. And I'm sure there are others here who know what it's like to be around people who spout some of the more toxic ULs and wonder whether or not to speak up and risk ostracism for facts that might not be accepted anyway, or to allow misinformation to continue to propagate unchecked.

[RivkahChaya]

Originally Posted by Lainie

I had a couple of teachers who seemed to care very much about being popular with the popular kids. Rather pathetic, really.

Wow. That is so, so wrong. I can't recall ever seeing that. I guess I was really lucky.

[Dasla]

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/n...-1226205791442

Ok this has been all over the news in Australian in the last few days. In case the link doesn't work for you, basically a boy was boy was being bullied and finally fought back and is now dead. It still early days yet so we may not be getting the full story about who was the bully. But it does go to prove that fighting back not be the solution. Even if it does turn out that the dead boy was the bully rather then the victim (which I personally don't believe) no-one deserved to die in this situation.

[Namowal]

Originally Posted by DemonWolf

Bullies never see themselves as bullies. When they pick on a kids they, in their own mind, are not bullying, they are "just kidding." The kid being bullied is often not seen as bullied, s/he is seen as needing a thinker skin. And it's ok to be mean to that kid because s/he's a "spaz" or some other label that signifies the kid as not being of equal social standing as the bully.

I agree. When I was a kid, I was a mere scab that needed to be picked, as far as the bullies were concerned. I was teased, ostracized, and harassed all the time.

As an adult I satirized the bully mindset in this essay "What's up with this Anti-Bullying Nonsense." I thought it was pretty obvious that I was making fun of his atrocious attitude, but a few people thought I was serious(!) and stopped following the blog after that post. Whoops.

[DawnStorm]

Originally Posted by Cervus

Or being openly criticized for your entire wardrobe and hairstyle because you're not trendy. Knowing that even if you wore the right brand-name clothing and had the trendiest haircut, you'd still never be accepted by these girls.

When girls bully other girls, it's often very subtle and focuses on excluding someone from a group or clique, which can be accomplish with body language, glances, whispers, notes, gossip, and flat-out ignoring that person or not allowing them to participate in group activities. A lot of this stuff goes under the radar of adult eyes. When it starts in elementary school and continues through high school graduation, the target of the bullying often never has a chance to develop any kind of self esteem or confidence. After a while, you know exactly where you stand in school society, and you give up any hope of acceptance. And lack of self-esteem becomes obvious, which encourages more bullying to a presumably easy target.

Yup, yup, and yup. With the help and support of some of my high school friends, I eventually learned how to ignore the bitches. I just wished I'd done that back in hel-- er, junior high school.