Well you can contain it to fewer opportunities. For example the kids in our neighborhood can feel pretty safe walking to and from school because of all the adults around. There are few times when the kids are not monitored.
Sadly one area of concern is still the school buses and cameras have helped.
Also some schools have hotlines and procedures to investigate and punish bullies.
The incident I described happened because the school administration failed to take action.
It’s getting worse by the day! Public and private schools have turned into nothing but war zones. I have come to the ultimate conclusion that the only way that kids should be taught is by home schooling them. Yes I’m very much aware a lot of families today can’t for what ever reason ( financial most likely ) do this but if you can I strongly urge you to consider it!
I’m not convinced that bullying commonly results from the target having a lack of social skills, as of having social skills that are culturally looked down upon. I was bullied in part because I was introverted rather than extroverted, and interested in reading and art rather than sports and beer. I was inclined to be cooperative rather than competitive, which really made me a target. Even as an adult there’s a cultural attitude that introversion is a problem or flaw, rather than a normal variation of humanity. (There’s better lip service these days, but if you want to network to advance your career, damn straight you still have to go to the noisy party and compete to be heard.)
Certainly I agree that kids who are targeted by bullies need better and more specific support, but I think it needs to be in terms of reaffirming that there’s nothing wrong with them, rather than assuming that something is. Telling an introvert that she “should” be “more outgoing” or display other extroverted traits because social skills, is implicitly telling her she’s not good enough as she is. That’s not really any better than what the bully is doing. (If anything it has more power because it’s coming from the adults, who still Know Everything if the kid is young.) I mean, how about the bully’s social skills? There’s no reason to assume the target must have a social lag – all kids are less socially developed than adults, that doesn’t mean they are underdeveloped for their age, and it sure doesn’t follow that different social skills are bad.
Also, frankly, the best support is actually doing something about the bully when the kid tells you it’s happening.
I’m not disagreeing with anything you say, but just pointing out that “introverted” and “shy” are not the same thing. I am an introvert, and always have been. That means that I would much rather spend my down time alone or with a few close friends than go to that work party. I’ll go if necessary and while I’m there I will mingle, talk to strangers, get up and make a speech if called upon, and likely have a good time. People even say I’m outgoing. The difference is that when the extrovert leaves the party they feel recharged. The introvert, OTOH, is exhausted from the effort.
It sounds like you are both introverted and shy, as I used to be. The introversion likely can’t be changed (and one probably shouldn’t try) but shyness, in many cases, can be. Overcoming shyness is not easy. In fact, it can seem like the most daunting task ever attempted by any human in all of time. It does, however, open up a whole world of opportunities that would otherwise be missed. Some of my most painful memories are of opportunities lost because I was too shy to step up.
That’s one type of kid that gets bullied, but there are others. There’s the awkward kid who really, really wants to be part of a particular group of “popular” kids, and basically despises all the other kids as “losers” and pushes himself in where he isn’t really wanted and is then rejected in terrible ways. And then there’s the kid that just an asshole, and has no boundaries, and thinks it’s funny to bully other kids because he’s “joking”, so it’s okay, but then cannot see that the bullying he receives in turn is a reaction–because they aren’t “joking”, they are “picking on him”.
The bullies are the ones lacking social skills.
If being mean to people because they aren’t wearing the “right” clothes, or they are shy, or they are not athletic, or they are overweight, or have bad skin, or unusual taste in music or hobbies is considered socially acceptable and the target needs training to become “with it” enough to be “normal” and participate in the behavior like their “socially skilled” peers, then normal is not something I want any part of.
Once a target has been chosen, others go along with it to increase or protect their own social status. It doesn’t mean the target needs to be “fixed” just because the majority has declared them broken.
Again, sometimes that’s true, and it’s horrible, and you are right. But I’ve seen more than one kid so desperate to be liked by the “popular” kids that he calls them ten times a night, sits down with them at lunch every day, shows up at social events he wasn’t invited to, all the while acting passive and inoffensive so that there’s no polite way they can get rid of him. That same kid tears down and rejects everyone else because he sees in them his own social “failure”. And yes, sometimes the “popular” kids are AWFUL to him. But dealing with that sort of person well takes social skills they just don’t have.
I’ve seen a kid who dominates every group discussion, refuses to do his part for group work, never listens, always pressures other kids to help him cheat, steals stuff from other kids, makes crude sexual remarks to and about the girls, disrupts class when other kids want to learn, and then truly, truly feels that he’s the victim because people don’t like him. And he’s not bullshitting; he doesn’t get it. And the kids are pretty terrible to him. They don’t make nice with him anymore; they mostly ignore him. But, again, what else do you expect of 14 year olds, many of whom are trapped with him in every class all day?
Certainly, most of the time the victims of bullies are entirely innocent. But there are situations where it is much more complicated.
Exactly. It doesn’t help, either, that everyone has a distorted sense of blame.
I think that parents don’t do enough to stop bullying. And that goes for both the parents of those that bully and those that get bullied. As a parent if you don’t set expectations of how your child should behave and how your child should react when bullied, then you are doing your children a disservice.
The complication here is the misapplication of the terms “bullying” and “victim.”
If someone is disliked because they phone-harass and show up to parties uninvited and doesn’t understand that these actions are making them unpopular when they intend the opposite, then that person could possibly benefit from some help with their social skills. Even if all the other kids were as polite and kind as could be in response to this behavior, that doesn’t mean no help is appropriate. “Bullying” is irrelevant to the equation.
Bullying, by definition, is not appropriate, so looking to see how the victims could change to stop inspiring it is not a good approach. An individual might reasonably choose to look at themselves to see what changes they might consider making to make their own lives easier, and a parent might reasonably assist in some ways, but there is a big difference between a kid choosing on his own not to carry a My Little Pony backpack to school and a school counselor or teacher suggesting he stop. No one should be told by an authority figure to modify their style, opinions, non-harmful behavior, etc. to fit in with bullying classmates. Authority figures should be ensuring fairness and safety, not endorsing conformity and peer pressure.
They have social skills classes in our area.
Heck even adults need these sometimes. For example there are many books on proper business etiquette like the art of mingling.
Both the supervision and lack of care can be solved by the other half of what I said, cameras. Everywhere. And microphones.
Yeah a camera won’t stop the first punch, nor will a camera push an adult to address an issue.
But it lets the victim take the issue to someone who does care and have more than hearsay. Teacher laughs? Take it to principal. Principal says no big deal, live with it? Superintendent. Representative. Media. Ect.
Most people are believers, but thought of God watching means nothing, especially with the aspect of forgiveness without recompense. If the badly behaved got it into their heads that they really really are being watched, and that those they torment can call upon the evidence for revenge, then maybe they’ll think twice.
Of course there’s the privacy issue, but IMO it’s not an issue. So what if people watch me? I’m boring with nothing to hide. I’d love to live in a glass house, so long as it lacks abuse. I have a suspicion the bullied agree with me. The opinions of their tormentors on the matter are worse than useless.
Many adults need them. There is a term called “work bullies”. Usually someone higher up like a boss but there are some brutal ones out there.
We have one where I work…the owner’s brother. Usually it’s insane yelling/cursing at someone over the stupidest things at every opportunity along with belittlement. Other times he’s trying to get someone fired to mad enough to quit. Needless to say, no one at work likes him.
Bwuh? Just where did I say they were? Going to large noisy parties drains me, but culturally I “should” go do them because that’s how networking (and career advancement) happens. That has nothing to do with being shy.
I’m well aware of the difference, having been both at one time (and only introverted now). I have no idea where you got the idea that I am (currently) shy. In a noisy environment everyone has to compete to be heard.
Am I missing something? This IS bullying behavior. Sure, a lot of bullies think of themselves as victims. A lot of bullies are so bad that they burn every bridge in school. Doesn’t make them right, and doesn’t make them any less of a bully.
So… when your co-worker is bullied by a petty tyrant boss, do you hand the co-worker a book on the art of mingling? 
'Twas this sentence that made me think shyness was an issue:
Introversion has nothing to with whether one is outgoing or not. The opposite of “outgoing” is “shy”. If I read too much into that, then I apologize.
When I was a teenager, my mother constantly advised me to be “friendly”. She didn’t seem to understand that friendliness is a two-way street, and it isn’t going to work if the other person isn’t interested in you or what you have to say.
:rolleyes:
She stopped doing that when she saw the results for herself.
I was teased growing up, particularly during the awkward middle school years.
No, I wasn’t Miss Socialite. I had a couple of friends, but I wasn’t popular by any means.
I’m struggling to imagine how social skills training would have helped me. I avoided kids, which only exacerbated my “teasibility” and my weak social skills. But I avoided kids for a pretty good reason. They were TEASING me. And they weren’t teasing me for having weak social skills. They were teasing me because I was spoke and moved funny. And because I spoke and moved funny, I didn’t want to do the things the other kids did (like games of any type. No adult had seen fit to get me checked out, so as far as anyone knew, I was just being a weirdo on purpose.
I remember a number of kids who got harassed who had weak social skills. There’s was this kid named Bertrum who was a regular Steve Urkel, always with the lame jokes and goofy way laughing. There was Allison, who was a goody-goody, a little chubby, and made the mistake of joining the pep squad in the 7th grade instead of the sixth (She also passed gas one day in math class. Her face was red for days.) There was Wiley, who had a lazy eye and wasn’t into hip hop and was given to crying spells (he once cried on the 7th grade Stone Mountain trip because he got scared of the altitude). In high school, there was Lawanda, who was the only black chick in the metro Atlanta area that could play Led Zepplin riffs on her violin. She dressed in a black leather jacket and combat boots, fashioning herself as “punk”. And she sold candy and cans of soda out of an orange duffle bag. What the hell was SHE thinking?
I mean, I think these folks had weak social skills. Obviously they did, since they were out there on the margins of society. Or maybe it’s more that their social skills were fine and it was the kids giving them a hard time who needed some “schooling”.
I get it with Bertrum and Wiley and Allison–but Lawanda sounds like the coolest kid in school. How the hell does she have weak social skills?
For me, I wore a black cape and muttered e.e. cummings under my breath and decorated my face on school picture day with black eyeliner so it looked (at least I tried to make it look) as though my face were a mask cracking apart. I didn’t exactly cultivate a reputation as a Satanic sorceror, but when I found out I had that reputation, I didn’t exactly do anything to dispel it.
A significant part of my motivation was to ward off bullying, such as the dude in tenth grade who held a trowel to my throat and told me how easy it’d be to cut my throat. I figured that if I seemed scary and unpredictable and indecipherable, maybe other kids would leave me alone.
It worked pretty well, but I don’t know if I’d recommend it to everyone.