Well, that’s my point. None of these people had weak social skills. Their “crime” was just being a tad different from everyone else.
First of all, that sentence is referring to kids in schools who are targets of bullying, not to me, and in context that’s perfectly clear.
Secondly, no, the opposite of outgoing is not shy. There are many different ways to be social, and being gregarious, the center of attention, or walking up to strangers cold is only one of them. If someone does better in small groups or one on one, adult authority figures shouldn’t be telling a kid they’re doing social skills wrong. Being social in quieter, smaller, lower-energy environments is just as legit as being social in large groups or chatting up strangers at the bus stop; and preferring quieter environments says nothing one way or the other whether that person is shy.
Schools address perhaps 5-10% of bullying incidents, and most times, they handle it incorrectly.
On what research or personal experience do you base this assertion?
Wow. I apologize and extend an olive branch and you just slap it away. Nice. The context, while “obviously” clear to you, wasn’t clear to me but I’ll waste no more apologies here.
Huh. I’m sure those folks who write the thesarus will be really interested in subscribing to your newsletter, being as they’ve gotten it wrong all these years.
What century was that? I was in gradeschool in the 60s and early 70s, and my parents were completely out of touch with me.
I’m not talking about introversion, or clothing styles. I had a longer post that got lost in the ether, where I explained what I was talking about, but I can’t repeat it now, because I have to meet my son’s bus.
Mainly, though, in summary, I’m talking about knowing when to pick your battles, and that at school you cannot always be the center of attention, even if you are at home. I have seen a few kids get picked on and ostracized because they argue and whine about everything, and others because they want to make everything about them, and yet others because they can’t let anything go. They don’t grasp the concept of good-natured teasing that kids do to one another. Those kind of skills can be taught, and need to be taught, because kids who don’t have them suffer.
Not all victims have those issues, but the ones that do need intervention. Also, sometimes if a kid has been victimized for a long time, they have not had opportunities to interact and continually learn new social skills, so even if they were fine once, they may have gotten to a point where they could use a leg up.
That’s all.
To add my $.02 as the husband of a teacher:
Just because a kid at recess, whom your daughter hardly ever interacts with, called your little girl “stupid” today, that is not “bullying”. That is the other kid being an asshole.
When Jimmy wouldn’t loan Billy a pen, because Billy lost the last pen he was loaned, please don’t call the principal and say that Billy is being “bullied”. That is the other kid not trusting your irresponsible child with something of his.
While bullying is a serious thing, some parents need to lighten up with the knee-jerk calls of bullying whenever something happens to their child that upsets them.
Those aren’t victims of bullying, they are people with unpleasant personalities. While they may bullied also, they are two separate problems.
It’s like trying to teach a bratty kid to quit acting up so his parent won’t hit him anymore. Sure, the kid’s behavior may be atrocious, but that is hardly the point.
75% of the intervention I had to do in a preschool where I worked was when all the kids started to pile up on this one kid, and her behavior was annoying a lot of the time, but it wasn’t going to change because she got picked on. OTOH, I wasn’t going to be there all her life. Part of her problem was her weird mother, who refused to set limits for her, and thought a lot of her “special snowflaking” was cute. The mother was also convinced the kid didn’t need discipline, she just needed the right diet, so every time there was a problem at school, the mother removed another food (eg, gluten) from the kid’s diet. The principal called the parents in for I-don’t-know how many conferences, but they wouldn’t budge on their parenting ideas.
At some point, that kid needs a safe space where she can learn good social skills. She’s not getting them at home, and she’s unable to get them “in the wild.” She was bright, and creative, and had a lot of potential to show empathy. I really felt bad for her.
Anyway, being bullied, and having unpleasant personality traits of poor social skills may be two separate problems, but that was my point in the beginning. I don’t think having intervention for the kids with personality defects, or social skills defects, or whatever you want to call it, will make bullying go away, but it may help some of the kids who are being victimized by their entire class continually, and it may restore confidence to previous victims, who, even if their bully has been expelled of dealt with severely, are afraid to jump back in and approach other kids again.
Whelp, I guess you are determined to read exactly one sentence of what I wrote and draw your own conclusions without regard to the explanation that immediately follows, so I’m not going to waste time arguing with someone who’s going to debate so disingenuously.
So are you suggesting that this preschooler should have been forced into some sort of personality-altering training situation? Because obviously her parents would not have gone along with that willingly–you said they would not budge on their ideas and they seem to have liked her the way she was.
The teacher should enforce class rules. If the girl’s “annoying” behavior broke a rule, like grabbing another child’s work, consequences should be imposed. If another student’s “picking on” her broke a rule, like calling her an insulting name, consequences should also be imposed.
It’s ironic that you lament the lack of a “safe space” for the child to “learn social skills.” It’s a preschool classroom! The adults are supposed to be making it exactly that, for everyone! Since preschoolers require constant adult supervision, there is no excuse for allowing bullies to act on their anti-social impulses. If your entire class is victimizing someone, that’s on you, no matter how “weird” the child’s family is, how “defective” you think she is, or how “annoying” her personality is.
Preschoolers are pretty much ALL annoying, practically ALL of their parents think they are cute, and thinking they are each “special snowflakes” is totally normal. The main reason they are there is to learn social skills. Why on earth would some other professional need to get involved with a particular student because she was not part of the pack picking on another kid?
Perhaps we’ll reingage in conversation one day when you learn what those big words mean. Until then, toodles.