Was it hyperbolic? Sure. But saying that a girl who starts crying because someone mocked her (let’s be frank) defective eyes needs to learn that kids are just assholes and not to cry when they say incredibly insensitive things? That’s just victim blaming. “I shoudln’t have been mean, but she shouldn’t have cried about it, so it’s her fault for not learning not to cry at hurtful things.” And if that girl *hadn’t *cried, **filmore **might never have figured out how hurtful she found it.
The point is not that bullies are the equivalent of rapists. The point is that being bullied can be an incredibly traumatic experience, and telling kids who’re bullied that they just need to get over it is unconstructive *and *unfair, in the same way that telling a rape victim to just get over it would be unconstructive and unfair.
Because you’re setting it up as some sort of inevitable slippery slope that if you punch somebody who’s punching you, it will end with somebody getting a knife in the gut. And yet, every time we have one of these threads, we get tons of stories where people finally faced the kids who were abusing them, struck back, and the bullies left them alone. No more abuse, no further need for violence. So, there are plenty of scenarios where some violence in response to abuse *ends *further abuse.
Whoops, except for all the examples here, including the OP, where the authorities are told exactly what is going on and yet are powerless to stop it: through laziness, incompetence, or “that’s just the way things are.”
I didn’t see anyone saying that the girl should “just get over it”. I read, “I feel horrible for what I said to that girl with glasses, but by the same token she needs to somehow know that self-centered kids will make those comments and deal with them in a way other than breaking down in tears.” In other words, someone needs to teach her more appropriate coping strategies for dealing with stress in public. The aggressor needs to be taught (in this case) more appropriate ways to build rapport with his classmates, as he’s already figured out, but she *also *needs to be taught how to deal with insensitive comments. Ignoring, defusing with humor, explaining quite seriously and calmly that the remark hurt her feelings…whatever. There are lots of ways to cope with an unkind remark that don’t involve further harming yourself socially by crying in public.
Similarly, no one should tell a rape victim to “just get over it”, but yeah, there’s lots of time spent in therapy teaching him or her how to best cope with the stress or PTSD from the experience. Teaching coping skills /= “just get over it.”
I’m not saying that girl should just suck it up. I am very sorry I said that to her. Unforunately, we live in a world where a lot of stupid kids like me probably said the same thing many times before and since.
I’m not a bully and I immediately regretted what I did. But I was a kid and didn’t feel enough to say I was sorry. I regret that too. But if I was a sadistic bully, I would have pounced on that weakness and made her cry more. That was my point. If she breaks down and cries, the sadistic bullies will target her for more taunting. If instead she lets those comments bounce off her, the sadistic bullies will lose interest and move on.
*Was *she further harmed? Or did she benefit, because the fact that she started crying made it *immediately *clear to filmore that she didn’t get the joke–and not only didn’t get it, but found it profoundly hurtful? Why isn’t a child allowed to cry in public when someone says something abusive? The only reason I can see is that it’s embarassing for the abuser, unless it’s a scenario where it opens the kid up to further teasing for being a “crybaby,” which **filmore **didn’t mention happening in this case.
ETA@filmore: You said “she needs to somehow know that self-centered kids will make those comments and deal with them in a way other than breaking down in tears.” Perhaps it wasn’t your intention, but to me, it very much came off as you at least partially blaming the girl for crying, instead of accepting the full responsibility for making her cry (even though that wasn’t your intention).
If my kid is getting wailed on, I don’t expect him to walk away. I fully expect him to kick some ass. One, it gives him a little self respect instead of making him like a constant victim and two, it shows anyone who might otherwise fuck with him that he’s willing to lay down some hurt.
Not saying violence is ideal, and I would hope that my kid never found himself in a situation where he had to resort to violence. But when you need to defend yourself, you need to defend yourself, and unfortunately a willingness to kick ass is all too often the only way to make the bullying stop.
The problem I have with much of the current bullying solutions it that it doesn’t encourage the victim to look for their own solutions. In my case when I taunted that girl with the glasses, here’s how it would probably be handled. I would be yelled at and made to feel like a criminal and expelled. The girl would be soothed and be told it wasn’t her fault, that the mean ol’ Filmore has been taken care of. The problem is that it’s not just mean ol’ Filmore. There are lots of other self-centered kids in the class who will likely do the same thing.
What I think should happen is that the bully is taken aside and told that it is not appropriate to negatively comment on how someone looks, dresses, acts, etc. If they continue to insult then the there is a series of appropriate escalating punishments. The victim should be soothed, but also told that it teasing is likely to be part of life and here are some ways she can handle being teased in this situation. This way the bully is encouraged to stop acting negatively and the victim gets stronger so that future bullying won’t take hold.
I was teased a lot in elementary school; I was shy and overweight and smart. Third grade was the worst. I felt like I had no friends. I hated recess, because it usually meant being teased and/or pushed around. And, for the most part, the teachers didn’t care at all.
Then fourth grade came, and I had Mrs. Leonard–she’s one of the most amazing, devoted, and fucking awesome teachers that I’ve ever had. She, like the other teachers, saw me being bullied; however, she, unlike the other teachers, actually did something about it. The kids she saw doing it were in capital-T trouble. One of them got referred to outside counciling. And she spent most of the year (and some time after; she headed the after school program I was in) coaxing me to try and make me more outgoing and capable of handling those kinds of situation.
Did it fix everything? Of course not. But it made things better, and what bullying remained was made less awful by the knowledge that there was someone out there who had my back.
That sort of action meant more to me than a thousand stupid-assed PSAs. Shame on the principal, the teacher, or anyone there who saw what was going on and chose to ignore it. God damn them.
That was really nice of her. The reason more teachers/admins don’t do this is because they want to be the cool students’ friends. I spent plenty of time in high school witnessing the aides and cafeteria monitors allowing clownshoes on the football team to meander out of the lunchroom whenever they felt like it, but when I (top of my class, fat, unpretty, frequently invisible) tried to leave lunch early to practice my sax in the band room or do some homework in the library, I was besieged with demands for a hall pass. I did eventually get my band director to start writing me hall passes, though. That was really nice of her, too.
That whole situation kinda reminds me, retrospectively, of prison. You can get away with murder if you’re in with the guards.
To be fair, in the adult world people call in the authorities, because one-on-one retaliation can have dire, life altering consequences. However grievously you were beset by a colleague, neighbor, or jerk in a bar, if you lash out and you’re the only one anybody witnessed throwing a punch, it’s your attorney that has to convince the jury in your assault trial (or convince the State to drop the charge).
Granted that’s not so much the case among kids, but even then the things that often make one a target of bullies are often the same things that make them unable to fight back effectively.
I can say that i do wish that i had punched some kids, or yanked some hair out. I do regret not figting back, i suppose i would have missed a couple days of school. Oh, darn.
I don’t think it would have been a huge help to me then, but, the one time i lashed out and kicked a boy in the nuts totally ruined his day.
If i ever had a kid I would teach them that they need to blend in at school but at home their freak flag can fly occasionally.
Have you spent any time as an adult (not a teenager, standing in the middle of the road, waiting to be hit by a truck of confirmation bias) around educators?
Am I naive enough to say that no teachers try to befriend students? Na, of course some do. Some fuck kids, too. But most don’t.
To the OP: I’m sorry to hear your child is hurting (and being hurt!). When I was a new teacher, I was so blindsided the first time I witnessed bullying. You have to make a snap decision to nip it in the bud and while that’s what I did, I can see how that’s a scary enough situation that another teacher might just try to ignore it. Is that the right thing to do? Absolutely not! I would rip into any of my teacher friends if I heard them suggest they even remotely ignored a kid in need of their help, especially in regard to bullying.
It’s all worth noting that teachers are human. Nobody is psychic and unless the kids tell us what’s going on, we can’t step in and help. Realistically, very rarely do the bullies push around the victims in front of the teacher. It’s fortunate for me that kids feel comfortable talking to me-- and I’m more than happy to be there, even just as someone to listen–, but I can’t know what I don’t know.
Hell, I coach high school debate now and the other day, a kid from a whole different team told me that some kids from a different school (not mine) were giving him shit at our last tournament for being gay. I gave him my cell phone number and told him that next time that happens, to shoot me a text and I will come resolve it immediately. Nobody needs to deal with that and luckily, I’m in a position that I can make it stop. That’s a responsibility I don’t take lightly.
Sure, it’s a scary decision, and you (apparently) did right. But the teacher (or school administration member) who doesn’t make such a decision is a pussy and a weenie who can’t do his/her job properly and should look for other employment opportunities. Immediately. Or even better, sometime last year. It’s part of their fucking job, for Og’s sake.
But it’s easier to close your eyes and play the glad game. Easier for the teacher, mind you, because hitting so hard that you do nip it in the bud probably carries at least a 50/50 risk of catching hell from the bullies’ parents. And children are, deep down inside, really nice persons, right?
I just don’t understand this idea that bullying is inherent. When I went to school, there was no point where you were not under 100% supervision. Heck, by my senior year, there were cameras everywhere. Where are these people going that the bully has time to treat you badly and not get caught?
And who are these educators who won’t do anything about it? I honestly never met one. I met some that won’t get involved when two people just yell at each other, or set up a fight time outside of school, but none that would not intervene if violence happened. And heck, there’s a flippin’ cop you can go to. Heck, I used him when someone stole my Game Boy from my backpack that I left out in the open, and you better bet I got it back (though with advice not to leave my stuff lying around.)
Yes, I know my school is somewhat small, but the student-teacher ratio is the same as the big cities. It doesn’t seem like it should be that hard to have a complete control on these situations at all times. Heck, when the new anti-bullying laws came into effect, most of us were upset, because it also cut off playful teasing–the worst thing most of us had experienced.
My sister did mention a type of bullying–the snobby girl who says bad things about you behind your back, but I don’t think even current anti-bullying stuff covers that.
Finally, I point out that, if your school is so unsafe that naked bullying is happening, it wouldn’t surprise me if knives were getting sneaked in. I don’t see the scenario of the bully using a weapon when he is ashamed of being taken down as such a far off possibility. I think people that advocate fighting back underestimate how violent the worst kids are willing to get these days.
sometimes it’s the teachers who start things rolling. The teacher who always tells Joey to “stop fussing”, even when Joey happened to be the only one more-or-less still and it’s everybody else who’s having a shaky day; the teacher who asks a student “how can you be so bad at artsy stuff when your mother is such an artist?” in the middle of art class; the teacher who returns marked essays to each student, except for one which gets singled up to be put up on the board (be it because it’s so good or because it’s so bad, or directly because the teacher wants to humiliate that student)…
They may not even intend to hurt that particular student; often they’re exasperated and not thinking clearly; but they are putting a big shiny red “shoot me” arrow on top of the student’s head. Other times they’re doing it on purpose, and ass-kisser students will gang up on the branded classmate to get on Teach’s good side.
Now tell me how is a student whose bullying starts that way supposed to “take off the leader”. Throughout my years in primary school, “the leader” was half the freaking teachers.
I couldnt agree more with what you are saying about nipping it in the bud immediately.
My youngest is a freshman in HS, the other 2 are in college. They have all gone through private schools with students in predominantly upper, upper middle class families, so any opinion that I might have will probably be viewed as pointless.
I have been a pretty involved parent. I’ve known all their friends, and their friends parents. My oldest is a high achiever, physically beautiful, and was one of the cool, popular kids. Thinking forward, I knew that she was in a position where she could be a really snotty shithead of a kid, if she didnt have some guidance. I did the best I could, and she wound up being a great role model for her classmates. Her sisters, while very different people are also enjoying social prosperity, and personal achievement.
We did make sacrifices to assure that there was someone always home for them. I could be a really rich dude right now if we just threw them to the wolves while I pursued my glory. Once the kids were here though, my priorities changed. It was hard, but Now that I’m pushing 50 and not having to deal with major issues with my kids, it was worth it. The only thing I’m lacking is I’m not driving a Mercedes yet.
I know alot of parents that put themselves ahead of their kids, and the kids suffer in one way or another, bully or victim.
Part of my fear as a parent (and as someone who was bullied at times, merely teased at others) has always been that one of my kids will be bullied or teased. The other fear? That they will be the bully.
A great deal of the Task Force-type action going on in our school district is about how to recognize bullying and what to do if your kid is being bullied. I think parents need a whole lot more education on how to recognize if their kid is a little shit.
My oldest is 8, and I recognized a while back that she has a real Diva streak. I have worked pretty hard to make sure that she is being fair and kind to others. Her teachers assure me that she is, but I fully recognize that there are always things they don’t see.
Simple. Most educators are content to just look the other way. As I mentioned before, they have enough on problems with kids being disruptive in the classroom. Why get involved in more problems, especially if they doesn’t involved you directly? Granted, if an honest to goodness beatdown happens, that they can’t implausibly ignore, they’ll take action. But let’s face it, beatdowns are fairly rare, and when they do happen, even the most knuckleheaded of bullies will usually initiate it when a teacher isn’t around.
What teachers should be doing is keeping an eye out for other forms of bullying - name calling, smacking the back of the head, flicking ears, etc. Those are the kinds of petty humiliations that they’re all too often content to ignore, or simply dismiss as “boys will be boys” type of behavior.
And, I don’t think it’s been addressed so far in this thread, but if the bully is some well connected kid, you can pretty much forget about the school delivering anything more severe than a slap on the wrist, if they they deign to do anything at all, which is a pretty big if. You think schools lack the balls to do anything about run of the mill bullies from the wrong side of tracks, they’re absolute asslickers when it comes to handling ones whose parents happen to be local big wigs.
Wow. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, but it seems like you really *are *blaming this girl for crying because you said something massively insulting about her fucked-up appearance.
I got through high school without ever being bullied by a classmate. I suppose that isn’t so special, but given my stature, nerdiness, and general awkwardness I find it surprising that I wasn’t bullied. I guess I need to give credit to my school which did a good job of segregating the population. Also credit to my classmates since I can’t think of a single one who I would classify as a bully. I guess I was lucky.
The only bullying I witnessed in high school was a teacher. It was pretty bad. I hated 7th period that year. The way he treated some students was horrific. Seriously, the guy made fun of a student’s stutter.
It eventually blew up when one of the stronger-willed girls told her mother. The principal was involved. There was much gnashing of teeth amongst the students. That was a weird day.
But the behavior changed.
My sister had the same teacher 4 years prior. When she heard what happened, she said “Finally.”
