Then there’s my own case, in which standing up to tbe bully got me laughed at and beat up.
At least one other person in this thread also said fighting back didn’t work.
So there’s your anecdotes
I presume the OP is interested in the truth about bullying, and at the Dope we know that anecdotes don’t generalize into truth. Hence my aggravation. If people are sincerely interested in helping the OP, and if they know that anecdotes are unreliable, I can’t understand why their advice in this thread is based, in every case, on an anecdote.
I knew I left something out. I talked to my son about this, and he was adamant that he didn’t want a picture taken of his bruises. I vacillated about it, but I don’t want to further traumatize him, and it should be enough at this point that we, as adults, can tell the teacher and if necessary the principal that we saw marks left on our son by known bullies. I will certainly ask the teacher on Monday if documentation would make a difference in how the school deals with this sort of thing.
You could have a doctor look him over. You could resort to some trickery there…have the doctor act like he needs him to take his shirt off to check something or other. A written statement from a doctor could be as good as a photograph because the doctor could give a valid medical opinion of how bad the bruises are. Just a thought.
Not yet. We want to start off with the teacher and see how much satisfaction we get there. If there are any problems at all, my husband is the head of the parent rep council for our daughter’s elementary school and has become very familiar with the various channels governing schools.
There’s not just one solution for bullying. We’re all giving our own advice because we’ve all been bullied and we’re relating what worked in our situations.
How did the bullying change after you got in the fight? As for me, I got in fights with three bullies and in all cases the bullying stopped. And it’s not that I won all the fights. I would say I won one, one got pulled apart, and one I lost when his first punch hit me in the diaphragm and I fell to the ground out of breath. So for me, I had great success with fighting regardless of how the fight turned out.
As for verbal bullying, I found most of it went away when I deflected what was being said instead of trying to offer a rebuttal. For example, if the bully says “That’s an ugly shirt”, don’t respond with a rebuttal like “No it’s not”. The bully wants that so he can offer more insults. Instead, I would deflect what he was saying with something like “I never knew you were so into fashion.” It’s not scientific research, but that worked fabulously for me.
One thing that would probably help is for parents to explain that bullying is an unfortunate part of life. Parents should talk with their kids about different bullying scenarios and how to handle them. That way when it does happen, the kid is prepared and it’s not this big, surprising shock that he’s getting bullied. It’s a sad fact that every kid will get bullied. How he handles it will determine how it continues.
There is a Krav Maga for kids group nearby in West L.A. that I see every once in a while that occasionally has Anti-Bullying Seminars.
Wish I had something like that when I was a kid.
As I understand it, something like Krav Maga may be preferable to Karate, Judo and other “competition-style” martial arts because it is specifically designed around real-world situations. YMMV.
If you read my example I intervened on the behalf of a weaker kid. The bully stopped screwing with me AND the kid I stood up for. If he ever picked on anyone else it wasn’t in front of me. Bullies don’t like pain anymore than the next person.
The concept of standing up for oneself does not bestow super powers upon the revelation. You found that out. If you had been prepared for it the story would have been different. This is not an end-all solution but an observation that bullies respond to people who can stand up to them.
Originally Posted by Susanann View Post
Originally Posted by Susanann View Post
In this order:
Talk to the school/principal (if 1 fails, go to 2)
Talk to the parents (if 2 fails, go to 3)
Talk to the police (if 3 fails, go to 4)
Hire a couple of 16 year old boys to beat the daylights out of those kids and have them warn those kids to never touch him again else it will be worse next time.
(…4 never fails, it always works )
I can testify from personal experience that #4 worked beautifully for us. The last thing that a 12 year old bully wants, is to get beat up by a 16 year old. Have the 16 year olds come to the houses of the 12 year olds, so they make sure that the 12 year old understands that they know where they live, they cant get away, and that they will be back if it happens again.The one thing that bullies clearly understand, is for THEM to get roughed up. It works. They dont like the shoe on THEIR foot.
I know!!! It works!!! …and it works all the time.
Nothing works better, than hiring somebody bigger than the bullies to send them the message to leave him alone.
As far as (teaching) the kid fighting back himself , there are several problems with that: 1. the kid probably will never be able to fight better than the bullies. 2. the bullies already outnumber the kid. 3. Some kids actually “like” to fight(as long as they dont lose), and if you teach your kid to fight back, the bullies might even escalate or make more frequent the times they pick on your kid. 4. If you make the choice to wallow with the hogs, you are going to get dirty. 5. you cannot fight back successfully against everyone - sooner or later you will find a bully who will beat you every time. 6. you may get even more seriously hurt if you fight back
I can’t understand why you’re pussy-footing around this.
If these kids had been adults, would you be hand-wringing over “should I let them work this out themselves?” and “should I have a meeting?” No. You’d be filing assault charges, because that’s precisely what this is. Assault. There’s no “valuable life lesson” taught by responding to this differently than you would expect them to when they’re adults.
When someone you care about is attacked (call it what it is), you go to the police and you give them an oportunity to see justice done.
Sure, talk to the school, but only after you’ve gone to the police and asked to file assault charges, and inform them of this fact while you’re there, and that you expect their full cooperation.
If the police refuse to intervene, identify this bully and end him. Or at least cripple him for life. If the police won’t protect the citizens from violent criminals, the citizens must, by necessity take matters into their own hands.
You want a personal anecdote about my experience with bullies? Most of the bones in my face ended up shattered, I required reconstructive surgery, and a few of the doctors were baffled at how the fragments of my skull had managed to avoid becoming lodged in my brain. Do not tollerate this kind of behavior. Ever. In any degree.
Yah, you stand in front of a judge with discolored nipples and explain why you crushed someones skull. If there’s a computer in prison you can tell us how it worked out for you.:rolleyes:
“After I reported this attack to the police, they told me my safety didn’t matter to them, and then they suggested I take the law into my own hands.”
Or did you again forget that my suggestions of violence were for after the police have refused to help?
There is no point in a proportional response to this sort of behavior. The only guarentee that the behavior will end is to make the abuser physically incapable of continuing to abuse. If the law refuses to impose its remedies, the citizens have no recourse but to deal with it themselves. And private citizens don’t have the facilities for long-term incarceration, narrowing their options still further.
In what world do you live where personal anecdotes are considered citations? And, anyways, not a single person on here has admitted to being a bully. Just because you know what worked doesn’t mean you know why.
What world do I live in? I live in the real world just as everyone else who posted does. This is not a rare event, this happens to everybody growing up and the anecdotal responses were not a matter of theory. They really happened. Trying to hide behind the word “cite” is an academic attempt to win an argument and has little bearing with this thread. Bullying takes on many forms from name calling to physical confrontations. Their reasons for doing so certainly vary as well. It doesn’t matter why they do it, the question is how to stop it.
Best of luck in your search for accredited conflict resolution but in the meantime people who have solved (or not solved) their problems will bring their experience to the table.
Look, Shantih asked people for advice. Most of us here are giving advice based on what has worked for us or for our kids; that’s all we can do. After that (I’m repeating myself here), it’s up to Shantih to sift through all of this and decide on the best approach for him and his son.
Nobody here has suggested shaming the kid if he’s not up for physical self-defense; I don’t know where you go that idea.
Going to the authorities doesn’t always work out either. Moving to a new school doesn’t always work out, either. In a nutshell, “not always how it works out” is not a helpful assessment. It’s very rare that one single solution “always works out” for everyone, and I’m not just talking about bullying. Unless someone here can cite a rigorous scientific study of what approaches offer the highest success rates for ending bullying, the best we can do is offer anecdotes about what has worked for each of us on an individual basis.