It seems that the general consensus around here is that a child should always at least have the option to react with physical violence to bullies, even with purely non-physical bullying.
My question is, what do you consider the appropriate level of such? Is beating up a bully with a baseball bat any different than with fists? After all, a smaller child might NEED some kind of weapon. Obviously, knives and such, being so easily lethal even when handled correctly, are right out. But does using weapons involve too much escalation? Does it invite outside consequences that wouldn’t be as severe had no weapons been used?
You meet force with equivalent force. If the bully is unarmed and the victim uses a weapon, that is not good. The victim has escalated and will now be considered the aggressor.
If the bullying is verbal only, the victim needs to learn deflection techniques that turn the bullying back on the bully.
I was taught by my father when I was a kid that if other children taunted you, you had to take it. But if they laid a hand on you, that’s an altogether different story.
As for a kid pulling a knife on your child, that’s not bullying, that’s criminal activity, and is a whole different arena of discussion! :eek:
How do the police control “bullies”? Sometimes with equal force, but more often with numerical advantage and weapons (lethal and less-than-lethal). A bullied kid doesn’t have these options, or will get in trouble for using them. Add to this the fact that a bully is unlikely to pick on someone who could challenge them on equal terms, so responding with identical force (e.g., fists to fists) is not very practical.
As sad as it sounds, the most effective course of action is often to keep sucking it up and build a well-documented case (written records of dates / times, pictures of injuries, records of conversations with officials, etc.).
I am reminded of a news clip I once saw (sorry, no link) about a man who had been continually threatened and tormented by his neighbors. One day he set up a video camera in his window, and went outside onto his front lawn. While standing on his property he asked his neighbor to stop throwing garbage on his lawn (or some such thing). The neighbor came onto his property and assaulted him. The man did not flee or fight back, but covered up as best he could and took the beating. After the neighbor left, he went back inside, called the police and had the neighbor charged and ultimately convicted. An unfortunate situation, but his solution was highly effective (albeit not without cost).
I thnk most people - like me - are recommending fistfights and wrestling, rather than advocating serious beatings or anything that is likely to result in significant injury. Escalation (in terms of weapons) is rarely justifiable. If a situation is such that serious injuries have occurred or are likely, then definitely police should be involved and lawsuits filed.
That may be the video I saw on one of the news magazines several years ago. A gay man was routinely getting harrassed by his white trash neighbors, so installed a video camera to point to his front yard. As he was watering his front yard, the 16 year old neighbor started ragging him about being gay, literally getting in his face. The victim just couldn’t stand it anymore and splashed the guy with his water hose. This is exactly what the little shit head was waiting for, took his shirt off (apparently to intimidate the victim with his prison-like tats) and proceeded to beat the hell out of him as the victim tried to cover his face with his hands.
After the attacker left, you then see the victim trying to get up, then Mrs. Whitetrash shows up and starts yelling “What have you done to my minor chirld!” over and over again. Apparently, she thought she was being clever with the “minor child” bit so she could set the victim up for a law suit, the pervert coming on to her poor “minor child” and all, the little darling just defending himself.
So I guess the victim handled it exactly as he should have, but if he had taken a bat to the kid, and I had been on the jury and seen the tape, he’d have gotten off in a heart beat.
Man, sometimes the word “bully” just isn’t strong enough for some of the intimidation and violence that it represents.
School children are trapped in a situation similar to prison (so my kids tell me). The have no choice in the matter and they have to deal with the situations there themselves in most cases. Sure, over time a “case” can be built up to get a bully in trouble but in the meantime the victims of the bully have to deal with that person, often with no outside help. I believe my kids should have the option to physical resist bullies or even attack them in extreme cases. By that I mean that I will support them if they feel the need to defend themselves and I have told them they should use a stick if they need to.
The important point is that a bully is much less likely to attack a person in a defensive attitude with a stick in their hand. I want my children to show that they will defend themselves and that, no, they don’t think pinching and hitting are just playing around. That doesn’t mean they have to beat the bullies with baseball bats.
There is a big difference between fight and a fight with weapons and escalation is never a good idea. If you are being verbally abused fight back with words if they are hitting you hit back but by being the first one to escalate things you open yourself to all kinds of legal problems.
The problem with escalating to the authorities with problems is that unless the problem is very major the offender will be released without any serious punishment and you’ve shown that you are an easy target. There is a guy on my rugby team who likes to fight and even after being arrested for assault several times he sill gets time served and a fine. What do you think they are going to do to a child for their first offense? Now you have someone who is upset at you, before they probably just saw you as an easy target, and you have to wait until you have enough to go to the authorities again.
Neither of these options really ends the problem of bullying which is why so many people were suggesting dealing with it yourself. If you are already being hit you won’t have legal problems and if you deal with the problem yourself you solution is always with you and there is no option of waiting for your protectors back to be turned.
There’s nothing morally wrong with escalation. Bullies deserve much more than a bat to the head. It isn’t advisable only because of counter-escalation, potential legal problems, and not wanting to encourage vigilantism in other cases where it might not be appropriate.
Everyone seems to be in one of two camps, “fight back” or “involve the authorities” (whether that means school authorities, police, or whatever). But it seems there’s hardly anyone espousing both.
As a kid, I was teased mercilessly, but fortunately, I was only physically bullied a handful of times, and I’ve never been in a fight. I’m sure it helped that I was a girl. But I really wish my parents had encouraged me to fight back, both verbally and physically. Their stance was, “You *never *hurt someone else, no matter what.” Occasionally, I tried to go to the teachers, but that never helped. So I just took it, and it ruined my self-esteem. For over a decade, I felt like a piece of crap who didn’t deserve to have friends. Now, I strongly believe in fighting back, and if I have kids, I intend to teach them to defend themselves. And I know it often works.
But my problem is with *why *it works: as has been said over and over, if you defend yourself, the bully will not want to pick on you… so they’ll go find an easier target. The problem doesn’t stop, it’s just transferred to someone else. I don’t want to teach my kids that it isn’t a problem unless it’s happening to you. Let’s say you’ve had your house broken into, so you fight back: you install an expensive alarm system, heavy duty locks, and bars on the windows. You do this so that (hopefully) any burglars happening by will try to pick an easier target. But if you *see *someone breaking into your neighbor’s house, wouldn’t you still call the police?
To me, fighting back tells the bully, “It’s not okay to do this to me”, while going to the authorities says, “It’s not okay to do this. Period.” There’s no reason they can’t be told both.
It’s interesting you should say that about the video; my eldest child was having trouble with a couple of kids so he decided to take his video camera to school. He filmed the kids picking on some other kids on the playground, which drew attention to him and drew all the other kids around – whereupon they went over to the bullies and made them stop.
Honestly, had he asked me I would probably have told him not to do it, it seems sort of a risky move to me But it seemed to effectively solved the problem in that case.
I did, however, stop him from putting the vid up on Youtube, which was apparently his plan. I asked him why he did it. He said the only way to deal with mean people is to show the world what they are doing, and apparently he meant the whole world.
Defending or fighting back myself led to more people holding me down and escalating the beatings and torture as well as getting more and more severe punishment from authorities. Their advice was to stop reacting and the other kids would get bored.
It’s been a long time since I was in school, but do kids still have the concept of “rep”? Basically rep (short for reputation) is an metaphorical account of social credit. Actions like performing well on a sports team, winning a fight or simply standing up to a much larger kid increases rep. Actions like allowing kids to pick on you without response and other displays of weakness decrease your rep. High rep tends to attract friends and girls while low rep tends to attract bullies and scorn.
The lesson I learned as a kid was that teachers and parents were apathetic idiots who had no idea what they were talking about. If someone starts with you, you stand up for yourself as best you can…period. Otherwise it just encourages others to pick on you. Telling was not encouraged as it just made you look weak and did little to nothing to discourage bullying. In fact, from what I’ve seen, the teachers probably had as much scorn for the victims as the kids did. Also, it doesn’t hurt to take up sports or karate or lift weights or something so you are actually physically stronger.
I was never really bullied all that much growing up. At least not in the sense of some nemesis constantly pursuing me for abuse. I occassionally got in fights or smack-talk with some asshole or another and that was usually enough for a potential bully to move on.
But really the best way to avoid a bully is to be someone who is well liked and gets along with people.
From my personal experience: You do what is necessary to defend yourself, but no further. If that means punching back or picking up a chair and hitting the bully until he backs off, so be it; just don’t keep on escalating. Don’t expect help from the authorities; they either don’t care or on the side of the bully. Accept that you WILL get in trouble with the authorities if you choose to be anything other than a passive victim; but unlike the bullies they won’t beat you or throw rocks at you or worse. It’s better to be punished by the authorities than to accept the results of obeying the rules.
Because as a rule people like that ARE the bullies. It’s the popular kids who do most of the bullying.
The logic about allowing bullying is that “children need to learn how to protect themselves,” but this is patently false. Incident after incident is showing that the bullies are winning, regardless of what ABC’s Afterschool Specials or Disney have to say about it. I, for one, am glad that there are now anti-bullying laws.
Minimum level of force to make the bully stop. Not to retaliate or seek vengeance. Just make him stop so you can get away and then involve the authorities asap. Ideally, this level of force should not inflict injury which require hospital treatment or rehabilitation, but it depends on the level of violence the bullies use in the first place. If a kid is cornered by several much larger bullies who make significant threats, he may be justified in breaking some bones or blowing out joints, purely from a self defence perspective.
I suspect that a good shove, a loud yell, and maybe even one punch to the nose may suffice in 99% of the situations.
Ideally, imho, if kids are trained in self-defence, they should be taught two levels of response. The first I’ll call “make the bully stop”, which should be restricted to mostly defeating grabs and perhaps strikes to the nose/head. The second I’ll call “get away from the predator dragging you to his van”. This would call for an incapacitating level of response that can include strikes targeting the groin, eyes, knees, cervical spine and throat. Even so, I think you need a definite level of maturity before you start teaching this stuff. You don’t want Johnny fifth grader breaking someone’s larynx on the playground over some bad words.
Defense is always an option. (by any means necessary)
Bullies, in my experience, rarely work alone. Either they have someone who works directly with them or the ‘audience’ is giving them there tacit approval.
So basically a lone victim is almost always unable to mount a defense. Their only real option is to wait, retreat, and report.
When I have a son, chances are he’s going to be a small guy (I was very scrawny until I went into the military). And if some bigger kid is making his life hell and my son beat him with a bat, I would not punish him in the least. The playing field should be equal, and the bully has the advantage of size, so that’s why weapons were made.
I got into a fight in junior high. Some kid kept messing with me all year and then I finally snapped and called him on it. I only remember snippets of the fight (I guess I blacked out or something) but I do remember him on the floor and me kicking him. Of course I got suspended for fighting, but because I didn’t hit first my “punishment” was to go to my grandparents for the weekend. The only thing my grandpa asked me was if I won.
My boys have always been taught that they may not start a fight, but that I do expect them to finish it as best they can. If they throw the first punch, they get in trouble and lots of it. If they throw the last punch, or even fight back, and get in trouble, their suspension from school for fighting is going to be a disneyland. The big thing is that you HAVE to document. You have to record and report every incident, with pictures, and have to be willing to take it to the real courts, not just the principal. The kid fighting back isn’t going to cut it most of the time. It’s not going to solve the problem in the long term.
The principal wants peace in the school, not to fix the problem. He or she is interested in the most effective learning environment for the most students, not the problems of that kid over there. I can’t really fault the school for that in a lot of cases. Not only that, but the schools can’t really do anything about after-hours on-the-walk-home stuff. Sometimes the problem goes past what the school can or should handle, and bruises, attacks that cause damage, gangs of bullies tormenting a smaller child, these are really beyond what the school can handle. At that point, since you’ve had the school involved all along, you have to take all your documentation, all the school documentation you kept copies of, etc., and take it to the real authorities. At that point, even if your kid has been involved in a fight, you can document self-defense, and a trend of assault, torment, verbal abuse, etc., and get something done legally.
I’m sorry if someone’s widdle snowfwake who couldn’t POSSIBLY hurt a fly gets sent to juvenile hall or prison, but I have proof, and you have a monster that you failed to raise properly. Maybe if you’d tried to put a stop to it the first time the principal/teacher/parent brought it to your attention, your baby wouldn’t be the asshole in prison.