Yeah, the Florida A&M band says hello.
Bullying, of whatever stripe, seems to be all about dominance from what I can tell. That’s why the bullies typically don’t mess with people who aren’t submissive.
Combine that with typical kid culture that doesn’t value informing the authorities/telling the teacher, and you have a situation where it’s ultimately something that the kids have to do for themselves, IMO.
That doesn’t necessarily mean 1950’s style punching the bully in the teeth, but it does generally require a change of mindset on the part of the victim that they aren’t going to be submissive and they aren’t going to be bullied anymore. This can take many forms, but the important thing is the realization and recognition on the part of the victim that they aren’t going to be the victim anymore.
Anything else pretty much invites future bullies to do the same exact thing, and if you’re an adult, you can’t really go to the cops and say that the guy down the street is mean to you!
Personally, I always got a lot of mileage out of standing up to the bullies- letting them know that while I didn’t really want to physically fight, I was absolutely willing to let things come to that if they persisted. Probably 4 times out of 5, they backed down because they were already on thin ice with the teachers discipline-wise, and didn’t want another fight. The other 1 time out of 5, it didn’t work and I ended up in fights.
Luckily, I had a particularly old-school grandfather, who had been a 1930’s era boxer, and who taught me how to fight, so bullies were usually pretty surprised, because I didn’t look like a kid who knew how to throw a correct and a HARD punch.
Back in the day, teachers could hit students, and parents sided with the school and with general decency. My Dad taught me how to box as a kid, and I got into some trouble at school for fighting, but managed not to get expelled. Dad believed in standing up to bullies.
That’s not advice I’d give any student nowdays. I gather that between “no tolerance” policies, younger and younger gang members, and lawsuits, not to mention negative evaluations that could seriously follow a student through their lives, I’d have to say either just avoid the bullies or turn “snitch”, to at least start a paper trail of evidence against them. The school may not do much to sanction the bully, but there will at least be a record of the events, and that can be useful later in the case of legal proceedings.
Sure, but rude or annoying or bad remarks aren’t bullying, and it diminishes the impact of real bullying to pretend that they are. Being rude isn’t torturing someone with words.
There’s a continuum here, from general dickishness to a continued pattern of intimidation and threats. The first isn’t anything the police can deal with; the second is, well, harassment and might even rise to the level of assault, both of which are crimes.
There are all kinds of play at the plate scenarios where there is no clear anything involved and everything is a grey mess. However, the kinds of stories I hear about bullying in these threads are pretty clearly stuff that would be straight-up criminal if an adult were on the receiving end of it, and isn’t the kind of thing that we should be solving through fistfights. Not just because the victim might lose, but because we live in a civil society, and a civil society has laws which are actually enforced. Without that, we have a Hobbesean State of Nature, which is worse than an actual hunter-gatherer society.
I had a bully when I was a kid.
He was a year older and would wait for me to walk past his house every morning on the way to school. Unless I walked about four blocks out of my way I had no choice but to walk past his house.
This went on for years.
One day I was at the park with my little brother and my bully’s little brother started to pick on my brother and I broke it up.
Of course he went and got his big brother (my bully).
When he got there he started his usual shit.
He never got to finish what he was saying because I was beating the shit out of him.
Sometimes these things resolve themselves. No parents, teachers, or police.
I sure wish someone had told me when I was a kid that standing up for yourself is a good thing, that once or twice you might need to throw down for your own sake and that was ok.
Every single thing told me during my childhood was “Walk away, ignore, tell a teacher, do something else, it will stop eventually” without variation. None of it worked, but I was given no other alternatives for the “good kid” so I kept on doing what they said to.
So I would say, let your kids know you have their backs and that standing up for yourself, sometimes physically, is ok. I sometimes imagine how my childhood might have been different with a few well-chosen punches or headbutts. I can’t truly regret it because I like the person I’ve grown in to today, but maybe that other me would’ve been great too (and with much less pain).
Senior band geeks are *way *bigger than freshman bullies.
My kids know that I have their back. I would never ever get even remotely upset if they stand up to a bully or help someone being bullied. They have a special needs sister and understand some of the uglier sides of bullying. Of course, we live is suburbia.
And I hope I never have to deal with bullying. My older brother was bullied in high school and I was semi bullied in high school, and so I want to protect my kids from that.
Rude, annoying, and bad remarks are the basis of verbal bullying. Bullying can’t happen without them. Sure, one remark isn’t bullying, but that’s not what we’re talking about. If Urbanredneck is talking about his son being picked on, it’s happened more than once.
Acknowledging verbal bullying doesn’t diminish the impact of other types of bullying. It recognizes that there is more than one way to damage human beings. Referring to verbal bullying as “being rude” is what diminishes bullying.
It totally depends on what kind of people the bullies are. If they are normal kids doing normal jerkish things, your son needs to whoop their asses. That will put the bullying to an end quickly.
If these guys come from rough neighborhoods or have a history of delinquency, that’s a little more tricky. Your son fighting back might make this situation worse. Weapons might be used. Bigger and stronger kids from their neighborhood might get involved.
I’m going out on a limb and assuming you don’t know much about how boys bully. Boys hit. That’s it, all the verbal stuff is merely a prelude to the hitting part. Now girls will tease until someone gets an eating disorder, but if boys aren’t pushing, punching, or kicking it’s not bullying. The OP comes in with a humblebrag about how physically capable his son is, a winner of karate tournaments who plays football and hockey, but he gets treated rudely by other kids. Well sorry, his precious snowflake probably doesn’t get treated at school with the deference he gets at home, but that’s not bullying either.
Boys can bully without physical contact, and girls exhibit more physical bullying these days. Your general point is correct though, simple rudeness is not bullying per se. The key factor in bullying is the satisfaction or even pleasure the bully derives from his/her actions.
I think it’s absolutely critical parents have a good relationship with their kids. In a lot of bullying situations, the victim is pretty isolated before they even step in school. It can get hard when kids are tweens because on one hand, they NEED their parents’ support for things like this, but on the other hand they are wanting some independence and having to resort to going to your parents for help/protection can feel embarrassing.
Kids need to be empowered to stand up for themselves and their peers. I notice that bullying gets a lot less traction in cultures/places where everyone is invested in sticking up for each other. In other places, kids are so afraid of making themselves a target it actually isolates then more and makes them MORE prone to bullying.
But it’s critical that kids feel they can fight back in a way condoned by adults- so they can take charge of themselves. The problem with the “Walk away, ignore, tattle” advice is that it takes all the power and agency away from the victim- you’re taught that you don’t have any agency in the situation, you have to simply endure it.
Kids raised like this have problems in the workplace because they don’t learn to handle conflict, only to internalize or complain about it. They perpetually feel stuck under the whims and cruelty of others, because they can’t seem to tell people “no”.
Or it could lead the destruction of a parent’s career if the bully’s parents are influential enough.
Whenever I hear about a one-on-one shooting or stabbing at a school, my first thought is ALWAYS that the “victim” had it coming. :dubious:
And there are some people who just plain old cannot defend themselves, no matter what. 
Sorry, but that is not correct.
Bullies do what they do because they get a rise out of the victim. If the victim doesn’t give them that satisfaction, they’ll get tired of it and go somewhere else. And yes, Tell An Adult works. Tell teachers, tell parents. If the bully starts catching heat, more than likely they will back off.
The only time that the victim needs to show force is if the bully escalates and attacks them first. At that point, I agree with you. Don’t be the one to start the fight, by any stretch of the imagination, but always be the one who ends the fight. And if it happens at school and the school tries to pull Zero Tolerance bullshit on the victim and suspend them, the parents should go on the warpath and be prepared to sue the school, the principal, the school board, et al, until that idiocy is done away with. No school board anywhere, at any time, has the authority to dictate that a student cannot put up a defense against a physical attack. Period.
Not from where I come from. Zero Tolerance is a f’ng joke. I grew up with bullies and know them pretty well.
My best friend was a bully, she did not do it to get a rise out of the victim, but from those witnessing the bullying. The bullies I have know would not “go somewhere else” they would just hound the poor victim even more. Have you ever heard of “snitches get stiches”. You go tell a teacher, and you could be in for even worse problems from others.
The thing I have learned over the many years of living in the city, is that you must counter-attack a bully as soon as the bullying begins. If they think you would put up a fight, then they would walk away and find easier prey. The best thing is to find someone bigger and/or meaner than the bully to set things straight. 
Yup, make friends will a big, slow psycho and let him get arrested for assault and let the bully’s family sue his parents. I actually like that.