Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad there’s a higher level of awareness these days on how miserable life can be if you’re a kid that’s being picked on or bullied.
Being bullied myself, I would have to say that there’s definitely some permanent damage that’s been done as a result. I have emotional scars, and I can’t even imagine how life, (particularly the social aspect of it), would be different if I had never been a target.
What I’m happy about now is that there are hopefully more kids to stand up for those who are being bullied. That almost bothered me more than someone randomly picking on me; That no one who saw it did anything to help me. Not even teachers sometimes.
I wish I could say I got my revenge by being happy and successful, but that’s not the case… not yet at least. I’m sure I’m not the only one here who’s been a victim of this. I’m guessing there have to be some people here who were bullied as well. Some of you might be stronger because of it. Maybe there are people like me who still feel damaged from it. Maybe some of you have kids that have a problem with being bullied.
I’m willing to share more, if anyone has questions. But for now this is my OP, simply telling people I was picked on, and the effects it probably had on me. It’s a little embarrassing to talk about… still. It would mean a lot if others, who can relate, contributed.
I hope things change for the better and kids these days are less likely to go through what I, and a bunch of others, have gone through.
I feel like a jerk for saying this, but I feel like bullying didn’t get much attention until Columbine, when I suddenly heard news outlets and people on the internet saying, “We have to put a stop to this bullying.” It seemed to me that the only reason people were saying this was to avoid another shooting. As in - it’s okay for people to get bullied as long as it doesn’t affect me. But if bullying causes people to go on a shooting spree (where I could get hurt), then bullying must be stopped. The old “what’s in it for me?” idea.
I say this as someone who was treated like an outcast for much of elementary school, junior high, and high school. (I was never technically “beaten up” but there was a physical aspect to some of the bullying.) I was in college when Columbine happened, so my worst times were behind me, but I sort of feel like nobody cared how I was treated simply because I didn’t go berserk.
Granted, it’s not all selfishness. With the rise of teens who have committed suicide after bullying, that may have also contributed to more people caring about it. Still, I feel like it shouldn’t have taken a tragedy to happen (or multiple tragedies) before people started caring.
Thank god we didn’t have the internet when I was a kid. Regular old-school punch-in-the-face bullying is much preferable to what kids are going through now with the cyber-bullying that goes on.
I think all this opposition to bullying is just so much lip service. Think of highly successful films and TV shows like, The Godfather Series, Scarface (enshrined like classics!), The Sopranos. Which people watch and discuss in front of their kids without a second thought. These things didn’t make millions, upon millions of dollars, (for a lot of people!), because people are disgusted and appalled by bullying and violence.
You can’t worship the Godfather series, adore Tony Soprano, quoting with pride whenever possible and seriously believe your kids are hearing any anti bullying lip service you may be making. Kids aren’t that stupid.
That’s kind of the point: it’s something people pay more attention to these days. The school shootings probably play into that, and so does the Internet because it’s harder to ignore this stuff if it’s right in front of you in text messages or Facebook. I don’t know how much difference it makes on a day-to-day basis and I don’t know if the attention is starting to spill into overreaction, but if teachers and school administrators aren’t allowed to ignore bullying and taunting anymore, it’ll make school a better place for a lot of kids.
But they’re stupid enough to confuse fact and fiction, right?
My son is in 4th grade. He told me earlier this year that he was having problems with another kid at school. The next morning, I called the two teachers they both have and the school’s guidance counselor. I got very positive reactions from all three. The two classroom teachers agreed to keep an eye on interactions between the two of them. The guidance counselor talked to each of them individually, talked to them together, and then somehow managed to get them working together on something tangentially related. Things now seem to be much improved. I’ve asked my kid follow up questions on occasion, and I’ve seen the two of them interacting in a very positive manner.
Another story: Some kid called another kid a mildly offensive name on the bus on the way to school. A whole herd of kids (including my son) went to go tell the principal as soon as they got to school. Action was taken - I’m not sure of the details - but the important thing is that my son’s friend felt like the other kids on the bus had his back.
What I think is important background to these events is that the local schools talk about bullying early and often. Having the guidance counselor come to the classroom to talk about bullying (among other things) happens as regularly as going to music or art or P.E. This means that the guidance counselor at my son’s school knew both of the kids involved in his incident. Also, the primary school has a list of six behavioral goals that they recite after the Pledge of Allegiance each morning. This list includes, “Treat myself and others so that everyone feels liked and safe at school.” I don’t want to say that we have some sort of bully-free utopia around here, but from what I see as a parent, our schools are being proactive about bullying and are responding quickly and effectively to incidents.
Yeah, I got beat up at the bus stop every morning (Ted? Billy? Bobby? Don’t think I don’t remember your names!). I used every excuse not to go out at recess, where I would be harassed and/or hit. Gym class? Dun’t esk! But the only reaction I got from the school was “oh, kids will be kids!” or “why don’t you hit them back?”
But yes, thank goodness this was pre-Internet; I was only being teased and insulted in front of my class, not in front of the whole world.
My husband was bullied at school and it was never taken seriously by his parents. He used to sneak home and hide in a closet rather than face them at school. His mother actually found him there a few times and, as far as I can tell, never really did anything about it. This actually came up at a dinner once and she just said something like, ‘I didn’t realise it was that bad,’ and then just moved on to talking about something else. And she’s a high school teacher. :rolleyes:
It has definitely affected his life as an adult, he is still very sensitive to the usual ribbing and teasing that adults do with each other (particularly in some cultures where it’s seen as a sign of acceptance if your mates make jokes at your expense). He has come a long way in the years that I’ve known him (we met when he was 18 and he’s now in his thirties), but I’ve learnt to be careful around how I frame things so that he doesn’t perceive it as an attack.
And that’s an interesting point, actually. Some of the stuff he’s told me that he experienced (both as a child and as an adult) wasn’t actually bullying, although he perceived it to be. It was just that he wasn’t equipped with the tools to cope in certain situations. As an armchair pyschologist, I’d suggest that’s because the right behaviours were never role modelled at home. I also suspect there’s a slight Asperger’s-like element there (no formal diagnosis), in that he wasn’t very good at seeing things from another person’s point of view. So in the time we’ve been together, we’ve done quite a lot of talking around his view of events versus my view of events, particularly things that have happened to us as a couple.
So I’m rambling a bit and not really making a coherent point. I guess what I would say to sum up is that he is a lot happier person now than he was as a child/teenager. Those things that happened to him as a child will always be with him, but he can deal with them, accept that they happened, and if anything, it makes him a much kinder adult because he knows how hurtful and harmful bullying can be.
There wasn’t much bullying in our school. The teachers wouldn’t allow it. I got into a playground fight once, and they broke it up very quickly. I once said something mildly derogatory about another kid in gym class (“Be sure to cover for x.”) and the coach chewed me out.
I was skinny and a terrible athlete, but was only harassed once – a single comment that I defused with a quick reply (They called me “Jew.” I turned, smiled, and said, “Jealous?” They laughed and never bothered me again).
It helped that we were a small school. There were less than 50 in my elementary school class, and only 110 in my senior class (still the largest one in the history of the school). It was easier to keep your eye on everyone.
I won’t say there wasn’t any bullying (the guys who said “Jews” to me were harassing another Jewish kid, so I had time to think of a reply), but the teachers would never stand for it and if you reported it, they’d take it seriously.
The bullying I endured during late elementary and all of middle school was one of my motivating factors in becoming a teacher. By God, that shit would not go down in my classroom, and my students found that out really fast.
I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a combination of teachers with motivation like myself, schools and districts being held accountable by lawsuit, and publicity of the consequences of bullying. There are even research papers that show bullies grow up to have problems with socialization, because they never learn to treat everyone with respect, and businesses have long been held accountable for tolerating a hostile workplace. They don’t put up with it, because they know it can get them named in a lawsuit, so the bully gets fired. Dealing with the problem at school, before kids go out into the grown up world is the best way to solve it.
It was in the same place the attention for ‘shell shock’ was - being marginalized as character-building and minimized as the far-reaching psychological issue it should have been. I think it’s only in the last 2 generations that we Americans have admitted that an even or series of events can be traumatic and that trauma can leave a person w/ psychological trauma that affects years of their life.
For example, we’re no longer an agrarian-based society. You no longer have fatal ‘farm accidents’ involving Uncle John who came back from the war ‘a little nervous’ or accidental drownings of kids who seemed to cry all the time. Consequently, families have more offspring who live longer and have more instances of mental health issues. W/ the easier living comes the chance to be an angry, bitter confused middle aged person who reflects on what they went through and was affected by.
But that’s just my WAG from observing my mom’s poor, Appalachian-based family.
Not a victim of it but witnessed it quite a bit in the 70s.
Seems like the common sense approach these days for adults to intervene. So much so that I have to question what the hell was wrong with the adults back in the 70s that they just turned a blind eye to the situation?
I’m still filled with guilt as an adult from being a 10 year-old observer over some of the bullying I saw and wonder often how these kids fared as adults. How could teachers be so blind to it and do nothing?
I was never beat up, but I was harassed a lot. I learned to diffuse situations, but I wouldn’t describe any of my time at school as “pleasant.”
I have kids of my own now, and I’m worried about what school will be like for them. When I was getting bullied, I never felt like the administration didn’t take it seriously, but I did feel like they were powerless. Punishing the offender never seemed to have an effect, and in some cases made things worse for me. I learned early on that it was better to deal with it in my own way versus “tattling,” and I think that was the overall attitude at the time. “Kids have to learn to stand up for themselves” and all that.
I think that attitude is changing some, in that there’s less victim blaming going on, but I’m not sure if schools have better tools now besides punishment. In my experience, the only thing that helped with the harassment was other kids – good kids who didn’t need to make fun of the geek to feel good about themselves and weren’t afraid to stand up and call out their friends for being assholes. But that’s a cultural thing, and kids like that are few and far between.
For me, the teachers/administrators growing up were often the bullies. The PE teacher that mocked the skinny kid in the shower? That ridiculed the fat girl in front of everyone? Check. The physics teacher that mocked the low-scoring kids in front of the class? Check. The playground supervisors that let “boys be boys” when big kids were rubbing dog shit in the weak kids hair? Check.
The great thing that the internet has done has been to make much of this behavior observable and documentable, it isn’t so easy to hide any more.
I was one of the biggest kids in school, so I had few problems. Except for this on little shit. I guess he was trying to make his mark by picking on someone twice as big as him. It was quite humiliating for me because I just took it. It was just verbal abuse, and he was trying to get me to throw the first punch.
Glad I didn’t as a .45 was later found in his locker…
