Where was all this attention on bullying when I was a youngster?

[Robot_Arm]

@sandra_nz

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.

I never got so far as hiding in the closet, but looking back on my childhood I can’t think of anybody who had my back.

Sounds like your husband is lucky to have found you.

[VinylTurnip]

@Bob Ducca

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.

Tell me about it. I’m just glad there’s no online forum where people can savage us behind our backs…

[Norse]

@steronz

Are schools getting better at handling bullies?

Probably impossible to tell due to a lack of reliable data, but frankly I doubt it.

There’s a totally different level of awareness today compared to when I was in middle or high school. At least in my country, there’s a lot of discussions, campaigns, Facebook memes and whatnot about bullying. But based on my rather limited dataset (my children’s experience), schools haven’t gotten much better at handling the situation. There’s a lot of lipservice and a lot of hot air, a lot of good intentions, documents, signatures, speeches and crap. But on the “handling”, nada. Nothing. Zilch. Fortunately, none of my children have tried to commit suicide like I tried. At least AFAIK…

[Agent_Foxtrot]

I agree that Columbine opened people’s eyes to bullying. People thought, “Oh my God, I didn’t realize it was so bad that the kids getting bullied would kill people!”

Columbine was a tragedy, but I’m going to be a pariah and say that it was necessary for the problem of bullying to get attention.

And yes, thank God I graduated high school before the internet got big.

[Zebra]

Well I think at some schools it’s OK to bully as long as you don’t turn them into murderers.
My biggest problem is that my bully lived in my house. My older brother. Heck, till I was 14 we lived in the same room. School was sometimes a relief because we were in different grades. Of course when the bullies at school figured out that my older brother would not defend me…

I hated summers.

[Dendarii_Dame]

Father Sends Son To School With A Wire, Records Verbal Abuse From Teachers

According to the above cite, some parents are sending their kids to school wearing a wire to provide evidence of abuse–in this case by teachers, but I can imagine this being used against other students as well.

[VinylTurnip]

@BetsQ

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.

I guess this is a good thing in theory, but a part of me can’t help thinking “a mildly offensive name and they spilled to the bulls? The little rat finks!”

[Soylent_Juicy]

When I was a kid I was picked on but it never once occurred to me to tell a teacher or parent. You just didn’t - that was called “tattling” and you’d be forever branded as a “tattle-tale”. It honestly never entered my mind to tell an adult.

[enipla]

@MyFootsZZZ

Yikes! How long ago was that?

[Marley23]

@Soylent_Juicy

When I was a kid I was picked on but it never once occurred to me to tell a teacher or parent. You just didn’t - that was called “tattling” and you’d be forever branded as a “tattle-tale”. It honestly never entered my mind to tell an adult.

And if you don’t tell anybody, the teasing continues unabated.

“Yes, they are a clever bunch.” -Homer Simpson

Which is why it matters if awareness of this behavior has finally changed. In the past, students might be able to get some immediate help by telling a teacher, but in the long run nothing serious would be done and there would be payback for tattling. When people take the problem seriously, that kind of thing does not happen.

[shiftless]

@Sailboat

The administrators at my various schools were relentlessly vigilant to identify any bullied kid who fought back and punish him or her.

I was called in to school one day to meet with the principal of my son’s elementary school. Another kid had punched him in the face and the school wanted to get a straight answer from him about what he said that would make a kid punch him. They had grilled him already and he wasn’t confessing like they wanted. They had decided that the poor kid who punched my son in the face was the victim of bullying. My son claimed he never said anything to that kid and nobody heard him say anything but the school had made up its mind who was the victim and who was the bully and that was that. I talked them out of punishing my son but they had no interest in the the other kid beyond finding out what all the meanies had said to him.

[Sunspace]

@Soylent_Juicy

When I was a kid I was picked on but it never once occurred to me to tell a teacher or parent. You just didn’t - that was called “tattling” and you’d be forever branded as a “tattle-tale”. It honestly never entered my mind to tell an adult.

And people wonder where prison culture comes from. It was like that in kindergarten for me.

[Eve]

@Soylent_Juicy

When I was a kid I was picked on but it never once occurred to me to tell a teacher or parent. You just didn’t - that was called “tattling” and you’d be forever branded as a “tattle-tale”. It honestly never entered my mind to tell an adult.

Plus, “You told? You’re dead–just wait till after school!”

[Mister_Rik]

@Hampshire

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?

My theory is that the USA was still being run by the WW2 generation, the generation that stood up to Hitler and kicked his ass, and believed that even little kids should be able to “stand up for themselves”.

@Soylent_Juicy

When I was a kid I was picked on but it never once occurred to me to tell a teacher or parent. You just didn’t - that was called “tattling” and you’d be forever branded as a “tattle-tale”. It honestly never entered my mind to tell an adult.

Heh. I was looking at some of my old grade school report cards and saw one teacher’s comment: “Richard is a tattle-tale”. 1972 or so, 1st grade, teacher probably close to my grandmother’s age, so again, WW2 generation.

[Poysyn]

@Soylent_Juicy

When I was a kid I was picked on but it never once occurred to me to tell a teacher or parent. You just didn’t - that was called “tattling” and you’d be forever branded as a “tattle-tale”. It honestly never entered my mind to tell an adult.

I have tried really hard to drill into my kid’s head that “tattle-taling is just wanting to get someone into trouble, telling a grown-up is when you want someone to help make it STOP.”

So far, that seems to make sense to her.

[BetsQ]

@Soylent_Juicy

When I was a kid I was picked on but it never once occurred to me to tell a teacher or parent. You just didn’t - that was called “tattling” and you’d be forever branded as a “tattle-tale”. It honestly never entered my mind to tell an adult.

Part of the anti-bullying training at my kids’ schools includes lessons in how to deal with people who are being unkind. I don’t remember exactly what they are, but it’s several steps that involve standing up for yourself and telling the other kid to stop doing whatever. If that doesn’t work, the final option is to go tell an adult and ask for their help. I like it.

[GargoyleWB]

@Eve

Plus, “You told? You’re dead–just wait till after school!”

Youze a stoolie, see! You sang like a canary, youze a fink, a rat. You folded like a cheap scarf. Gum shoes give you the third, and you grab air? Snitches get stitches, see.

[Marley23]

@GargoyleWB

Snitches get stitches, see.

Heh. The only time I ever heard that one in real life was from a group of drunk middle-aged men at a baseball game. It was creepy.

[John_DiFool]

@MyFootsZZZ

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.

I’m living proof that that doesn’t have to be the case-what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.

Said thought is completely independent of the actual damage and suffering that bullying can indeed cause.

[astorian]

@LaurenIpsum

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.

You’re absolutely right, Columbine was a HUGE factor… which is strange, because it’s pretty clear that bullying was NOT a key reason for Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s murder spree.