EXACTLY. You simply did. not. tell.
You either put up with it, fought back, or if you were lucky enough to have an older brother or sister THEY took care of the problem.
I learned quickly in Kindergarten when a kid kept pushing me around until I finally hauled off and shoved his ass into a cubbyhole and I was the one who got in trouble. I was a mousy, sheltered, only child and I never stood up for myself again, lest I be the one who got blamed. Again: never told my parents, see above reason…
I was never beat up but I was just harassed mercilessly. I too felt like no one had my back. I was a piece of work. Bad hygiene poor kid clothes smart. Oddball parents. That experience affects me to this day from my lack of self esteem to my choice of fetishes. This past summer my therapist suggested that I too have a touch of the aspergers. I hope with all the discussion that kids won’t have to go thru what I did. It was,brutal and after effects still waaay more than linger. My wife is an angel. Very patient but willing to smack me upside the head. I decided at young age that some negative attention was better than being ignored completely. Now I question if that was a wise choice.
Yes. They were outsiders and got picked on some, but there were also budding sociopaths and not perpetual victims. It’s funny how events like that can get twisted as they are commemorated by the public. In the Rutgers spying case, there was a widespread perception that Tyler Clementi killed himself because his roommate outed him by videotaping him - the spying was all true, but he was already out to his parents and at least some friends. This thread about the Lawrence v. Texas case (anti-sodomy laws) revealed another crazy one.
Yeah, I wish this sort of anti-bullying campaign had existed as I was going through school.
I was bullied viciously throughout grade school, but apparently not nearly as badly as some of the posters here; in my case it was almost purely strong verbal harassment and ostracism, and aside from some very few and far in between instances when things became particularly brutal, it never escalated into physical conflicts. I consider myself lucky in that the bullying for me just altogether STOPPED completely as soon as I got to high school. To this day I still can’t pinpoint why it turned out that way, but a few things probably played a role:
I naturally just “grew out” of being a target as I got older. My body filled out a bit, I got taller, etc; those things make you less likely to be picked on by bullies.
Maturity of high school kids is higher than K-8 rascals. At least in my HS, I always just got the feeling that the kids in general had better things to do than bullying other kids. That isn’t to say that other kids weren’t bullied, though; no, I knew of kids at my school who were apparently getting bullied, but I never encountered that behavior personally or ran into it firsthand.
I was an extremely popular guy in high school, and this might be the biggest draw that’ll dissuade bullies; I mean, if you had a lot of friends, then more people would presumably come to your defense in the face of bullying. I had a ton of friends in high school, and wasn’t bullied at all.
I can’t imagine how I might’ve turned out if I’d been bullied just as aggressively throughout high school as I had been during grades K-8. I don’t have any emotional scars or anything, but it’s entirely plausible to me that bullying could definitely lead to things such as those.
I’m sorry you feel embarassed. My experience has been that nearly everyone can relate and sympathize; even bullies get picked on by other bullies sometimes.
I’m absolutely terrible with names and have the memory of a goldfish* and I can still remember the full name of the girl who unsnapped by bra on the bus on the way home the very first day I was wearing one (and could not possible for the life of me have re-clipped it).
Me too, except it was because I moved to a different city the day after Grade 8 Grad - therefore I was starting Grade 9 just like everybody else - and I went to the same high school as my cousin who was two years older and whose best friend was one of the two toughest girls in the school. Then I promptly made friends with the other toughest girl. I had zero problems with bullying in high school.
I don’t recall much bullying in high school out of the regular “peer pressure” - I think for the same reasons listed above - the kids are more mature and have better things to do.
My bullying stopped in high school, too, and I think I know why: I stopped giving a damn and trying to fit in; I was “myself” and just laughed at them. I developed interests and my own clique of oddball friends. I still got bullied by one or two people–but some of my previous bullies actually skulked up to me when we were alone and told me they *admired *me.
Amen, bro. I was in the same boat.
Except instead of thoughts of suicide, mine were of homicide. I actually put my .22 rifle in a box, climbed on my bike and pedalled over to the home of my biggest harrasser, then “hid” in the bushes outside his house for more than 3 hours waiting for him to walk out the door.
Fortunately for both him and me, he didn’t. I made it back home without being caught, snuck the gun back up to my room and as I was putting it in my closet, I stopped being pissed about not being able to shoot him and started thinking about how he wasn’t worth the trouble I would have gotten into if I had. After that, I began laughing at him when he started his bullshit, until the day that annoyed him so badly that he swung on me and I broke his nose with a lucky punch. Fortunately, a teacher saw it all happen. This was back in the 60s when common sense still had a toehold in schools and I did not get in trouble for it.
I can’t speak for all schools but my district does a very good job at keeping bullying in check. When my son was bullied they brought the all the parents and kids together and sat them down to talk it out. One mother was upset to the point of tears at her son’s behavior. The bullying stopped quickly.
I was bullied as a kid and it still affects me.
My three worst bullies were my mother, the PE teacher and the 5th grade teacher. Did not make for a fun childhood.
It’s elementary/middle/high school. Everyone gets picked on by everyone at some point. You even have bullies in college and the adult workplace.
There is definitely a different perception these days on the whole notion of “bullying”. When I was growing up (mostly in the 80s), it was basically accepted that social cliques and bullying was a part of growing up. Teachers weren’t there to police you. They simply couldn’t be everywhere at once or they simply didn’t care. Why would they? Half of them were jerks themselves.
Say what you will about the younger generation these days in regards to motivation and attention span. But the anti-bullying movement is the best thing to come from that demographic in years, if not decades.
I don’t think the younger generation is responsible for anti-bullying stuff. It’s their parents (my generation) that are saying “enough is enough”.
I think it’s great that people are paying more attention. I do wonder how schools regulate this kind of behavior. Zero-tolerance policies are not good.
I don’t know if I was bullied or just harrassed as a kid–or maybe they aren’t distinguished? I was called names but never beaten up. People would laugh when I would do something unintentionally, like bumping into a desk or asking a stupid question. Is that bullying? Once some boys took my sweater and played “monkey in the middle” with it during class (while we had substitute teacher). They were picking on me and I didn’t like watching my sweater fly up in the air over my head, but it didn’t hurt my feelings. (I only started to cry when the substitute teacher threatened to send me to the principal’s office).
I had a great teacher in middle school. She made it her duty to protect me from the obnoxious behavior directed towards me whenever it showed up in class. Once, she’d intercepted a note floating around in class about me, and she made me do an errand for her while she tore into the class (according to a classmate). You can imagine what resulted from this. I was “teacher’s pet”. I got harrassed for having an adult fight my battles for me…even though I had never asked her to do anything. It solidified my credentials as a retard. So I ended up sticking to this teacher like glue, because she was the only person that I could stand.
Perhaps I’m just blaming the victim now that I’m looking back at this period through the mists of time…but I think I actually deserved all of it. I WAS a dork. I could have tried harder to conform and not be such a froot-loop, and I think a part of me enjoyed the ostracism because it confirmed to me that I was “different” from the crowd (which I never wanted to belong to).
I don’t know what I’m trying to say. Only that I hope there is some nuance to how people are being disciplined.
This is indicative that there has been a paradigm-shift in the younger generation, though. I’m not saying it’s ALL on them, but kids back in the 70s wouldn’t have allowed their parents to intervene. Now, they do.
My brother lives with mental illness. He is in his 40s and has not progressed very well thru life. He lives alone and on public assistance. He is not a substance abuser and is non-violent. He just never was able to get his act together.
Our parents are both gone now, so there is no one to ask, but I know he was always sort of odd as a kid. He much preferred going to the library at school rather than go outside and have to socialize. I guess he was always painfully shy - which, by high school meant he became a target.
A few months ago we were discussing his issues and he revealed to me that he was a victim of bullying in high school. He explained how he was the surrounded in the boys restroom by 3-4 of his classmates and grabbed and held as if he were about to get a flushie. They did not go all the way, thankfully. He said that was the main incident that solidified the path he took in life. Victimhood, anxiety, depression, socially awkward, few friends and fewer close relationships.
I never knew about this until he told me, and it explained a lot. Some people may be strengthened by the challenges of being bullied and get over it and move on to become confident adults, but I bet the are a lot more that do bear deep scars for life.
I’ve been asking this question for a long time.
I’m also curious if teachers, etc still tell kids “If you ignore the bully, they’ll go away because bullying you gives them power.” or something to that effect (which if I had a dollar for every time somebody said that to me growing up, I’d be a forking millionaire right now). I know that when I tried that tactic, it never seemed to work because it just seem to infuriate the bully more and they would up the ante, trying to see how far they could push me before I’d break down and lash out.
You’ve reminded me of something I’ve often thought about. I was never outright “beaten up” in school, but I was “picked on” and ostracized in grade school and junior high. When I would complain about this at home, my mother would give me the “They’re just jealous because you’re so smart” line. Sure, I was smart, and my mom meant well, but telling me that was counterproductive because I believed it 100% (hey, Mom wouldn’t lie to me!) As a young kid, it simply didn’t occur to me that my own behavior, however non-deliberate, might be provoking other kids to pick on me. No, they were picking on me for being smart, and I really couldn’t do anything about how smart I was, now could I?
From my parents, I got “they’re just teasing you because they like you!”
I think even kids have an instinctive sense of the difference between good-natured ribbing and outright malice intended solely to humiliate. My parents’ cluelessness only made it worse.
I still daydream about getting back at my bullies. Not by violence, but by humiliation.
I agree, as a kid who went to public school from 1978-1986. This sounds terrible but when I hear about a kid getting picked on or bullied nowadays and the first thing they do is run to a teacher or parent I automatically think “What a candy-ass.”
I like to think that if my hypothetical child (I’m never having kids so I get to daydream about these things) were to be bullied I’d tell them to FIGHT BACK - yell, swear, punch, whatever it takes - and I’ll deal with the school administration. In my daydreams my kid would NOT put up with that bullshit and I would have their back 100%, as long as they were acting in total self-defense.
I actually think that it’s wrong that kids aren’t being taught to fight back against personal attacks - if some random stranger attacked me on the street I’d damn well fight back, why not if someone attacks you at school? There are no teachers/principals/counselors to run to in the real world.