My years in school were hell.
And no, I didn’t get over it.
I wasn’t bullied for two reasons:
1.IMO I was nice to, and liked by, most everbody.
2.It’s considered bad form to bully the kid in the wheelchair.
No one seemed to mind bullying the kid in the scoliosis brace (though my dumbass brother broke his knuckle punching me in the stomach, don’t know how he forgot there was a metal bar there).
I meant school bullying. Though my 2 older brothers didn’t bully me. (my younger bro took the brunt)
I was bullied when I was a kid. Girls can really be bitches, you know? Of course, I was so naive I thought if I was nice to them and said kind things they would be nice to me and like me. I feel such sadness for myself as a little girl. I would tell my mother and she wouldn’t do anything, “Just ignore it…” I can only imagine how the father of one of my bullies felt as he held me over their bathroom sink (I was what, 6?) so my foot could bleed into it and I told him that his precious girl sent me to do something in order to “maybe” join her club. I stepped on a tent stake and needed stitches to sew up that gash. That bitchy girl gave me a hard time afterward (no,duh) because she got in trouble.
I could go on and on. I can name people, give dates, tell incredibly detailed stories about all the bullies I ever encountered, up to and including a principal I worked for a few years back.
I live in a state where bullying is actually against the law. It’s on the books and bullying is defined so as not to be confused with just “shitty people who say crappy things.” I’m a teacher and we have been trained and professionally developed on this law. My kid was getting bullied this year. I waited. I made sure it was actual bullying not just a “shitty person who was saying crappy things” to my kid. We talked to the counselor who talked to the kid. The kid took it to Facebook. That escalated the bullying to the next level. We told the counselor (and, as good GenX-ers, reminded him that our attorney could come in and explain the law if they needed help), he talked to the kids again (by this time there were about 7 of them) and their parents and it stopped. Just…like…that.
Retaliation is against the law here. Oh, and my kid? He told me that he just wanted the kids to shut up. Since this incident, he has stood up for another kid who was being bullied. Told the kids to shut up and leave him alone (which, btw, he had told his own bullies). He told me he wasn’t going to put up with it and that as long as he was around he would always speak up. He really is some kid.
I think I read one time here on the Dope to tell your kids if they are being bullied: Hit back twice as hard, twice as fast. The bullying will cease. I don’t know how effective it is in real life, but it sounds good on paper.
Yes, it does sound good on paper. Yes, it works sometimes. No, it definitely doesn’t work every time.
All of this IME and anecdotal, of course.
I don’t remember ever getting into a fight about something concerning me, but my younger brother was a perfect victim. A bumbling doofus with a big trusting smile on his face. Very intelligent but socially inept. Whenever somebody hurt him he’d tell me after school as we started walking home. Somewhere down the long hill I’d tell him to wait on the sidewalk while I hid behind the hedges. When the offending kid starting walking by, usually an older boy, I’d jump out and try to beat the shit out of him. I remember one big guy palming my forehead as I swung air in front of his belly, finally landing a few blows, saying Please don’t. Please don’t. I thought I was a hard-ass, but really I was just embarrassing the boys to death. School mornings went like this: the Pledge of Alligance; some kid would read a Bible verse; roll call; and then the teacher would say Becky, report to the office. Took me about a year and a half, two years, before they finally got the picture and I didn’t have to fight so much. Late '50s.
Mid-eighties, my older son was accosted by two older boys at his locker, barely getting a swing in. All three were suspended for three days because the school had a No Tolerance Policy. (The victim was…part of the problem?) While he was out I’d remind him that he didn’t do anything wrong–that the school was wrong and for him to never let anybody tell him he couldn’t take up for himself.
Late eighties(?), my younger son was in Special Ed. One of the teachers’ aides would berate the class. (I know because I was a lunch aide that year and could hear her from out in the hall.) Not his teacher, or I would have torn her a new one. But I let them know I knew what was going on and didn’t like it.
It’s good that schools are cracking down on peer bullying, and that people are wiring their kids to catch school staff that are doing the bullying, too. Youtube seems to have brought about a lot of emotional retrobution. (sp) If I had a kid on Facebook I would insist on being a “Friend,” and would jump in if things got abusive.
I guess I’ve got a hands-on approach, but it cuts thru a lot of crap.
I had a similar experience growing up. I’m gianormous, and it seemed like every little late blooming punk kid with a napoleaonic complex felt the need to fight me in high school to prove their worth. Teachers all had the same attitude that I could handle myself because I was bigger than they were. Eventually I’d always reach out and touch someone and find myself in the office calmly explaining that yes, he’s f-Ed up and broken and I’m fine, but he has been following me around for the last 2 days physically assaulting me and I tapped the kid one time.
That said, I think it’s ridiculous how bullying is handled these days. It’s pedantic whiny bullshit, sending emails to the school board and trying to create a papertrail and schools around here tell kids to actually sue each other civilly if they feel they’re being bullied. Personally I just raise my children to be confident and have some sense of self worth and a thick enough skin to deal with other people who aren’t always nice. I see people at work who are in HR every single week tattling on someone who parked too close to their car or told an inappropriate joke in the break room and I don’t want my kids to be like that.
I agree with many of the posters about bullying. I grew up in the '50s where you just didn’t tattle to teachers or parents about being bullied. There was much more of a ‘kids will be kids’ attitude back then. Plus there was one teacher per 30-35 kids in each class and I don’t think they had the time or inclination to handle anything other than just getting a day’s teaching done.
The school I went to had grades 1 through 8, so there were bullies of all ages there. I was 7 or 8 and got cornered in a dark garage by several “big” boys (thinking back on it they were probably 10-12 at most, but seemed pretty old to me). They stripped off all my clothes and exposed me to each other. Thankfully, nothing worse happened, but I just froze at the time and couldn’t even think what to do–I pretty much went off somewhere in my head. I never did tell anyone about it until years and years later; I was way too ashamed and always felt it was my fault.
I’ve since moved past this, but I hate to think what happens in the heads of those who have been bullied and let it adversely affect their lives.
I’m afraid that a suitable answer to this pile of bullshit requires us to be in another sub-forum. Like the Pit.
I have experienced bullying both as a child and an adult, though not to the extremes that some have experienced. With my run-ins with adult bullies - I’ve noticed that some people seem to mistake my tendency to be a quiet person as meaning that I can be pushed around. Fortunately, I’ve learned how to stand up for myself better as an adult than I was able to do as a kid.
As for the idea that some people become “stronger” from bullying and others are “damaged” from it, I disagree that there is really such a difference between these groups. I think a lot depends on how you choose to look at things.
You don’t have control over what other people have done to you. However, I do think that you have control over how you choose to view that experience and how important you let it be in your life.
In the op’s case, if you feel that your past of being bullied has held you back socially, it’s not too late to work on learning social skills (yes, it can be awkward trying to learn to be social past the age when most people do, but it can be done).
Aside from the fact that I agree with 2square4u, I take issue with the basic premise of your post.
In a perfect world, all it would take is confidence and a thick skin and the bullying problem would be solved once and for all. But it’s not a perfect world and, consequently, we have bullies who go beyond “not so nice” and into criminal assault and battery, libel, and other forms of legally actionable behavior.
And sometimes, it’s the confident and thick-skinned kids who are the targets because they attract the attention of those kids who aren’t, and who are maladjusted enough to act. I knew a high school senior who was this girl until her parents divorced; she became fair game after that and almost lost out on a college scholarship because of some very cruel posts about her and her mother that came up in a Google search. She went from being a bright and confident girl to being an emotional wreck, and the girls responsible for this were never held accountable.
Let’s face it. There is often no rhyme or reason to who bullies and who is bullied. Some bullies are victims themselves and are acting out because they need help. Some victims are social misfits who are bullied because they don’t fit in. And some bullies are just assholes who bully for sport, and some victims are patsies who go out of their way to be bullied. In the absence of any psychological or sociological breakthrough, the best we can do is pay closer attention to what happens, to address it when it does, and hold those responsible accountable for their actions. If the school and the police refuse to act, that’s what the courts are for. When bullying causes some real economic damage, the victim has the right to be made whole. And that’s all there is to it.
I concur w/ MsRobyn and I’ll take it a little further; if I was held and beaten on one occasion going to a store I could call the police and someone would be arrested.
But since I was held and beaten by classmates nearly every time I went to the bus stop or out on recess or walked home from the bus stop after being harassed on the bus it’s NOT an offense?
If a stranger ran up to me in a parking lot and hit me w/ a fist so hard on the top of my head that I nearly fainted from the pain that person could be prosecuted for battery. But b/c it was my brother in our own home I should understand that ‘boys will be boys’?
How does familiarity w/ one’s attackers excuse those same attackers in any way that ISN’T victim-blaming? How is it parents are supposed to accept their kids being assaulted by classmates but on guard for minimal attention from strangers?
I think violence should definitely be handled with swiftly.
Name-calling, rumor-milling, and blatant meanness are other things that should be stomped down.
But looking on back on my childhood, there was a lot of stuff that I don’t know how to categorize. Like, on more than one occasion I was the “monkey in the middle”. Whether it was my sweater or bookbag or lunch, I was always made to play the fool. An outsider looking in might say, “Oh, that poor girl.” But if you’d asked me at the time, would I have called it bullying? Would I have wanted the kids fooling around with me to be disciplined? No. And it wouldn’t have had anything to do with not wanting to face the repurcusions, but rather not knowing how to separate “play” from “harassment”. Sometimes it was okay being the monkey and other times it wasn’t. I’m not sure I would have always been able to say how I was feeling–and it probably wouldn’t have shown in my demeanor.
Do the “anti-bullying” measures always hinge on the victims coming forward? Or are adults required to stop any activity that has any level of “non-niceness” to it? I would have some concerns about the second. I think the booger-eating kid in the class should be able to go about his life without being teased or harrassed. But I guess I would have a problem if teachers forced other kids to play with the booger-eating kid when they would otherwise ignore him.
I tried that–it never helped.
Nonsense. You see, those are a special class of crime that only adults I agree with and respect can possibly be victims of. Everyone else who claims victim status in that regard is a whining, puling little pissant who needs to be taught how the Real World works. Also, it’s probably really fucking funny to watch them being ‘victimized’ so let’s get it up on YouTube so we can all join in the laughs.
Is the Real World the way it is because that’s just how it is and how it always will be?
Or is the Real World a malleable thing within human control that can change with societal enlightenment and maturity?
The term is generally used for the parts of life we can’t change, rather than those we can.
How can we know what it is we can or cannot change if we never try?