Again, how did she stop it? I’m at a loss for how I would handle it if another parent or someone for the school came to me and told me my kid was being a bully. What do I do? Ground him? Lecture him? Take away his Gameboy? Hit him? None of those sound very effective, frankly. Luckily, this hasn’t come up for me, because I have no idea what I’d do on that end of things.
This is IMHO, where I normally don’t tread and doesn’t require cites, right? Excuse me, since I’m new at this.
(ahem)
When I was six I socked the neighborhood a good one that left him crying for Mama. When we were in high school he petioned to be the first boy allowed in a Home Economics class.
Do the math, though I think he was just looking for what he expected to be an easy A. He obviously never heard all the cuts of beef he’d be expected to memorize.
I didn’t fight fair either, but the thing is, my elementary school didn’t have a problem with boys hitting girls. They did have a problem with girls hitting back. Because girls were supposed to be little ladies, and the only acceptable response to being hit by a boy was to cry and run to the teacher. If a boy hit a girl with his fist, well, boys will be boys. If the girl bit the boy’s finger, or slung a plastic jumprope at him, or hit him in the eye with the corner of her book, that was a problem child.
I hope things have changed since then.
Being perceived as slightly insane will get bullies to leave you alone. I was always the skinny, nerdy type, but what people who didn’t know me failed to realize was that I was also in pretty good shape from bicycling everywhere. One elementary school I went to was an occasional hangout for older kids in the evenings and summer. Once an older boy decided to shove me around, so I managed to jump on his back and squeeze his ribs with my legs. I wasn’t strong enough to cause any major damage, but he was pretty bruised afterwards. Another time I wailed on the much larger bully with my bookbag full of books.
However, there are also situations where you have to learn to get away. In 8th grade I went to Denman Middle School in San Francisco, which was next to Balboa High. These were two of the worst schools in the city, and I was one of only a handful of “white” kids there. (I’m actually half Filipino but don’t really look it.) I had a few friends, but I also got mobbed pretty frequently. I got away if i could and fought back if I was cornered. One time I was ambushed and surrounded by about 10 or 20 guys a block away from school. They gave me a black eye and some cuts on my face and broke my glasses. I had to go back to the school and have my mom pick me up. We actually filed a police report, but I couldn’t identify anyone well enough so I don’t know if anything came of it.
Worked for me, too.
Elementary school, I was the Weird Kid. I got some teasing but no bullying because being teased made me grin and stare at their throats.
Intermediate/Middle school worked aboutt he same, although minor bullying occurred until I was observed that I was unfazed by walking on a foot-wide ledge 8 stories up to get to a phone switch room. (The phact that it was a phone switch room impressed other kids, too).
High school was trickier, as I didn’t end up at the same school as most of my friends who respected my… colorful nature. I was the odd one no doubt, but had to prove myself. Early in my freshman year, when the football players were starting to make menacing faces and cracking their knuckles at me, another freshman set off a pretty sizable pipe bomb in a bathroom across the hall from where I was waiting for class. I knew who had done it as he’d left the bathroom with a grin and made a “Shush!” motion, and tracked him down later. Told him I wanted to learn how to do that.
We became good friends, and once people realized I was running with that crew, I never got bothered (except by the do-gooders, but they were more interested in turning me away from my life of crime and getting in touch with smoe guy they knew named Haysoos or something).
And before anyone freaks out, I’ve never made a bomb, nor blown up a bathroom. But they were good friends to have.
How does a twelve-year-old get into this situation where others of his age can see? I want to hear some more details, it sounds like an interesting story.
My solution was to grow to be 6’5" and start dressing in all black. Then Columbine came and nobody bothered me any more. :o
There were a pair of skater fscks in my school that alternated between tormenting me and tolerating me.
Detail 1: My father taught at the local University, and I spent virtually all of my spare time lurking there… You know, hanging out reading in the research library, building hacking, social engineering at the computer center… Good healthy geek education.
Detail 2: Said Uni was ripe for skaters. I don’t think campus security did anything other than harrass skaters.
Detail 3: Tropical climate, so many of the buildings had open/semi-open air construction.
So I bumped into, we’ll call them “Phil” and “Matt” one day. They were feeling friendly that particular day, and in effect asked me to get them into trouble. So, knowing where the phone switch room for the campus was (for some reason on top of the chemistry building… It was a very old NorTel switch IIRC) I figured that would be a good place to start.
The staircase for the building was external, so at the top floor I was able to squeeze through the narrow concrete slats that made up the external stairway wall, around the locked switch room outside door via the building ledge, back through onto the… external switch room access room, I guess you’d call it, and then open the door from the inside.
No, security really wasn’t this campus’ big goal.
Yes, this scored me major brownie points with Phil and Matt. I also took them into the chem building’s store rooms, the geophysical sciences crypts, and… Geeze, I thikn I taught them how to get free food from the cafeteria.
I think it’s a lot like (what I’ve heard and read about) being in prison.
There’s no shame in getting your ass kicked, as long as you fight back. To the contrary, I think. Back down, and you’ll get “turned out” and be somebody’s “punk” forever.
Regardless, you just might get in a “lucky shot” and bloody the nose of someone twice your size, and by the second or third time, it won’t be worth it for the bully, regardless.
I strongly suspect that the shock of a heavily accented german woman at your door step with a little boy that probably wanted to die on the spot didn’t make you say, " son, I don’t want that large german woman at my door again. Stop punching her kid or I’m gonna punch you one."
IMO; A kid needs to learn to not be affraid of an ass kick’n.
I’d say he should chanllenge him at least once. Then take it from there.
If the bully winds up beating him to a pulp; it will be all that much more easier to convince the authorities to get that kid out of there.
I pity the child who ever hits any child that is ever in my charge. I won’t bore you w/ the details of my ten years’ worth of daily beatings at the hands of my brother and the neighbor kids. I was a tall skinny girl and lived my life in fear of my dad and brother at home and the kids at school. My parents did nothing to stop it; mom knew and didn’t care to do anything more than a phone call while my dad didn’t know and I wasn’t allowed by mom to tell him. There was one girl who played a game of “I’m your friend today! No, actually, I’m not and I beat you up!” with me pretty often from 3rd grade through high school. She was in my bible study all that time, too.
Tell your nephew to hit back and don’t stop until the other kid flees.
See, my schoolbus friends weren’t nerds. They were actually more popular and cooler than the bullies. But the thing was that they were NICE and didn’t care that I was clumsy and goofy. Bullies are not always cool or popular. The victims of bullying are not always social outcasts. I was actually more popular than the bullies were…perhaps that’s why I was always on their radar. Perhaps they were jealous.
Even when I was teased at my worst, I had friends. Not a ton of them, but I had some. Making friends, not just learning how to fight, is the best way to prevent and mitigate the cruelty of bullies. It really doesn’t matter how “cool” your friends are. They are still friends.
Even if your friends ARE nerds, it’s still better than being a lone victim. A friend will convince you that the bullies are jerks and that all that name-calling is a bunch of malarky. If your friend gets beat up along with you, at least you can go home and lick each others wounds. And if it ever comes down to a fight, you can have each other’s backs. You’ll suffer through in-school suspension together, if it comes to that. And after that, no one will fuck with ya’ll again. You’ll be known as Those Guys Who Will Fuck You Up. And the two of you will have memories that will last a lifetime.
I know I still carry with me the memory of me and my friends outsmarting the bullies on the bus.
I wonder if bullying has gotten worse since corporal punishment was abolished in school?
I went to school in the 70’s, when corporal punishment was allowed. Each school I went to had a designated ‘scary male’ teacher, who’s job was to put the fear of God into bullies. And it worked. I remember in particular a bully who used to walk around and hit kids in the chest with a ‘spear hand’ (fingers outstretched). One day the scary vice principle saw him do it and make another kid cry, and he marched over to him, grabbed him by the shirt, threw him up against the lockers, and gave him a taste of his own medicine three or four times, with a promise to do it harder next time if he even heard a hint of the kid bullying anyone else. I don’t recall that bully bothering anyone again.
Back then, teachers were our protectors. They kept order and made us feel safer. Now, they’ve been defanged and the bullies know it. And since many bullies don’t care about grades, the only tools the teachers have (threats of poor grades, suspension, etc) are useless. So all we’ve done by abolishing corporal punishment is give the bullies free reign to pick on the little kids.
We still had bullying, but it was almost always off the school grounds. Bullies would try to get you on the walk home or in some other place where there was no supervision.
Other than that observation, I’d say that the best defense against a bully is to present a confident attitude and not shrink away from the bully. Teasing should be met by a confident, possibly amused attitude, like you think the bully is just an idiot. Don’t show that it bothers you. Threats of violence should be met with an aggressive attitude. Stare the bully down, and let him know that he can try, and maybe he’ll win, but he’ll pay a price. If you do that well, hopefully it will never go any further.
No, you are right of course. Bullies are themselves often social outsiders who like to throw their weight around.
The essence of people who are douchebags is that they feel inferrior in some way - socially, academically, financially, whatever. So when they achieve some success and power or if they happen to be physically larger, they lash out with it.
Unles they themselves became the bullies.
Hmmm…dunno. I think it was more situational than that and I’ll offer a counter anecdote from the early 80’s.
In one of my junior highs, which I attended one year ( in Michigan, in a suburb of Detroit ) our large, bald, intimidating principal had the nickname ‘Terrible Ivan’ and acted the part with troublemakers and bullies. He actually used a hockey stick to break up fights ( not walloping anybody necessarily, but levering them apart and pinning them against a wall ). He was an active bully hunter ( and quite gentle with the ‘good kids’ ) and I saw him throw many a young rowdy up hard against the lockers.
Despite that, that school was rife was bullying - in hallways, schoolyards and locker rooms. Indeed it’s the only school I ever attended where physical initiations of incoming freshmen was accepted custom. It was also the only year I was ever bullied to a worrying extent, though thankfully he was an equal opportunity thug who terrified everyone and I was no higher on his radar than anyone else.
So I’m not sure that things are any better, but barring more concrete evidence I’d question if they’re any worse.
And for the record I’m generally not a fan of corporal punishment in schools ( or anywhere, really ).
- Tamerlane
Is the nephew being physically hit and/or pushed around, or humilitated and made fun of.
Your nephew has a right to respond with force if force is being used against him. He does not have that right if some jackass is verbally tormenting him.
Give us more details if you can.
Which is no surprise, of course: bullying the bullies doesn’t make them stop bullying.
I was bullied in grade school. In Jr High it pretty much stopped because I bulked up a bit. In High School I ran into someone who was in grade school with me but went to a different Jr High. He started telling someone he was with the humilaiting name they used to call me. I turned and looked at him with such a murderous glance that he stopped in mid-sentence and never bothered me again. There is a body language that you need to develop. I think the MA training will help. At age 7 getting into a fight is not too dangerous and I think if it continues he should slug the bully hard enough to hurt him. Any beating he gets will hurt less than the humiliation.
It’s interesting that threads like this always concentrate on physical harassment. Maybe because it’s more immediate and brutal, and maybe because recommending physical retaliation is more clear in that case. I doubt anyone on this thread would recommend it for harassment that does not involve any physical component at all, and is thus much harder to deal with. (Please correct me if I’m wrong.)
I have had to deal with bullies quite a few times in my life. Half way through my 5th grade year I was transfered to a private Catholic school. Up to this point in my schooling, I only had to deal with some occasional bullies. Nothing on a day in and day out basis. Actually, I was kind of popular.
So, I was really suprised that at the Catholic school, taught by Nuns, I would be subjected to the nastiest kids I would ever know.
So, from the middle of 5th grade through 8th grade, I had to put up with one particular bully by the name of Billy Wolf. That is a perfect bully name. God I hated that kid. Tough and mean and he had great hair so the girls thought he was cute. Somedays were my days. Some days he went after Candy, the fat girl, or Mark, the mostly deaf kid who talked funny. Sweet guy that Billy. Most of his stuff was emotional mistreatment, not the physical kind.
I wish I could say that I had planned this but I didn’t. On the last day we had class, we only had a half day. So the last thing we did, was recess. We all knew that next year we would be in HS and we wouldn’t have ‘recess’ anymore. So, we played kickball. I was picked last. (yes, after the fat girl and even the deaf kid were considered preferable kickball players) Of Billy was one of the captains and his toady was the other.
It is getting near the end of recess. Billy is pitching. I come up to kick. He rolled it to me. I kicked it hard, out to center. I don’t know if the ball was caught. I didn’t run to first. I ran straight at Billy. He had turned to watch the play. He turned back when I was a few feet from him as I had started my war cry. The look on his face, that mixture of suprise and ,yes, fear, thrilled me. I leapt upon him and in a flash he was on his back and I was on him, punching his face. Four guys tore me off him. Then, just as it was over, my mom drove up to pick me up. The teacher, Sister Denise, told me to go sit in my mom’s car. My mom went to the office. My classmates all went inside. A bit later, mom came out and took me home. She said that she told them she was sure Billy deserved what he got and better and that they deserved the same as he had been bullying me for 3 and a half years and they never did anything about it. She asked each the two teachers and the princepal if they Billy was a bully and they all stammered out some excuse and she said 'Shame on you", to the sisters. TO NUNS! God my mom had a set of brass ones.
So, I never had saw Billy again.
And of all the bullies I’ve had in my life, he is the only one I don’t talk about in thearpy.