The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence • Hacker News Board

Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence

#191

Post by thegrimmest » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 8:47 PM UTC

bentley wrote: post #183

thegrimmest wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one of your classmates takes to pushing you around, taking your stuff, embarrassing you, calling you names, etc. This is normal behaviour in apes who are trying to establish a dominance hierarchy. The bully likely sees you as a soft target who is easy to dominate. The best course is to correct that assumption - escalate conflict - fight back, fight dirty. It's the same rationale as in prison - you don't want to en…

In adulthood I’ve never had to resolve a problematic interaction through physical violence, and I hope to never have to. The methods I have used—distancing myself from the bully, reporting to management/HR/oversight agencies—are quite like the methods I used to avoid bullying in childhood. I never used violence back then either. The only meaningful difference between now and then is that in adulthood I have more such…

Or perhaps the conclusion here is that administrative intervention is not effective on children the same way as it is on adults.

Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence

#192

Post by MrJohz » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 8:48 PM UTC

cannaceo wrote: post #116

thegrimmest wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning how to respond to antisocial behaviour by a peer, and being able to resolve conflict independently, are two very important skills that it's critical to learn. Being seen as someone who needs adult help to resolve peer conflict is socially disastrous for young people. We do children no favours by intervening in this developmental process.

"Solve the problem yourself". Yeah, you've never had to deal with being chased by bullies and having the shit kicked out of you for no reason. Bullying is not a conflict between peers anymore than a woman getting raped is a conflict between peers. As an adult these problems are solved for you by either human resources, the police, or being able to avoid the situation. Maybe that's why you don't walk around the rough…

I'm not the person you're replying to, but I was bullied as a child, and honestly, the problem is hard to deal with. I was not good at socialising, I found it difficult to read social cues, and I was kind of irritating a lot of the time. None of that excuses bullying, of course, but ultimately a large part of what caused that bullying was my own behaviour. If I'd have been more socially adept, if I'd realised that the social group I'd found wasn't supporting me and if I'd put more effort into making worthwhile friends, I wouldn't have been in that situation.

In the end, I needed to change for the issue to be resolved - which I did, and, along with moving to a new environment which helped reset a lot of my social interactions, that helped a lot. Obviously that's not some instant magic wand solution - I went through five long years of this experience, with various teachers and other adults trying to help me before things started clicking and I started being able to move on - but in my experience there aren't really many better solutions.

So, while I can't reiterate enough how unacceptable bullying is, and what a negative impact it had on those years of my life, I do agree with the previous poster: the ultimate solution to being bullied often lies in the hands of victim (n.b. not literally: I never found violence helped me), and trying to resolve the situation via visible external intervention may well have little impact. For me at least, a better social education would have made me much more prepared to deal with the issues that I faced.

Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence

#193

Post by granshaw » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 8:55 PM UTC

loandbehold wrote: post #64

granshaw wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure if there’s data/studies on this, but I feel that bullying is a bigger problem in the US than in eg Europe and Asia. If so, would like to see more discussion on why that is and how we could improve things by comparing

Not sure about Asia, but in Europe bullying is as common as in US.

Interesting, good to know

Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence

#194

Post by bentley » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:02 PM UTC

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #126

Cupertino95014 wrote: post #90

I completely agree about the problem, and some of this thread has the answer: fight back. Being adults, we naturally focus on what the adults can do. Of course if someone in authority sees bad behavior, they should stop it. The problem is all the bad behavior they don't see. The bullies just learn to do it when no adults are watching. Teaching the kid how to fight back is a great solution and several answers have sai…

The advocacy of violence implies the ability to succeed in doing it. Perhaps you don't recall the vast difference in size and strength in adolescence. Couple that with GROUPS of bullies, what do you advocate? Well, the modern solution to war is more firepower, and that is the firearm. So essentially, the end state of advocating violence is school shootings.

Not that it holds much scientific value, but my impression from reading news stories about school shootings is that the perpetrators usually were already known in their social circles as bullies, not bullying victims.

Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence

#195

Post by CalRobert » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:04 PM UTC

david422 wrote: post #79

CalRobert wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish we could be honest with our kids that sometimes you need to be mean in order to not be destroyed by mean people.

This is a difficult lesson to learn and also can be a difficult lesson to act upon (unfortunately).

Unfortunately what I mostly learned is that money allows you to shield yourself to some extent. The true appeal of a "nice" neighbourhood isn't the fancy houses, it's that the police might care about you. The appeal of a private school (aside from hobnobbing with kids of rich parents) is that bullies can get kicked out of a private school much more easily than a public one.

Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence

#196

Post by bentley » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:05 PM UTC

thegrimmest wrote: post #191

bentley wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In adulthood I’ve never had to resolve a problematic interaction through physical violence, and I hope to never have to. The methods I have used—distancing myself from the bully, reporting to management/HR/oversight agencies—are quite like the methods I used to avoid bullying in childhood. I never used violence back then either. The only meaningful difference between now and then is that in adulthood I have more such…

Or perhaps the conclusion here is that administrative intervention is not effective on children the same way as it is on adults.

Given that my interactions with adults outside of school (and later, when I was pulled out of public school to be homeschooled) were almost always positive, I’m willing to specifically blame school administration and/or their techniques.

Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence

#197

Post by Biologist123 » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:08 PM UTC

bentley wrote: post #183

thegrimmest wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one of your classmates takes to pushing you around, taking your stuff, embarrassing you, calling you names, etc. This is normal behaviour in apes who are trying to establish a dominance hierarchy. The bully likely sees you as a soft target who is easy to dominate. The best course is to correct that assumption - escalate conflict - fight back, fight dirty. It's the same rationale as in prison - you don't want to en…

In adulthood I’ve never had to resolve a problematic interaction through physical violence, and I hope to never have to. The methods I have used—distancing myself from the bully, reporting to management/HR/oversight agencies—are quite like the methods I used to avoid bullying in childhood. I never used violence back then either. The only meaningful difference between now and then is that in adulthood I have more such…

Good response. Toxic organisations (at whatever scale) fail to maintain an atmosphere where bullying is rejected and people are helped to be their best. Children should be taught to recognise toxic organisations and be given courage to exit them. And internalize that you do this as an adult too. There are situations where assault or battery could arise, and it is good to have some training in how to deal with those situations. Bullying, assault, battery are all abusive: it’s just bullying is legal and the others are not.

Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence

#198

Post by neonate » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:11 PM UTC

BetaDeltaAlpha wrote: post #141

oifjsidjf wrote: post #6

"School is the only place where modern humans will experience violence".

FYI: The full quote is "Public Schools are prisions for children, and are one of the only places where many people will experience physical violence."

Interesting. https://twitter.com/michaelmalice/status/1129603377401401345

Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence

#199

Post by bentley » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:20 PM UTC

thegrimmest wrote: post #139

soco wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically you advocate not only educating the own kid, but also educating their peers to intervene, and also educating the older ones to police the area, and educating the adults in the end. Do you really think this is a realistic policy, over the lifetime of your school kid? In an ideal world, no idea, but in this real world Id say zero chance. However I can tell you how it works around here (Switzerland, by no m…

This was basically how things have worked and continue to work in (particularly rural) areas where policymaking is lacking and people are left to their own devices. "Bullied" kids seek help from their immediate peers, from their/their peers older siblings, and from adults, roughly in that order. Parents typically do not hesitate to suggest aggressive escalation as a conflict resolution strategy. This strategy is ofte…

My own experience growing up in rural America is not so romantic. Bullies were sometimes those who had a numeric advantage when it came to having relatives who were peers and adults at the school. Their victims, often, outsiders who were not physically strong, had no big siblings to protect them, and were not “favorites” of the teachers. Such children would not benefit from your strategy.

Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence

#200

Post by standardUser » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:22 PM UTC

corobo wrote: post #52

Heh, decent timing. My last CBT session ended with me realising one of my issues may be a lasting effect of bullying. Essentially I was trying to find out why I procrastinate, beyond "it's just the ADHD lol" Boiled it down and down and down until we hit the core of the issue and realised I don't want to poke my head up and ship code/sites/ideas/etc because I believe I'll be bullied for it. In school doing anything th…

I strongly relate. I've noticed a lot of my bad habits or odd approaches to things are actually simple pain avoidance. Bad things happen to us and we unconsciously develop methods of avoiding or lessening those bad things. No different than a beaten dog flinching at a raised hand. For me, a lot of these behaviors have been easy to unlearn, but it took half a lifetime to notice them in the first place. And who knows what other subtle pain avoidance behaviors I engage in that I've yet to see or understand.