This problem comes from schools being completely artificial environments. In human societies before the Prussian model, children were around adults most of the time and they learned to emulate adult behavior. Schools, with high child to adult ratios, are Lord of the Flies barely concealed with a thin layer of gilding to fool the on-lookers.
The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence
301–310 of 449 posts
Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence
#302My parents basically said “If you keep getting bullied, assault the bully, try to draw blood, and we’ll take you out for ice cream if you get suspended.” Highly recommended for any parents of boys out there - it is the best way to address this problem.
I mean - great advice if you’re as big as the bully. As a kid who was often smaller than kids 2-3 younger than him all the way to his senior year in high school… Can’t say that advice would go over well.
Also, if the fight is fair. It was never 1 v 1, in my childhood, it was 1 v n.
Even if you do catch the bully in a 1 v 1 fight, will the next fight be 1 v 1?
Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean - great advice if you’re as big as the bully. As a kid who was often smaller than kids 2-3 younger than him all the way to his senior year in high school… Can’t say that advice would go over well.
Also, if the fight is fair. It was never 1 v 1, in my childhood, it was 1 v n . Even if you do catch the bully in a 1 v 1 fight, will the next fight be 1 v 1?
The ideal situation is with as many bystanders watching as possible. That sucks if you have a gang after you, but perhaps it can be avoided in the first place by not being an easy target.
I do agree that this won’t work in all situations.
Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence
#304This problem comes from schools being completely artificial environments. In human societies before the Prussian model, children were around adults most of the time and they learned to emulate adult behavior. Schools, with high child to adult ratios, are Lord of the Flies barely concealed with a thin layer of gilding to fool the on-lookers.
this is an interesting point.
in my home growing up we were bullies. I unfortunately carried this into school and didn't learn manners until later
Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence
#305Heh, 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 wonder if private schools are a way that rich kids can afford to be different but poor kids can't. See https://sfstandard.com/business/inside-ftx-founder-sam-bankm... Would rich kids be facing much more competition for elite spots from poor but smart kids if bullying wasn't part of the curriculum in the public schools? Given that only 10% of kids get to go to a school where dignity is assured, it could be that 90%…
I have a friend who was bullied so abusively and thoroughly at a private school that his family pulled him out and moved him into public school (which turned out to be a very good school system with very little bullying, fortunately for him).
Obviously that's just one data point, but I don't think the incentive structure at a private school is what you think it is. There's a lot of incentive to keep issues quiet, and a lot of pressure to fit a certain mold.
Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
My advice is teach your kids how to fight. I grew up with 2 brothers and lots of cousins and learned how to fight by watching boxing on TV. I fought my 2 year older brother to a draw when I was 6 years old. I dropped a 15 year old kid who was way bigger than me and bullying me by kicking him in the balls that same year and then stood over him while he was on the ground writhing and crying in pain and told him he was…
> When people know you will fight back they tend to not mess with you and getting hit is not the worst thing that can happen to you. You'll heal up. Not fighting back sticks with you and hurts forever. 100% I once had a kid walk up to me and tell me he had to show me something out in the recess yard. We get out to a certain spot, he bends down and picks up a screwdriver and throws it at me, slammed into the side of m…
Yeah, if that was everyone's experience being bullied no one would care.
My bullies would tackle me, surround me, and kick me while I was down for minutes. Never less then 6 of them at a time. I had 3 concussions from being tackled and having my head smashed against the floor.
They would throw sand into my eyes. I remember not being able to see while being beat. I remember having to wear an eye patch for a week from the abrasions.
They would throw large sticks at me, I have numerous scars from being hit in the face.
They would break my things, I had multiple bikes smashed on the bike rack.
They would steal my things, if I had anything nice in my desk they would steal it when the teacher was out of the room.
They would shove dog shit in my face when they tackled me to the ground in their groups.
They would ostracize me from every other person at school, anyone I tried to talk to would have to ignore me for fear of being beaten up and treated the same. Even those that I was good friends with outside of school felt they couldn't let it be known in school.
I'd have my pants pulled down almost every single day while I was walking in crowds.
I stood up and fought for myself every single time. I never backed out. I always tried to fight back. I was larger then any of them individually. I had my dad take me to Taekwondo from the time I was in grade 2. I started lifting weights in grade 4.
My only recourse was to avoid them. From grade 2 to grade 11 I would pretend to be sick for weeks at a time in order to avoid going to school. Avoidance was my ONLY option, nothing else worked. I would use up every single sick day I could without getting expelled in high school. I'm not even sure about elementary school, they didn't have a max number of days, but I'm sure I missed at least half of every year.
Finally in grade 11 I managed to get the fight to stop by knocking four teeth out of my main bullies mouth and giving him 18 stitches. I was knocked out cold and barely remember the fight.
Standing up for yourself doesn't always work, everyone in this thread that thinks it does is extremely naive.
I'm glad that you punching your bully once solved the problem for you though.
Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence
#307When I was coming up, especially in middle school, we were always told that you should just ignore bullies and they would go away. This, of course, never actually worked. And anyone who did fight back against their bullies were punished just as severely, if not moreso if they swung first, as the bully. This entire approach was complete BS and only served to enable bullies because they now know that their victims eith…
> You may be punished, but the sense of catharsis more than makes up for that. The kind of punishment doled out by law-abiding adults to children isn't even a blip on the radar vs. suffering a vicious bully. It isn't even worth mentioning, punishment for violence is a total farce until adulthood. That's basically the whole source of the problem; bullys have realized there are no consequences. The best response to a b…
The best advice I would have for my childhood self is along those lines.
Get angry, and hurt them.
Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence
#308I sometimes feel like I'm in some alternate universe when I read stuff like this: > These new findings indicate that interventions should also focus on supporting victims of bullying and helping them build resilience; ... > These studies suggest that public health interventions could aim at preventing children from becoming the target of bullying behaviours from an early age. Have we considered ways to make bullies n…
After watching how my kids schools deal with this, I think the a big part of the solution is not just thinking about bullies or the bullied, but the rest of the kids in the middle that aren't bullies or the bullied.
The schools programs really focused on the middle kids showing them how to spot bullying, not tolerate it, report it and to stick up for other kids, and bullying seemed to become publicly seen as weak and uncool.
One of my kids has/had some personal circumstances that they would've been flayed alive for at the schools I went to back in the day. I am so grateful for the change in culture, and how the other kids treat each other now compared to what I went through.
Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence
#309I sometimes feel like I'm in some alternate universe when I read stuff like this: > These new findings indicate that interventions should also focus on supporting victims of bullying and helping them build resilience; ... > These studies suggest that public health interventions could aim at preventing children from becoming the target of bullying behaviours from an early age. Have we considered ways to make bullies n…
Studies show that roughly 1% of the population is psychopaths, and these people are over-represented among CEOs of corporations. From that we can assume there are rewards for psychopathic behavior, and this includes bullying. Starting in school, the bullies are often rewarded by established authority figures. Some of this is generational perpetuation: a generation ago some bullies became leaders and now they want the new generation of bullies to also become leaders, as they associate their own behavior with ideal leadership. Therefore, to end bullying would require a full-going social, cultural, and economic revolution. The entire generation-to-generation cycle would have be broken.
Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hear what you’re saying, but I think it’s important to take a more nuanced viewpoint rather than reducing such parents to “bad people”. I think it’s fair to criticize such people, or point out why it’s a problematic approach, but many parents are just trying to do what they believe is the right thing, misguided though it may be. Education and correcting misconceptions is important, and applying a binary mindset to…
If a parent were to ask a known pedophile to babysit you wouldn't blink at calling them bad people. It's the same thing, this is clearly harmful. If you're uncomfortable with calling them bad people, then call them bad parents.
> It's the same thing, this is clearly harmful.
This is a deeply fallacious argument, and these are not equivalent things.
You seem to be concluding that the only thing that matters is outcome, not intent.
Comparing a parent who makes a well intentioned mistake with a parent who intentionally puts their child in the care of a predator is ridiculous.
One of these parents may even be criminally liable for their actions.
> If you're uncomfortable with calling them bad people, then call them bad parents.
It’s not a matter of comfort, but of effective communication and acknowledgment of nuance. Words have meaning, and boiling complex things down to hardline binary positions is rarely helpful.
Yes, calling someone like this a bad parent is somewhat better than calling them a bad person, because the implications of the two accusations are drastically different.
One implies a moral failing, while the other implies a lack of knowledge/understanding, which are two entirely different categories.
I say somewhat, because these “bad parents” may still be doing almost everything right, and may not have been exposed to situations that would give them the wisdom to impart proper guidance to their kids on this particular topic.
I know some truly lovely and sincere people who just aren’t very good at parenting yet. Every parent starts there. They know it, and they’re doing their best to learn and improve as they go. They grew up in sheltered environments and didn’t exactly have model parents to emulate.
These are not bad people.
A hacker who intentionally breaks a critical system in a hospital is a bad person.
A freshly graduated sysadmin who causes an outage to the same system due to incompetence is not automatically a bad person.
Both events may have similar outcomes, but to claim that the people involved belong in the same category is nonsensical.