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

#331

Post by mypalmike » Thu, Dec 01, 2022, 2:38 AM UTC

bluefirebrand wrote: post #285

XorNot wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep wondering what you think bullying is, at the school level? Because at my level, it was physically violent - and I was not in a school where this was considered "a problem". Everyone knew who the bullies were, and there was a collective culture of silence because the school could not possibly enforce proper physical safety on the grounds or around it. You avoided them and stayed away from them, because they abs…

Teaching children to deal with physical bullying includes self defense lessons and also involves teaching them not to be passive if they witness physical bullying. Maybe the bully is the biggest kid in class but it won't matter if every kid knows how to defend themselves and also every kid will team up to pull them off of someone.

An 80 lb kid who "knows how to defend himself" against one weighting 150 still loses the fight. The benefit of defending oneself is mostly that the bully often moves on to easier pickings after pummeling the one who fought back.

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

#332

Post by jimkleiber » Thu, Dec 01, 2022, 2:40 AM UTC

bennyschmidt wrote: post #294

For the people who think bullying isn't a problem: Replace "bullying" with: Parental neglect/abuse, unfair rejection/blame, or being backstabbed in a situation that you can't really do anything about it/no one will believe you. It gets at what the end-feeling is like. Bullying in its raw form seems acutely more harmful than say, parental abuse, which only manifests as "bullying" years later, but it's the same overall…

I've been focusing on a very bottoms-up approach: how to respond to micro-attacks. So practicing responding to getting rejected, ignored, blamed, even idolized, and complimented—anything that makes me want to disconnect more and more from the person and from myself. I've found that in getting better at these very simple, micro-interactions, I start to get better at the bigger things.

One of the things I've noticed the most in classes is that being attacked is often a subjective experience from the receiver, often oblivious to the giver. I have people intentionally try to reject the other and it seems very uncomfortable to try to do it intentionally.

Anyways, I find it neither dystopian nor hellish. One person who took a class said, "Jim, your workshop it f*cked my feelings but they needed it, thank you."

I don't mean to advertise here, more just to say I believe there are ways to approach it that I feel excited about.

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

#333

Post by mypalmike » Thu, Dec 01, 2022, 2:42 AM UTC

P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #224

thewebcount wrote: post #212

I 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…

> Have we considered ways to make bullies not want to bully? That seems way more productive to me. At over 40 years of age I've had to deal with people attempting to bully me, most of them are completely shocked when they realize they can't. My point here is that if you think bullying is something that stops at graduation then sure, that sounds like a reasonable position, but the premise itself is wrong. One of my fa…

I'm curious when you've encountered bullying after high school? I'm over 50 and haven't seen it since (and I was a frequent victim back then).

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

#334

Post by ryan93 » Thu, Dec 01, 2022, 2:49 AM UTC

olau wrote: post #243

thewebcount wrote: post #212

I 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…

I read somewhere that to be successful you need to focus on the environment people are in, as in instead of trying to figure out who the bullies are, you need to figure out why a certain environment leads to bullying behaviour.

Seems like a somewhat universal phenomenon.

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

#335

Post by atomicnumber3 » Thu, Dec 01, 2022, 2:51 AM UTC

a1pulley wrote: post #251

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…

Does anyone have experience with going to a "school within a school" for "gifted and talented" kids? I was trying to figure out why I don't remember any bullying from my middle school or high school, when it dawned on me that I might have been insulated from it by taking classes exclusively with gifted and talented kids —i.e., kids from stable/whole/educated households. I went to a high school where kids came from a…

This is essentially how "honors" classes worked at my large public high school. If I weren't in the Anime- sorry, I mean, Japanese Culture- Club, I would literally have only seen the same 50ish kids all day out of a class of ~1000.

In freshman and sophomore year I decided that English classes bored me to tears, so I took non-honors English both years. There was zero overlap between that class and the kids I saw the rest of my day in honors classes. Then in junior year when I decided to do IB and was forced to take IB/AP English, suddenly boom yep exact same set of kids.

I'll admit, I enjoyed the experience. Admittedly partly because even half-assed work got me easy A's and glowing appreciation from my teachers (for actually putting in some effort and not being disruptive etc), but also getting to meet lots of different people was fun.

Also good god did I hate English class. So many insufferable books of what I still consider to be terribly little literary merit. I wish we'd been allowed to just read classical literature all year. For one of the book slots we were allowed to choose our own book, and I chose Plato's Republic, which I enjoyed thoroughly. It was the only book from prior to the 20th century that I got to read for class that year as well. At least it got better in senior year when we got to do Shakespeare again.

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

#336

Post by bradlys » Thu, Dec 01, 2022, 2:52 AM UTC

progrus wrote: post #284

fleddr wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I got my ass kicked in the playground by a much larger kid. Completely unprovoked. I came home crying, my dad told me to return to the playground and hit him back. I insisted that I couldn't, he's much larger and stronger. "Get a piece of wood then" I did. As I approached the playground, I felt ridiculous. This wood still wouldn't do anything. To my surprise, the bully fled the scene, clearly afraid. This incide…

I never really got physically bullied because this was just understood in our house, so I was confident enough with the option to throw down that it didn’t happen. There was also the fact that my parents spent beyond their means for “good” schools - but I was a tiny kid and otherwise would have made an ideal target. I think two scuffles overall, both were the first and last time, and one of the bullies became my frie…

Man - you grew up in such a sheltered world. The real world is much more cruel for most of us. You might have said you were a "tiny kid" but you were truly never at odds.

I was constantly beat up, physically, until I was 16. It wasn't just by one kid, it was often by multiple. This was even in front of teachers, principles, etc. They watched and did nothing. Other kids watched and did nothing. We don't all get to live in nice communities.

Other kids could pick me up by the neck and choke slam me down into the ground and did so. I wasn't able to do anything about it because I just wasn't that big. If I had done anything to fight against it - I would've been expelled.

It's different when you're a small brown kid in a super racist small town America where your average parent is absentee and on meth half the time.

Don't give advice when you never got into a physical confrontation to begin with. How fucking privileged.

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

#337

Post by patentatt » Thu, Dec 01, 2022, 3:12 AM UTC

a1pulley wrote: post #251

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…

Does anyone have experience with going to a "school within a school" for "gifted and talented" kids? I was trying to figure out why I don't remember any bullying from my middle school or high school, when it dawned on me that I might have been insulated from it by taking classes exclusively with gifted and talented kids —i.e., kids from stable/whole/educated households. I went to a high school where kids came from a…

That's me. Grew up in a very middle to perhaps lower-middle-class area and went to more-or-less middling schools. It definitely wasn't 'the mean streets' or anything but very blue collar. I'm certain there were kids living through very real problems at home and in their personal lives all around me. But I was blissfully unaware and disconnected from all that as I was wrapped in the bubble of band and honors/gifted classes and the associated type of kid. A pretty good childhood overall. One time, one 5-minute instance, I was actively, actually bullied, in a very minor and entirely inconsequential way by the football captain jock kind of kid. Took me by surprise, but rattled my cage enough that I still remember it. He went on to play in the NFL, had a short and pretty much unremarkable career as an athlete best I can tell, and now is a construction worker nearby and I saw a headline once that he got arrested for a DUI. I now live in a much nicer neighborhood in a bigger house than he does, and based on the blurb about the DUI, I drive a better car than he does/did. Point is, I can't imagine what it's like to actually be bullied. One tiny thing happened to me in an entirely impersonal and inconsequential way and here I am decades later googling the guy and feeling smug that I came out on top. I would have been crushed by any amount of real bullying.

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

#338

Post by KnuthIsGod » Thu, Dec 01, 2022, 3:23 AM UTC

I was bullied as a child, and as a young adult. And yes, I have had adverse mental health effects from that.

But the thing is that I was weird before and am still weird now. Aspergers ( sorry, must not mention that mass murderer's name ) / Autism spectrum disorder/ general weirdness.

So I do not really know if the bullying was an epiphenomenon of my weirdness and whether my weirdness would have caused my issues.

Or perhaps the bullying contributed.

In any case, it does not matter.

"Il faut cultiver notre jardin: ‘we must cultivate our garden’" as Voltaire wrote in his Candide...

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

#339

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th » Thu, Dec 01, 2022, 3:24 AM UTC

haswell wrote: post #310

P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not reading all of that, sorry.

If a parent isn't preparing children for life as an adult they're bad parents.

I'm a bad basketball player and my intent has fuckall to do with that judgement.

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

#340

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th » Thu, Dec 01, 2022, 3:26 AM UTC

primax wrote: post #314

P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A feel as though a lot of people that say those things haven't been victims of bullying, or maybe, at least, not the a certain extent that others were I say those things and my stepfather was abusive to the point of choking me unconcious and kicking me in the face with a steel-toed boot. Please, do tell about how I know nothing about dealing with abuse at the hands of others.

Just because you have your torments does not mean others do not have their own, in their own inner worlds. And trying to diminish theirs is a cruelty.

wtf are you on about?