(there are 300+ comments and I have only skimmed)
Q: Is there not a single (former) bully who is reading it who can share why they did what they did?
Being a short guy and a motormouth, I got bullied aplenty (perhaps beaten up is the correct word), but I want to believe that it didn't leave any long-term effects. But then I do have a short fuse and I procrastinate like there's always a tomorrow. So maybe, my self-analysis is all wrong.
The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence
371–380 of 449 posts
Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence
#372When 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…
Anecdote to go with everyone else's: punching a bully in the nose in the 9th grade wound up bringing about an immediate, universal and permanent end to anyone bullying me in school.
Love it. My best friend was bullied by the class jerk for being Indian. Unfortunately for the bully, my friend and I had been practicing martial arts together for years, and my friend knocked the guy out in the middle of class. The story spread like wildfire and no one bothered him ever again. It still gets brought up many years later at class reunions!
A couple of years later, some other kid tried his luck against me with the same result. It's the grapevine that really does it for you. "Some kid fell down trying to tackle me" turned into "I knocked out this hapless boy with Bruce Lee's one inch punch" over the course of a week of storytelling.
Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence
#373(2017)
Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was a peaceful kid and no good at gym class, which played some part in why I was bullied. What benefit would I have received from officially sanctioning my regular physical humiliation?
Well, for one it forces the school to scknowledge thst'd it's happening, which is at least half the battle. And of course both sides must agree, you can't be forced in to it.
So let me just game out what happens:
The bully comes up and shoves a kid around, doing some minor injuries.
The bullied raises the matter to school authorities.
Their solution is "would you like to fight the bully some more?"
---
At what point did the victim want to get involved in this? The victim didn't instigate violence, the victim didn't want to participate in violence, the victim wants the violence to stop and to feel safe at school.
And you propose to instead offer them "would you like to risk more bodily injury engaging in violence?"
Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence
#375I feel quite shocked reading the other replies to see that so many people seem to believe the only way to resolve violence is to respond with violence. Perhaps I wasn't bullied as physically or severely as people here, but I had a few people that picked on me a lot in high school. One who ended up dating the girl I was in love with and whom I introduced to my friend group. He rubbed it in my face for almost four year…
> but at what point do we then become the bully trying to instill fear in them? This isn't really as ambiguous as you present it to be, the obvious answer is "when you do it to them unprovoked, that's what distinguishes bullying from self-defense". There are scores of comments here describing a strategy that worked for them, it's evidently effective. Have you ever tried what you're preaching with real childhood bulli…
> This isn't really as ambiguous as you present it to be, the obvious answer is "when you do it to them unprovoked, that's what distinguishes bullying from self-defense".
I agree if I believe I did it to them unprovoked, then it would be bullying; however, how often do you think a person believes they're doing it to someone unprovoked? The receiver may believe it's unprovoked, but I'd imagine the person delivering the blow in that moment may think it was provoked. I don't think most people will self-identify as a bully, but I may be wrong about that.
Also, with regards to self-defense, in the Krav Maga and other self-defense courses I've taken, there's a lot of talk about legality of self-defense and how if one's actions tip over into being too aggressive, it can go from being self-defense to assault very quickly and become illegal. So even in physical self-defense cases, who is the defender and aggressor can change quickly depending on perspective.
> Have you ever tried what you're preaching with real childhood bullies?
Hmm, maybe not real childhood bullies because I started focusing on this in my mid-20s, however I can give one story from a few years ago. I went to a picnic with my ex-girlfriend and her family was there. First time meeting the family. One of the distant cousins came up and offered me a drink. I said I had just made a deal with myself I wouldn't drink alcohol for a month and it was just the first week. He said that he didn't know me and I was new to the culture and in his culture they make drinks for people. I said no, I didn't want an alcoholic drink. He said that he makes the drink for me to know how to trust me, if I won't take it, how will he know to trust me, it's a matter of respect. I told him:
"Listen, I made a deal with myself I wouldn't drink alcohol for a month. So while I want to respect you, I also want to respect myself."
The guy stopped trying to guilt me into taking a drink and I think walked away.
So while it may not be as an extreme example of what kids can do to each other or other adults can do, I think it may show that there are ways to resolve such conflicts with words that aren't playing therapist so much as expressing indignation and anger and strong confidence in what we want, without demonizing the other side for what they want.
Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If there was something that you could have done yourself to prevent or stop it, would you refuse to do it? I still don't know. "Do you go Ender's Game on the bully?" As an adult, I don't want to condone violence, but at some point, it seems like there must come a point where one must stand up & defend oneself. The problem is that you'll very likely get in trouble for it — self defense is not a defense in the eyes o…
> self defense is not a defense in the eyes of public school administrators While this is true, it's also obviously wrong, and the fact that it's widespread in our society makes it even more wrong. Rather than try to expound that in more detail, I'll just reference a post by The Last Psychiatrist that does the job better than I could anyway: https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/10/one_way_our_schools_... The TL/DR is…
> While this is true, it's also obviously wrong, and the fact that it's widespread in our society makes it even more wrong.
Just to be clear: I don't agree with it. All I'm saying is that child-me understood that it wouldn't be a valid defense after the fact, i.e., that there would be consequences. That, of course, affects one's decision making.
That article is very real, though. (But … and I get this gist from other comments on the thread: that article's example is a mild bully. But yeah, that's how public schools react, and how they inadvertently teach.)
Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If there was something that you could have done yourself to prevent or stop it, would you refuse to do it? I still don't know. "Do you go Ender's Game on the bully?" As an adult, I don't want to condone violence, but at some point, it seems like there must come a point where one must stand up & defend oneself. The problem is that you'll very likely get in trouble for it — self defense is not a defense in the eyes o…
I certainly hope nobody's talking about going full enders game. I think most people are talking about giving as good as you get and proportionate response. Not being afraid to take a punch or get a black eye. If someone's talking about a real psychopath willing to break bones or with a weapon, the only real responses to run and any martial arts with class will teach you as much. Thick skin is just quiet suffering unl…
> I think most people are talking about giving as good as you get and proportionate response.
The goal is change, i.e., to end the violence. That's the same motivation as Ender. (I shouldn't imply Enders-game levels of violence, sorry, I meant more the metaphor the book sets up: Ender ends the conflict, which is a mirror to his larger role in the plot.) My point is that, had I engaged in violence — I never did, but do I regret that decision? how should I advise a youth? IDK… — I'm not fighting to win that fight, I'm fighting to win all fights.
(And, as I said in the original comment, I think the question of what the child should do is itself wrong. By the time a child is thinking whether violence will or won't solve the problem, the alleged adults in the room have already failed the child. It should never have gotten that far to begin with.)
A number of commenters in this thread also seem to have the popular media trope of a bully as their impression, which is a fair bit watered down. As the paper states,
> poor outcomes throughout the life span, including mental, physical and socioeconomic difficulties.
"Throughout the life span". It has permanent, enduring effects, and I don't know that pixels on a screen capture the mental anguish bullies leave in their wake.
> Thick skin is just quiet suffering unless it is backed up with real confidence and an actual sense of self-worth.
That's a good way of putting it. Unfortunately, I think the years it takes to acquire that mean you're not going to have it until after it's too late. (Or more realistically, I think bullying set back a child acquiring that sense of self-confidence and self-worth.)
> Unless you're an award-winning actor, a boy can still tell if they're getting to you.
Absolutely that.
Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence
#378I was bullied pretty severely as a kid. So bad in fact I was put on medication just to deal with it. I was a weaker kid when I was younger owing to the fact I was sick a lot. In America there is a concept of "zero tolerance" that keeps the bullied compliant and the bullies in charge. It was not until I started to get very violent that the bullying stopped. I would fight at a moments notice even sometimes in classroom…
More violence, got it.
So what's the ceiling on that? What if they escalate back? What if I can't win physically?
Is head-injury risking brain damage to my opponent going too far? Do I bring weapons? Bats? Knives? This sounds like a losing escalation path really, guns are pretty readily available and a half-dozen rounds to the chest sounds like it would be a nice permanent solution to most bullying problems.
Is that going too far?
The number of people in this entire comment section who don't see "escalate the violence" as having some very obvious negative outcomes is incredible. It's all "boys will be boys" style rhetorical crap, where they pretend that there's a magic set of limiting rules and that somehow teenagers throwing punches isn't in fact gambling on serious injury and death.
Oh and the best part: the victim doesn't want to be there. The victim wants the problem to stop. The victim, is the one who in violent escalation gets held to account for going "too far" in response.
The "real world" doesn't work this way, it's not even remotely similar. In the real world in most US states if someone assaults you in public you actually can legally draw a weapon and kill them in response, but at the very least the authorities will descend and the assaulter's life as though know it - if caught - is quite thoroughly over. School's are the only place where everyone knows the identity of the perpetrators and theirs witnesses galore and the authority says "nah, the victim should handle it - but you know, not too much".
Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Chiming in with my anecdote. Took all honors classes throughout high school, so I pretty much never mixed with kids outside of that bubble. Was one of the few Asians in my high school in the small midwestern town, so I'm sure there was potential for bullying. But I wasn't bullied, and I credit some of that to the tiered class system. This is one reason I'm up in arms about public school districts near me shutting dow…
If I understand you correctly, shutting down gifted programs because they aren’t equitable doesn’t make sense. But if you wanted my advice, you might get further if you made that point without the racism.
Re: The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and adolescence
#380(there are 300+ comments and I have only skimmed) Q: Is there not a single (former) bully who is reading it who can share why they did what they did? Being a short guy and a motormouth, I got bullied aplenty (perhaps beaten up is the correct word), but I want to believe that it didn't leave any long-term effects. But then I do have a short fuse and I procrastinate like there's always a tomorrow. So maybe, my self-ana…
Interesting question!
I’ll speak up. Context:
Australian, male, went to shitty public school in an old and wealthy suburb that had a dozen private schools and 1 public school. I was from a dysfunctional family with a lot at home issues. I wasn’t smart or hard working and because of my metabolism and genetics, I was obese until about 18 when my body started to mature (later compared to my peers).
I got bullied. Hard. By my peers at school. By kids at my games of basketball on the weekend. By my friends. By my brothers and by my father. I’m talking about every day comments about my weight. My smell. My family. My unattractive body. My fat dumb face etc. (Verbal, never got into a violet situation).
What ended up happening is that I began to bully back. I would say nasty things back to people. I would pick things up from South Park. I would knock kids books off the table. Draw on lockers with (poorly) drawn male genitalia.
Ultimately, it felt like the normal thing to do. Just be a total fucking prick to everyone.
I’ve changed a lot since then. I personally can’t stand being around verbal conflict or even consume media that makes fun of people.
I find a lot of modern ‘comedy’ to be a form a Bullying to someone somewhere.
I’m personally very sorry to my family and friends I still have for my actions that time. And I’m personally very sensitive to witnessing these behaviours.
In my life I try my best to be kind and considerate. I try not to judge people and keep my negative thoughts to my self.
I never wanted to be a bully. Looking back I feel as though I was just fitting in.