The cultural issue is a key point. I have raised happy, curious children who take on the world like excited kittens. They are also extremely smart. Both have had bullying issues with the clique. A quick left solves the short term issues (followed by the kid being taken to the ice cream shop on the way home from my visit to the principal’s office after mine got in trouble for fighting back). Clique bullying is harder.
The issue is whether we raise our own children to join in, which is a sign of weakness, or to defend others, which takes real courage. My son noticed that when he defended other victims, that the group backed off on him a bit. Why do most kids follow the bully instead of the victim? Is this more recent or did the greatest generation, for example, do the same thing and they learned courage later?
Regardless, teach your kids to take the brave road, stand up for others who are on the “outs,” and they will be respected/feared by the popular ones in many cases.
“Why do most kids follow the bully instead of the victim?”
Maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome. The thing is, in the fifties, sixties, and seventies and eighties bullying was dealt with. For some reason these kids are getting more feral, demonic.
It’s not just name calling, exclusion, or maybe a schoolyard fight. It’s systematic and after one is sepcifically targeted, they show no mercy.
I actually read that Phoebe had dated a popular high school jock and the girls decided that Phoebe didn’t know ‘her place’ in the pecking order of the school. So it’s not like this is about lunch money being stolen. This is about some demented idea of ‘remembering your place’ that is insane.
Somehow in this culture we’ve accepted this feral behavior and we need to start treating them like out of control animals.
In my experience it's the cool kids who do much of the bullying, as in Phoebe not knowing "her place". Kids and peer pressure yields kids either siding with the bully or ignoring the problem. Siding with the victim means being treated similarly. Also, kids see that there's no real punishment given to the bully.
Bullying is all about power and control. Humans seek power and control, rather than weakness and no control. When one child bullies another, then the bully has the power and control. It feels good (as long as one can ignore one's conscience).