For most of the people that I deal with, life has been brutal. No breaks, just sh8t. Why are we sentenced to this? Did any of us ask to be born? School is brutal. It sucks to be bullied, but there really is no help for it. I told my kids you have to bully a bully but one of them was bullied and one of them was a bully who now is bullied. My ex was a bully.
What is the effing point?
I do not think that enough is being done about bullying. Too many schools, unfortunately, turn a blind eye to it.
Some kids do learn to cope with it. Others end up withdrawing and becoming dysfunctional adults, incapable of forming real relationships or holding down jobs.
Yes, there are tough times in life, and kids should be empowered to stand up to them. Heaven knows, we’ve been failing on that front, with all of the snowflakes. But excusing bullying is not the way to make strong kids. If we wouldn’t tolerate a behavior from an adult, we should not tolerate it from a child.
I used to get bullied in school because I was always the new kid and big for my age, but passive.
The comedy is that I was an expert at goading bullies and then running away in such a way that I was NEVER caught. I remember, as an 8th grader, being chased by a bunch of ninth graders at South Mercer Jr High (Mercer Island) and hiding behind a really good bush while they were angrily discussing how I got away, right in front of me.
I was caught once by a sophomore bully when I was in 11 th grade. The grass was wet and I had leather soled wingtips on. He close fisted me on the back of the head as he caught up to me. So I stopped, turned around, lifted him off the ground by his belt and collar and threw him down on his face and sat on him. I was 6’1” and 160. He was about 5’10”. I told him we could wait for a teacher to come by, or I’d let him up and he could walk away. He chose the latter.
I’m 64. To this day I stand by a commitment I made to myself when I was in grade school: When I see a kid getting bullied, I WILL intervene. I had to do it in the international district of seattle when an asian kid (looked to be about 15) was being absolutely pummeled and blodied by a group of 10 or so other asian kids. While the people walking down the street just gawked, a cab driver and I went full force into that group and started ripping kids off. That stuff makes me sick.
Bullying is not a rite of passage, its abuse.
However,that's no reason to tease or bully the kid.The kids who are doing that should be spoken to and,if necessary,punished by their parents.
When I was a kid (many,*many* years ago) there was a girl in our class who had some kind or orthopedic or muscular condition (polio,perhaps?) which made her walk funny and which required her to use those clunky looking "cripple" crutches...the type that "Timmy" uses in South Park.We used to tease her badly.I think back on that now and am very much ashamed and I hope that I (we,actually) didn't cause her any lasting emotional harm.If someone had sat me down and explained how wrong it was I might have stopped...even back then I had something that at least resembled a conscience and a sense of empathy.
Sorry..I meant Jimmy of South park,not Timmy.
I wonder if bullying has become much more common in recent decades. When I was in HS In the late ‘60s, the term “bullying” was not even in our vocabularies. We used the term “picking on” to describe what was mostly verbal harassment and very minor, if any physical contact. And there was very little of that.
If you show weakness or let them know they’re getting to you, it’s like blood in the water to sharks.
They’ll pour it on all the more.
The best thing to do is either dish it right back, and self-defense training would come in very handy for that, or ignore it.
And then the parents could always homeschool, which is no guarantee against encountering bullies, but greatly reduces the likelihood.
I was pretty much a loner as a kid, no reason for that as far as I’m aware, I was just an island. That by itself made me stand out and so I got unwanted attention. The only way to stop bullying is to beat them down so that they’re afraid of you. That runs the risk of turning you into a bully yourself, but there comes a point in everyone’s lives when enough is enough. There are worse reactions than punching your tormentors in the face to get them to leave you alone. I didn’t start it but I ended it. Seems fair enough to me.
Seems to be universal that people are bullied.
I’ve hardly met a person yet who wasn’t although the few that didn’t have that problem turned out to BE the bullies.
I was bullied, too, like so many others. It does hurt and does leave emotional scars.
Teasing is the worst because it cuts and you begin to believe the lies. It affects your whole perception of yourself.
I was the Batman for kids that got bullied. Still some of my favorite memories of school. Being big and athletic helped. I was the captain of my football team, wrestling team and rugby team. But my best friends were the nerdy, geeky kids. I played Dungeons and Dragons, read comic books, loved to draw and write. But my favorite thing to do was intimidate and/or physically take care of dudes who bullied my weaker friends. Man did I love doing that. Maybe that made me a bully to the bullies, but I don’t care.
I have 3 sons now, 13,11, and 6. They are learning to box and wrestle. I teach them to defend their less gifted friends. So far its working well. I do agree there’s too much parental intervention in school though. Kids need to overcome obstacles in order to grow and thrive. As a parent you need to give them the tools and instruction, but you gotta let them handle adversity as it comes their way and not rely on mommy or daddy to step in.
Why are **children** expected to cope with an environment that would win an adult MILLIONS if it happened in the workplace?
Children are expected to overcome abuse that, if it were adults doing it, would generate **felony** charges?
Abolish school.
Problem solved.
I was never a victim of bullying, although I encountered bullies that would cast their eyes about and see if I would be a victim. In HS a known bully decided to try his hand on me. He walked up to me and said in a nice way, "How ya doing?" and hit me in the shoulder real hard, trying to make it look friendly. It hurt. Without saying a thing, I put him in a headlock, fliped him over my back right into a muddy drainage ditch. He lay there flat on his back in 6 inches of mud and said, "Why'd you do that?". "You know why."
Later that same day, he snapped me with a towel in the locker room. It hurt. I guess he wasn't sure how we stood. I turned around threw a right hook, caught him under the chin and knocked him out cold. He left me alone after that. Word got around, too.
Until my junior year in HS I was the smallest male and usually the smallest person in my classes. I also knew and used a lot of big words. In Jr Hi in Norfolk it got the worst and I went home with torn clothes and bruises almost daily. Until one day when I started around a corner at a neighborhood shopping center and saw my chief tormenter coming toward me from a block away. There was a 1x board on the ground right there about three feet long. I waited for Greg who was twice my weight and half a foot taller than me behind the corner of the wall until he reached it and clocked him with the board. I made sure he could see who it was who bloodied his face and turned and went home. Nobody bothered me again at that school and Greg never told anyone who marked his face.
Stalin’s Yellow School Bus
Public School is child abuse.
Teachers are the bullies.
And keep children off ALL social media until at least 18.