Bullying: Stop the complaining.
- Thread starter andrewfox
- Start date
one of the problems of bullying is that it is never as clear cut as you remember it...
It's nice to think of the world as being easy to understand, black and white, bullies and bullied but how can you make these calls when one kid is struggling to cope with his fathers alcoholism and his mother's heroin addiction and is taking it out on another kid who is a little different but surrounded by a supporting family.
No one sees themself as a bully - even those who are mean see it as casual teasing, those on the recieving end see it as victimisation of a cruel hard nature...
I thought I was bullied all through school, I was loud and abrasive and didn't fit in and thought I was the victim... Years later I caught up with an old school pal, who saw me as a kid who bullied him, my loud insecure nature meant he had felt like he was the one being bullied, and all along I had no idea.
On another occasion an austrian kid who I saw as giving me a hard time was wound up to the point he tried to strangle me... who do you punish in that situation?
At the end of the day, all a teacher can do is make sure everyone has the support they need and try to give the kids the strength to carry on each day.
It's nice to think of the world as being easy to understand, black and white, bullies and bullied but how can you make these calls when one kid is struggling to cope with his fathers alcoholism and his mother's heroin addiction and is taking it out on another kid who is a little different but surrounded by a supporting family.
No one sees themself as a bully - even those who are mean see it as casual teasing, those on the recieving end see it as victimisation of a cruel hard nature...
I thought I was bullied all through school, I was loud and abrasive and didn't fit in and thought I was the victim... Years later I caught up with an old school pal, who saw me as a kid who bullied him, my loud insecure nature meant he had felt like he was the one being bullied, and all along I had no idea.
On another occasion an austrian kid who I saw as giving me a hard time was wound up to the point he tried to strangle me... who do you punish in that situation?
At the end of the day, all a teacher can do is make sure everyone has the support they need and try to give the kids the strength to carry on each day.
As everyone probably has I was bullied and I'm fucking glad of it. It's a bad experience and it drops your ego, but hey, i stopped acting like such a ******. Now I'm just somewhat cynical. I'd say that people should deal with it however they see fit, then learn the hard way if their decisions were right or wrong. Making a mistake usually teaches people better than us telling them what to do.
So I am now "assuming" that a large portion of the readers read the OP as "The victims of bullies should just accept being bullied". Instead of the way I read it as in "Deal with the bullies with whatever method the victim needs to solve the issue."
Tomato, tamato?
Tomato, tamato?
Yeah well no amount of sheer willpower will help me when a guy twice my size and twenty times my experience in good ol' fistcuffs starts picking on me, really. Luckily I'm resilient, so I can at least take a beating, just can't really administer one.rainz555 said:
'sides if any jackass tries that on me (as I said, I'm resilient, so I'll live) he can expect to eat nothing but turd sandwiches without the bread for the rest of his life because I'm going to sue the blood out of his veins.
And don't call me soft, you seem to be the proponent of "hit them where it hurts most" yourself. So if my fists won't hurt them, I'll hit them with something that will
There's always a bigger fish, mate. Being a "tough guy, RAAAAR!!!" is no guarantee for anything. Resourcefulness will generaly win over brute force any day, that's why we're the dominant species on the planet, for cryin' out loud.
Also I bet you're not as manly, tough and corageous as this guy is: http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1996-07.html
The sick irony is that the school will go after the victim just for fighting back because those who intervene (if any) only see two kids fighting.rainz555 said:
For regular kids, it works fine. "Don't start fights" is easy to follow because they aren't pressured to fight.
For bullies, it's carte-blanche to go nuts. They don't care.
For the victims, it sends conflicting messages.
Two sweeping generalizations in one broad stroke.Whiskey 041 said:
Laziness and ignorance make such fine bedmates, don't they?
You evidently never have been bullied. And I mean seriously, GENUINELY bullied. I agree that what kids are being told to do isn't helping, but YOUR viewpoint (and the fact that it's the viewpoint of many) is just making everything worse.andrewfox said:
I was bullied in middle school, I am currently 21, and I still rage over incidents from back then (also cry, but that's less often). They come back to me in flashes like they'd just happened yesterday, and I still am afraid to meet new people because I think they'll say something to remind me of it and I'll attack them for no reason. I spent every waking moment in those days angry enough to kill or miserable enough to consider suicide. I never asked for help, always trying to take it as something that was 'just gonna happen', and it did fuck all to help me. I still can't hear the words "Happy Birthday" without wanting to punch whoever said it. Including my own MOTHER.
Bullying is not some "rite of passage" before adulthood, it's fucking sick and frankly every single goddamn time I hear someone claim otherwise I stop listening. The insinuation that the reason I got bullied was that I never took responsibility for myself is fucking INSULTING and you should be ashamed of yourself.
Personally, I think this is a pretty sticky topic. On the one hand, I'm from the time where if you were being bullied and picked on, you either stood up for yourself and hoped for the best, or you just dealt with it until you could get away from it.
I was bullied in high school. Rough times, I remember, but I finally got sick enough of it to talk back. I stopped caring what that moron said and it eventually dwindled down to nothing. However, what worked in my case may not work in another's. There's also the notion that the world has changed a lot since I was in school. There's a level of technological saturation that can make it hard to get away from taunts and other crap bullies may pull. How many stories have we seen so far that have mentioned being bullied on Facebook or other social sites?
Now, I know a few people will think on that and respond with, "well, they can block whoever's being a jerk", or "it's only words on a screen; these kids need to suck it up", or something of the sort and to an extent I agree that kids should try and realize that. But that can be hard to do when you're of an age where what your peers think of you shapes you and provides some kind of reflection to you. Then, there's also the idea of helicopter parents and parents who fly off the handle everytime their precious little darling has their feelings hurt, so that can't be doing anyone any favors either.
I'm not going to downplay the problem of bullying. It can be as vicious as someone walking up to you and slapping you in the face with a brick for no good reason. It can have a lasting and damaging effect on teens and kids and sometimes, you just can't reason with a bully. Sometimes sticking up for yourself can make things worse when the bully is particularly malicious. But the media coverage in the last few years makes bullying seem this insane epidemic. Sensationalist news. We're living in a time where one's privacy is becoming more and more a memory, where anyone can put their entire life on the internet and tweet about whatever just happened to them in 140 characters or less.
So, to get to the point after all my rambling-- I really need to drink more coffee-- I think that, in most cases where the bullying is words and arguments, kids need to be taught to deal with it and to know that words are words and, in the case of bullies, words of idiots. Now if it's escalated to physical threats and violence and some kid really doesn't want to get into a confrontation of that type, go find help. Schools, parents, teachers, cops... there are plenty of people to go to. The worst cases? Prosecute. There needs to be a level of common sense in this situation; it doesn't have to be one extreme or the other as the media likes to portray.
I was bullied in high school. Rough times, I remember, but I finally got sick enough of it to talk back. I stopped caring what that moron said and it eventually dwindled down to nothing. However, what worked in my case may not work in another's. There's also the notion that the world has changed a lot since I was in school. There's a level of technological saturation that can make it hard to get away from taunts and other crap bullies may pull. How many stories have we seen so far that have mentioned being bullied on Facebook or other social sites?
Now, I know a few people will think on that and respond with, "well, they can block whoever's being a jerk", or "it's only words on a screen; these kids need to suck it up", or something of the sort and to an extent I agree that kids should try and realize that. But that can be hard to do when you're of an age where what your peers think of you shapes you and provides some kind of reflection to you. Then, there's also the idea of helicopter parents and parents who fly off the handle everytime their precious little darling has their feelings hurt, so that can't be doing anyone any favors either.
I'm not going to downplay the problem of bullying. It can be as vicious as someone walking up to you and slapping you in the face with a brick for no good reason. It can have a lasting and damaging effect on teens and kids and sometimes, you just can't reason with a bully. Sometimes sticking up for yourself can make things worse when the bully is particularly malicious. But the media coverage in the last few years makes bullying seem this insane epidemic. Sensationalist news. We're living in a time where one's privacy is becoming more and more a memory, where anyone can put their entire life on the internet and tweet about whatever just happened to them in 140 characters or less.
So, to get to the point after all my rambling-- I really need to drink more coffee-- I think that, in most cases where the bullying is words and arguments, kids need to be taught to deal with it and to know that words are words and, in the case of bullies, words of idiots. Now if it's escalated to physical threats and violence and some kid really doesn't want to get into a confrontation of that type, go find help. Schools, parents, teachers, cops... there are plenty of people to go to. The worst cases? Prosecute. There needs to be a level of common sense in this situation; it doesn't have to be one extreme or the other as the media likes to portray.
Why is it that there always seems to be a percentage of people who associate mental scarring with developing as a person? Not just bullying, it happens all over the place. Is it not obvious that the whole 'What does not kill me makes me stronger' thing is total crap?
Let's take something mild; One person gives you their sincere opinion that you are fat every day. Are you necessarily going to start believing them? No. I can guarantee that it will make anyone who views that as a negative or who believe as much unnecessarily conscious about their weight.
It's fairly simple. You consistantly call someone out for having no friends, they are more prone to being introverted.
In the case of the OP I might suggest from his post that it's fostered
A distrust of other people,
"But in life, bullies will always be around. In fact, you can still find them in the grown up world. They just usually come from the back with a knife instead of a punch in the face."
A callous attitude to percieved weakness in others,
"WHY is bullying being presented in such a way today that it seems to make people want to jump off tall building?" (answer: because, very occasionally, it does.) As further evidence, there's no acknowledgement at all of the possibility that it might not be realistic for whoever is being bullied to stand up to their aggressor.
And left him undervaluing cooperation with others when trying to achieve something (links back to disrtust of others).
"in life, you can't wait for someone else to rescue you from your problems."
Obviously I can't show anything concrete, I'm trying to prove a point not claiming I can effectively psychoanalyse the Thread Maker based off of one random post online.
Let's take something mild; One person gives you their sincere opinion that you are fat every day. Are you necessarily going to start believing them? No. I can guarantee that it will make anyone who views that as a negative or who believe as much unnecessarily conscious about their weight.
It's fairly simple. You consistantly call someone out for having no friends, they are more prone to being introverted.
In the case of the OP I might suggest from his post that it's fostered
A distrust of other people,
"But in life, bullies will always be around. In fact, you can still find them in the grown up world. They just usually come from the back with a knife instead of a punch in the face."
A callous attitude to percieved weakness in others,
"WHY is bullying being presented in such a way today that it seems to make people want to jump off tall building?" (answer: because, very occasionally, it does.) As further evidence, there's no acknowledgement at all of the possibility that it might not be realistic for whoever is being bullied to stand up to their aggressor.
And left him undervaluing cooperation with others when trying to achieve something (links back to disrtust of others).
"in life, you can't wait for someone else to rescue you from your problems."
Obviously I can't show anything concrete, I'm trying to prove a point not claiming I can effectively psychoanalyse the Thread Maker based off of one random post online.
Except that not all bullying is violent, and punching somebody for name-calling will often make things worse for the victim. Some people subjected to bullying don't expect others to solve their problems, many believe that there is no solution to the troubles, that's why they self-harm or take their own lives.Whiskey 041 said:
It's not a question of "taking initiative", the people who you've basically accused of playing the 'whiny little *****' card often were unable to stand up for themselves back then for numerous reasons (yes, reasons), but are now in a position where they can help others. It's called basic human compassion, something which your post there was sadly lacking.
This idea that bullying is some form of rite-of-passage is, frankly, moronic and myopic. And I'd bet the twenty pounds in my wallet that you'd change your opinion pretty quickly if you discovered one of your kids was being bullied.
Bullying is wrong. We all know it's wrong, on that there is consensus. But taking a laissez-faire attitude and letting it continue makes you just as culpable as the bullies.
We had a bully at my school that bullied me and my best friend for 3 years, we did everything to report it and nothing happened, so one night after he stole my friends tribal 2 we tracked him to where he hangs out with his friends and kicked the living shit out of him and got the tribal back. He never gave us grief again but his posh mom and dad (that's right the kid had a very cushy lifestyle) tried to get me and my friend expelled even though their son was a piece of shit. We got away when the principle of the school gave them a file of complaints as thick as the bible not just from us but half the school.
Nice generalizations. Most of which were already made, and addressed, so all your statement here proves is that you didn't actually read the fucking topic before commenting on the people about it.Whiskey 041 said:
How about those who did take the proper initiative, "Man up", and were punished for it?
"Ah, they're just social outcasts and introverts...who the fuck cares about them anyway?"
*facedesk*
I apologize if someone else has already made this point, but I would like to point out that it's very easy to ignore an insult that is occasional or infrequent. That is rarely the case in more extreme situations.andrewfox said:
It's fairly easy to shrug off an insult that happens once or twice, but if you are told you are ugly multiple times per day over a long period of time, it wears you down. Kind of an emotional erosion. I do believe that kids should be taught to stand up for themselves, but I also think they should be taught to identify the point at which they need to ask for help from a teacher or an adult.
That skill could also be applied to the real world in the form of telling an authority or boss about harassment or at least presenting a united front of you and your friends to a bully.
It is better to be feared then to be loved if you can not be both. I just convinced everyone in my school i was one bad day away from bringing a gun to school and blowing there ever loving brains out. When i went to the teacher i laid down the law, fix it or i will and you will not like how i fix it. Authority will ignore you the issue is become enough of a threat and they cant. If they hadn't solved my issue i would have started walking around the school with a baseball bat (never would have threatened a person walk quietly but carry a big stick). Bully me I dare you. Expel me I dare you...what he went to the office and asked them to fix it and they didnt. I can hear the lawyer salivating even now. Bullying is a *****, the only way to deal with it is force(all force is a form of violence and violence is the only solution when dealing with those who do not act in good faith any one who says different is an idiot). Just remember never offer a minor injury a man must either be destroyed or completely indulged, if offered a minor injury he will seek revenge. BTW when I have kids there getting a copy of the Prince and Clausewitz for there eighth birthday.
bullying comes in stages and each stage has a different way of being handled.
the biggest problem is, is that to many parents are coddling their children and its causing bullying to be displayed disproportionate. My parents and family always taught me to take responsibility for my actions, stand up for myself and if i failed it was my fault no one elses. but ive got friends that grew up slightly different to me e.g. blame the teacher for bad grades, always turn the other cheek etc.
I grew up with homosexual parents, i was over-weight, shit at sports and insanely lazy at school. so you can imagine the sorta bullshit i used to put up with on a daily basis. yet i shrugged it off and kept on going with life and funnily enough i never once though about offing myself or even slight self harm or drug abuse to deal with it. to be exact actually bullying caused me to want to improve myself, and i did because i knew that the only way i was gonna stop the bullying was by doing something real about it. yet some people get paid out for the legitimate own fuck ups and its the end off the world because they, nor mummy and daddy can lay the blame on someone else. every time i hear about some poor child offing them self because of bullying i feel sympathy because they grew up sheltered and were completely ill-equipped to handle with the real world and they had to suffer for it.
TL;DR parents are to soft on their kids, so their kids cant handle the real world.
the biggest problem is, is that to many parents are coddling their children and its causing bullying to be displayed disproportionate. My parents and family always taught me to take responsibility for my actions, stand up for myself and if i failed it was my fault no one elses. but ive got friends that grew up slightly different to me e.g. blame the teacher for bad grades, always turn the other cheek etc.
I grew up with homosexual parents, i was over-weight, shit at sports and insanely lazy at school. so you can imagine the sorta bullshit i used to put up with on a daily basis. yet i shrugged it off and kept on going with life and funnily enough i never once though about offing myself or even slight self harm or drug abuse to deal with it. to be exact actually bullying caused me to want to improve myself, and i did because i knew that the only way i was gonna stop the bullying was by doing something real about it. yet some people get paid out for the legitimate own fuck ups and its the end off the world because they, nor mummy and daddy can lay the blame on someone else. every time i hear about some poor child offing them self because of bullying i feel sympathy because they grew up sheltered and were completely ill-equipped to handle with the real world and they had to suffer for it.
TL;DR parents are to soft on their kids, so their kids cant handle the real world.
Not so much this last page but ridden through this thread is a kind of crap I actually feel compelled to respond to.
That being, a number of you are bullying OP in almost exactly the way he most likely was in High School.
Numerous times, he (guessing from Andrew) mentions his own intelligence, how he's a simple guy, all that and how his reaction to bullying was to show physical strength and there's a deluge of comments just saying how he wasn't really bullied (making light of someone else's problems) and a number disparaging in various forms the intelligence of his proposed recourse (which I'm willing to bet unless told otherwise, is exactly what used to spur him on to the 'Fighting' bit)
"You evidently never have been bullied. And I mean seriously, GENUINELY bullied. I agree that what kids are being told to do isn't helping, but YOUR viewpoint (and the fact that it's the viewpoint of many) is just making everything worse."
^ Things like this (not quoted because who said it is irrelevant, it's just the first one on the page and sums up the spirit of what I'm responding to nicely), someone had a different experience and has a different personality/body structure/passport and so immediately what the OP went though 'isn't bullying'. How do you know? How do you know he didn't go through exactly the same shit you did, getting his head dunked, books thrown in a lake, ganged up on and the crap kicked out of him and all through it his response was that he'd physically fight his tormentors if they were brave enough. Because his reaction was different? So he obviously CAN'T have been bullied. What pisses me off isn't that OP can't relate to others being bullied (because much as I'm defending him, he quite clearly can't) it's that a majority of the responses ignore that he could even have BEEN bullied because his experience was different.
Everyone deals with things differently, some people feel unable to talk to teachers about it and so we have PSAs to encourage that, and that's good. Some people feel the world's against them and we need to tell them it isn't. Some people need to punch their bully in the face and honestly, best we can do there is deal with the consequences and encourage them to document what lead up to it for legal reasons. We also need some new thing to deal with cyber-bullying and repeated name-calling apparently.
Now for the hot topic, was I bullied? Irrelevant to the discussion. If what we're talking about is 'should we encourage children to deal with their problems independently rather than appeal to authourity' why the HELL is everyone listing their own personal sob story? This isn't a discussion, it's group therapy. Discussing a social issue will obviously require at least a few examples, likely from real life but how YOU were bullied is not how EVERYONE was bullied. OP doesn't know the best way to handle all forms of bullying but you sure as hell don't either since all you're imagining is a legion of 13 year old clones of you being picked on the same way. Incidentally, I don't know either because each case is individual, as a generality I would say stuff like the Kid Zangief video shows that occasionally violence can at least draw attention to the issue that would otherwisebe overlooked.
tl;dr, Everyone is different, everyone gets bullied, there isn't and never will be a perfect solution.
That being, a number of you are bullying OP in almost exactly the way he most likely was in High School.
Numerous times, he (guessing from Andrew) mentions his own intelligence, how he's a simple guy, all that and how his reaction to bullying was to show physical strength and there's a deluge of comments just saying how he wasn't really bullied (making light of someone else's problems) and a number disparaging in various forms the intelligence of his proposed recourse (which I'm willing to bet unless told otherwise, is exactly what used to spur him on to the 'Fighting' bit)
"You evidently never have been bullied. And I mean seriously, GENUINELY bullied. I agree that what kids are being told to do isn't helping, but YOUR viewpoint (and the fact that it's the viewpoint of many) is just making everything worse."
^ Things like this (not quoted because who said it is irrelevant, it's just the first one on the page and sums up the spirit of what I'm responding to nicely), someone had a different experience and has a different personality/body structure/passport and so immediately what the OP went though 'isn't bullying'. How do you know? How do you know he didn't go through exactly the same shit you did, getting his head dunked, books thrown in a lake, ganged up on and the crap kicked out of him and all through it his response was that he'd physically fight his tormentors if they were brave enough. Because his reaction was different? So he obviously CAN'T have been bullied. What pisses me off isn't that OP can't relate to others being bullied (because much as I'm defending him, he quite clearly can't) it's that a majority of the responses ignore that he could even have BEEN bullied because his experience was different.
Everyone deals with things differently, some people feel unable to talk to teachers about it and so we have PSAs to encourage that, and that's good. Some people feel the world's against them and we need to tell them it isn't. Some people need to punch their bully in the face and honestly, best we can do there is deal with the consequences and encourage them to document what lead up to it for legal reasons. We also need some new thing to deal with cyber-bullying and repeated name-calling apparently.
Now for the hot topic, was I bullied? Irrelevant to the discussion. If what we're talking about is 'should we encourage children to deal with their problems independently rather than appeal to authourity' why the HELL is everyone listing their own personal sob story? This isn't a discussion, it's group therapy. Discussing a social issue will obviously require at least a few examples, likely from real life but how YOU were bullied is not how EVERYONE was bullied. OP doesn't know the best way to handle all forms of bullying but you sure as hell don't either since all you're imagining is a legion of 13 year old clones of you being picked on the same way. Incidentally, I don't know either because each case is individual, as a generality I would say stuff like the Kid Zangief video shows that occasionally violence can at least draw attention to the issue that would otherwisebe overlooked.
tl;dr, Everyone is different, everyone gets bullied, there isn't and never will be a perfect solution.