Dealing with bullies: "Don't tell on them"

[Aepervius]

Same enough for me. The last day I was bullied was the day I fought back.

The problem is, in some case it is not an isolated guy, and not one which is weaker. In my case it was not one bully but a gang of 5 , all older by 1 to 2 year than all of us - class repeater and liking to provocate the younger kids into a fight to then beat it down. At some point they decided that since I was good at class I needed to be "taught a life lesson", followed them hunting me at every point. Even the teacher feared and let them do stuff way beyond discipline. Thankfully my parents moved me to another school, otherwise the solution I was desperately toying with would have made everything far worst for everybody including me. Fighting back is sometimes not an option if the adult shed their disciplinary responsibility at school.

 

[Primus]

The problem with any sort of generic bully advice is that not everyone is the same. Most people on the internet have a 'I stood up to bullies and they stopped' story but very few people are as pleased with recounting the time they stood up to bullies and got the snot beaten out of them and made it even worse. I was mercilessly bullied for years at primary school and at the time I was not able to physically stop them myself. All of the stand up to them and it will be fine advice is just as useful as people saying ignore them and it will go away advice in my personal opinion. Especially as a lot of people giving it are getting being bullied mixed up with someone was mean to me that one time.

 

[3point14]

The advice I wish I'd been given:

'Cary a stick. Use it.

I was very, very small, I would have needed a stick.

Perhaps if I'd done it I'd have ended up with some qualifications. Ho hum.

 

[LaurelHS]

I generally lost faith in most advice for handling bullies ever since my own school years, when teachers loved to repeatedly declare that "ignoring bullies makes them go away", and impatiently dismissed children who tried to inform them of this technique's observed 100% failure rate.

Yeah, my teachers liked this technique as well. "Just ignore them." Sometimes they decided more action was required and asked the bullies to apologize, so the bullies would give me a fake apology and then go right back to verbally and physically harassing me. One teacher decided that a bully and I should be assigned to work together in class so we could work out our interpersonal problems like adults. Of course the bully wasn't interested in doing that.

 

[Mark6]

There's definitely something rotten in our school system. This is from a school in my neck of the woods:




Source of above quote: Exclusive: Special Ed. Student Records Audio Proof of Bullying, Threatened With Charges of Felony Wiretapping
Later article: Exclusive UPDATE: Mother of Special Ed. Pennsylvania Bullied Teen Speaks Out as They Battle Court Conviction

This comment from Slashdot (direct link) about the above incident probably applies to the subject of this thread, too:

What a school wants is "peace". They want pupils to shut up and not cause a problem. Especially not a disciplinary one. So how do they deal with bullying? Well, easy: Not at all. Because it is not a school's problem. The bully has his victim, is satisfied and will not cause any other problem towards the school, its property or its faculty. The victim is being pushed and punched.

Now when does the school run into a problem in this scenario? Right. When the victim does not want to play his role anymore. That is when the school runs into a problem. Because now they have to do something. Until that moment, there was no reason for a reaction. A pacified bully is no problem, and a victim that lets the bully kick him is none either. The very LAST thing the school wants is to be forced to take action against the bully. Because then not only does it draw attention to the bullying problem, it puts a very unhappy bully at their hands, someone who knows how to cause trouble if he wants to, who may or may not be even supported in his actions by his parents.

The school's reaction is a logical one: The victim upset the apple cart. He created a problem for the school. What the school wants is him to shut the **** up again and swallow the punches.

When schools act like that, the way to deal with it is to treat bullying as a criminal matter. Your child is bullied -- call police and file charges for assault. School will hate that. School tells you some nonsense about "zero tolerance policy" -- tell them that you have your own ZPT -- zero tolerance for felony behavior.

Unfortunately, when the victim is treated as a criminal, this is the only way to fight back.

 

[Monketi Ghost]

I grew up in a Catholic school. Which is why I learned to fight. Recess time, all the nuns were nowhere near the playground and a bully could hold a victim down for a full half hour if they wanted because nobody was there to stop them.
Really the only effective advice for kids is to learn to avoid trouble, and if it comes looking for you, make sure the bully knows you're not worth the trouble as he'll get scuffed every time. Bullies will always pick an easier target.

I recall one instance of a very fat, very nice kid who had a terrible bully. This guy would pick on him for his weight every day.
One day in the locker rooms he flipped out, grabbed his bully with both hands and started slamming the jerk back and forth between the lockers. EPIC bully beat down. Of course he was immediately respected and never bothered again.

 

[Cainkane1]

This according to a flier distributed to fifth graders at a Nebraska elementary school. "Tell an adult only when a real injury or crime has occurred. Would we keep our friends if we tattled on them?" the flier asks, because telling someone you're being bullied is just as bad as tattling on your friends apparently.

Other sage words of wisdom from the flier inform us that verbally defending yourself makes you "automatically the loser", "the person who responds actually starts the fight", "no one likes a sore loser", and that a good strategy against verbal abuse is to "make a joke out of it or agree with the put-down".

The author must be a bully himself. I have to say to say this though. What good does it do to tell on those punks? The teachers won't do a thing about it at least they didn't when I was a kid. The pamphlet is right when it says telling invites retaliation though.

When I was crapped on in school I didn't tell not because telling wasn't right but because it was a waste of time.

 

[Cainkane1]

I grew up in a Catholic school. Which is why I learned to fight. Recess time, all the nuns were nowhere near the playground and a bully could hold a victim down for a full half hour if they wanted because nobody was there to stop them.
Really the only effective advice for kids is to learn to avoid trouble, and if it comes looking for you, make sure the bully knows you're not worth the trouble as he'll get scuffed every time. Bullies will always pick an easier target.

I recall one instance of a very fat, very nice kid who had a terrible bully. This guy would pick on him for his weight every day.
One day in the locker rooms he flipped out, grabbed his bully with both hands and started slamming the jerk back and forth between the lockers. EPIC bully beat down. Of course he was immediately respected and never bothered again.

This is fine and dandy but bullys are geniuses when it comes to picking the right victim to torment. Sometimes you get attacked out of the clear blue sky and sometimes there are more than one of them. If some athlete attack s some weaker student how can the weaker student hope to retaliate?

As often as not the victim is handicapped either mentally, physically or emotionally. Sometimes all three.

The closest thing I can see to a solution is security guards in the hallways, classrooms and buses. Bullying should be punished by expulsion and if the bullying is severe enough it should be punished by incarceration.

On the internet there is a story of a boy who was forced to commit sodomy and one fo the punks who made him do it had a history of improper touching a girl. Until the boys family sued the rapist punks had not even had their hands spaned by the school.

Some bullys are psychopaths and go on to commit other violent crimes. One bully I k.new in school is serving life for aggravated assault and murder. I know of one bully named Randy Dobbs who bullied weaker students and one day at home he killed a pizza delivery driver. Bobby Strickalnd was a bully at my school and he's serving life for murder. You can see both at Georgia inmate locaters.

 

[BStrong]

This according to a flier distributed to fifth graders at a Nebraska elementary school. "Tell an adult only when a real injury or crime has occurred. Would we keep our friends if we tattled on them?" the flier asks, because telling someone you're being bullied is just as bad as tattling on your friends apparently.

Other sage words of wisdom from the flier inform us that verbally defending yourself makes you "automatically the loser", "the person who responds actually starts the fight", "no one likes a sore loser", and that a good strategy against verbal abuse is to "make a joke out of it or agree with the put-down".

Modern corporate thinking applied to children.

In today's world, an individual otj is physically attacked by another employee and defends themselves, both are fired regardless of the circumstances of the act - and in some cases both are fired even when the victim doesn't defend themselves.

I know of a local young guy employed by a well known tech company that was involved in boxing as an off hours training program, a couple of his work buddies got involved and they attempted to start a company wide activity group - a practice encouraged by their company in other endeavors - and were shut down by order of someone unknown in the company CoC - I told him it could have been worse, at least you weren't trying to start a shooting club.

WRT the school, they're probably attempting to CYA and possibly might be attempting to do so retroactively for reasons unknown.

My personal pov is that the old ways work best here short of serious injury - a good punch can communicate a lesson quicker and more directly than a lecture and an endless round of conflict resolution.

 

[Checkmite]

I think programs like this one, along with the advice that "ignoring them makes them go away" are wrong because they're informed by the concept of a straw bully that doesn't actually exist most of the time - some antisocial "bruiser" type who has a personal problem with his/her targets and gets pleasure out of seeing that they're making that person angry or feel bad. I don't think that this describes even the bulk of elementary school age bullies, in my experience.

I dealt with a bully one year; but the next year he was out of my class and I never saw him again. However, I always saw bullies throughout school doing their thing; and one thing I observed was that bullies are actually very social creatures. They pick specific targets for specific reasons, but it's rarely because they actually have a personal problem with them; and in my experience, although a victim reacting angrily certainly can exacerbate the situation, it's definitely not the point at all (which is why ignoring them doesn't work). Rather, the bullies I observed always performed for an audience - whether it's their longtime friends, toadies, fellow bully-types, whatever - and it's not the negative feedback from the victim that they derive pleasure from, but the positive feedback from the audience. As long as their friends are there to laugh at the jokes or express admiration or enjoyment, you can ignore them until you're blue in the face - it makes no difference because you're just a means to the end anyway. I've seen bullies pick on their favorite victims, to the laughter of their friends, when the kid being made fun of wasn't even present.

Conversely, I've very, very rarely personally seen a bully pick on a victim when their typical audience wasn't there to enjoy it; such as a class where the two are present but none of the bully's friends are. In my experience the bully will try a few times but when it becomes clear their current classmates aren't sympathetic or impressed, it usually stops there and the bully saves his work for other periods or times when a more amenable gallery is around.

That's not to say that Hollywood bullies who wear older teen-punk hairstyles and studded collars when they're 9 years old and are always threatening violence at every opportunity don't exist; I just am not convinced they constitute the largest part of the problem as educators seem to think they do.

I also have to say I don't agree largely with the Slashdot comment. I'll agree that schools don't want to deal with the problem, but I don't agree at all that it's because they're afraid of having an "unhappy bully" on their hands who "knows how to cause trouble if he wants to". I think that's the Hollywood bully caricature in action.

At any rate, I think all educator-provided advice on how to "deal with" bullies is barking up the wrong tree anyway. Bullying is wrong; the problem needs to be solved by putting the educational emphasis on not bullying people, and identifying bullies and putting a stop to their activities, rather than teaching victims that they need to change who they are or how they think or act in order to make themselves "less bullyable".

 

[rjh01]

This is fine and dandy but bullys are geniuses when it comes to picking the right victim to torment. Sometimes you get attacked out of the clear blue sky and sometimes there are more than one of them. If some athlete attack s some weaker student how can the weaker student hope to retaliate?

As often as not the victim is handicapped either mentally, physically or emotionally. Sometimes all three.

The closest thing I can see to a solution is security guards in the hallways, classrooms and buses. Bullying should be punished by expulsion and if the bullying is severe enough it should be punished by incarceration.

On the internet there is a story of a boy who was forced to commit sodomy and one fo the punks who made him do it had a history of improper touching a girl. Until the boys family sued the rapist punks had not even had their hands spaned by the school.

Some bullys are psychopaths and go on to commit other violent crimes. One bully I k.new in school is serving life for aggravated assault and murder. I know of one bully named Randy Dobbs who bullied weaker students and one day at home he killed a pizza delivery driver. Bobby Strickalnd was a bully at my school and he's serving life for murder. You can see both at Georgia inmate locaters.

I would suggest that the security guards be the other students. They take the bully and bash him up themselves. Then the bully is expelled from school.

 

[applecorped]

 

[jj]

Well, there's the kid in upstate NY who recorded somebody bullying him, and who was cited for violating a wiretap law, the cop who cited him forced him to delete the evidence of bullying, and the kid now has a permanent adult disorderly conduct conviction on his record.

I think somebody DOES need to go to jail for that, and it's not the kid. Furthermore, the kid is owed a living for the rest of his life for that conviction that can never be made to go away, no matter what.

 

[332nd]

In my case fighting back made it worse. A lot worse, but I had reached a point where at least it was a moral victory. Then two things happened in the same week. I got bumped up to varsity football as a freshman due to a string of injuries, & the worst of the bullies tackled me in the hall knocking both of us into a bench. It cut my scalp, but due to the position of his head, fractured his eye socket. I jumped up unknowingly bleeding like an 80s horror movie, screaming at him about how he has to come at me harder if he wants to hurt me while he's howling & clutching his eye that's swollen shut.

So I had the protection of some of the biggest guys in school, plus everyone thought I was batguano crazy. Thing is, it shouldn't have gotten that far.

Later on I saw several other incidents. One involved a girl who moved from Rio. Exotic accent & beautiful, so pretty much every other girl hated her. Lotta satisfied smirks when she was getting pushed around. Then her parents took the leash off & my hometown was introduced to Brazilian Ju Jitsu... & that its not unusual for people to lose control of thier bowels if choked out. (I asked her to teach me. Lead to many an awkward moment...)

 

[Mark6]

I think programs like this one, along with the advice that "ignoring them makes them go away" are wrong because they're informed by the concept of a straw bully that doesn't actually exist most of the time - some antisocial "bruiser" type who has a personal problem with his/her targets and gets pleasure out of seeing that they're making that person angry or feel bad. I don't think that this describes even the bulk of elementary school age bullies, in my experience.

I dealt with a bully one year; but the next year he was out of my class and I never saw him again. However, I always saw bullies throughout school doing their thing; and one thing I observed was that bullies are actually very social creatures. They pick specific targets for specific reasons, but it's rarely because they actually have a personal problem with them; and in my experience, although a victim reacting angrily certainly can exacerbate the situation, it's definitely not the point at all (which is why ignoring them doesn't work). Rather, the bullies I observed always performed for an audience - whether it's their longtime friends, toadies, fellow bully-types, whatever - and it's not the negative feedback from the victim that they derive pleasure from, but the positive feedback from the audience. As long as their friends are there to laugh at the jokes or express admiration or enjoyment, you can ignore them until you're blue in the face - it makes no difference because you're just a means to the end anyway. I've seen bullies pick on their favorite victims, to the laughter of their friends, when the kid being made fun of wasn't even present.

Conversely, I've very, very rarely personally seen a bully pick on a victim when their typical audience wasn't there to enjoy it; such as a class where the two are present but none of the bully's friends are. In my experience the bully will try a few times but when it becomes clear their current classmates aren't sympathetic or impressed, it usually stops there and the bully saves his work for other periods or times when a more amenable gallery is around.

That's not to say that Hollywood bullies who wear older teen-punk hairstyles and studded collars when they're 9 years old and are always threatening violence at every opportunity don't exist; I just am not convinced they constitute the largest part of the problem as educators seem to think they do.

I think the reason educators seem to concentrate on "Hollywood bullies" is that to concentrate on the other kind is tantamount to admitting that bullying is nothing more than a way to establish dominance within kids hierarchy. In other words, normal primate behavior. Not a lashing out by someone psychotic, disturbed or otherwise abnormal.

 

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Well, there's the kid in upstate NY who recorded somebody bullying him, and who was cited for violating a wiretap law, the cop who cited him forced him to delete the evidence of bullying, and the kid now has a permanent adult disorderly conduct conviction on his record.

Actually, that was in southwestern Pennsylvania, about 15 minutes from me. I linked to a couple stories about it above.

 

[Craig4]

The school has already retracted and apologized. What it sounds like is that ONE 5th grade teacher put the flyers in the kids' folders that they take home every day. So, wasn't approved by the school or the district.

The info is from the Bullies2Buddies program. See more here:

https://bullies2buddies.com/

You may be particularly bizarroed by this part:

https://bullies2buddies.com/how-to-...-trying-intro/lesson-8-have-a-sense-of-humor/

It's Christian stuff, apparently.

Well there's the problem. Why would you take advice from Christians about bullying? The guy they follow got totally punked.

 

[Aepervius]

I think the reason educators seem to concentrate on "Hollywood bullies" is that to concentrate on the other kind is tantamount to admitting that bullying is nothing more than a way to establish dominance within kids hierarchy. In other words, normal primate behavior. Not a lashing out by someone psychotic, disturbed or otherwise abnormal.

Sometime those hollywood bully do exists.

In the gang I mentionned above, there were 3 "normal" type, and 2 what I would qualify as abonormal now, but simply feared like him when I was a kid.

One landed in psychiatric hospital once past his teen. He was obviously "deranged" to anybody with him. He sometimes saw stuff which was not there, threatened people for things which they did not do, and went into a lot of fight.

The other was lacking empathy utterly. I hesitate to say he was a psychopath, but it certainly felt like it restrospectively. He liked to burn stuff, especially hear the sound of insect burning. More than once he put glue on a wall under a spider web with a spider then started the glue on fire. His second favorite stuff was to take one kid with his friends, then beat him, bend his limb so that it inflicts a lot of pain, let the kid escape a bit then run at him then beat him again down or slowly advance a knife toward the eyes or the balls of the kid. Sometimes it was chemicals or fire , like the time where they ambushed me and tried to use paper with a lot of glue and put it on my eyes, or the time where they tried to throw petrol "water bomb" at a friend. We feared him more than the 4 others , because he was the one with the "idea", new idea every month, on how inflicting pain. Also sent a teacher in hospital, he was very tall and muscular (well to me as 9 year old when It started , 12 years old last time I saw him). I heard he got condmned to 10 years of prison for drug trafficking. I do not want to hear or see that guy ever again unless he is in a coffin.

Really, how do YOU deal with that ? Fighting back did not work. Asking teacher did not work. In fact the 3 others might have been afraid of fighting and would only reluctantely, but the two cited above ? They *releashed* into fight. They were the biggest tallest strongest meanest kids in the whole damn quarter. Later they were the meanest MF in gang. There is no way whatsoever an average kids would have beaten them, unless having an iron pipe and ambushing them from behind.

The only stuff which worked was finally coming back relatively heavily wounded and telling my parents either I am switching school, or I am running away.

 

[Tiktaalik]

In my experience, nothing a bullied kid did stopped the bullying. Ignoring it - didn't work. Trading insults - didn't work. Friends sticking up for you - didn't work. Fighting back - not only didn't work, but also got the bullied kid in trouble (because he started it). The only thing that works is for ADULTS to not tolerate bullying and control kids' interactions if necessary. But very few adults know how to deal with bullies or care to do it. It takes time and attention and work. Teachers wanted to relax during recess & let the kids do their thing. Walking home after school was the worst; no one around at all to see kids getting beat up. And many kids didn't want to tell; because then they'd have to admit they were getting bullied, and that meant they were disliked, bottom of the heap, something wrong with them, etc.

 

[The Man]

Well, there's the kid in upstate NY who recorded somebody bullying him, and who was cited for violating a wiretap law, the cop who cited him forced him to delete the evidence of bullying, and the kid now has a permanent adult disorderly conduct conviction on his record.

I think somebody DOES need to go to jail for that, and it's not the kid. Furthermore, the kid is owed a living for the rest of his life for that conviction that can never be made to go away, no matter what.

Should probably be the cop, as I recall NY state has a one party consent law. So as long as he (the kid) was a party to the conversation he has every right to record it.

http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/recording-phone-calls-and-conversations