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Studies Reveal Why Kids Get Bullied and Rejected
Thelasko writes "I'm sure many here have been the victim of bullying at some point in their lives. A new study suggests why. '...now researchers have found at least three factors in a child's behavior that can lead to social rejection. The factors involve a child's inability to pick up on and respond to nonverbal cues from their pals.' The article sketches out some ways teachers and councilors are working with bullied kids to help them develop the missing social skills."
Years of pent-up anger boiled over. My high school tormentor was sitting across a cafeteria table from me. I decided right then and there,that I was going to strike back, as brutally and spectacularly as possible. I used the attached round stool as a launching pad and dove into him, knocking both of us to the ground. I rose immediately, punching him in the hard part of the side of the head - hard enough to indent my middle knuckle to the point that it's now level with the rest of the other knuckles. He was humiliated, I was vindicated (and suffered very mild punishment), and the BULLYING STOPPED FOR GOOD because the 1200+ other students in that school learned through the usual grapevine that I FOUGHT BACK.
I've lived a strange life. I was bullied from a very, very young age at school. I was also bullied by my older brother and his friends. After time, at school I became the bully. After about a year I switched schools. Once again, I was bullied. Within a year, I switched homerooms and the bullying stopped (one class was full of completely malicious little shits and the other was full of people I would be friends with for a decade). A few years later, a kid that had bullied me in the past came back to the school. I bullied him continuously. Then, I moved to another state and school. I was bullied there for about two years. I went to another school and by then I had learned a few lessons. The bully in me was still there. But it had changed. Instead of bullying the weak, I enjoyed bullying the bullies. I treated the world as a hostile place. Everyone that wasn't a friend was an enemy. Every affront was an act of war, and my typical response was escalation. You push me into a locker? I pull a knife on you. You punch me? I slip on brass knuckles and return the favor. I got a reputation as a crazy bastard. Eventually I calmed down to where I am now. Rarely bullying others, and rarely resorting to violence. People say that I have an attitude (they can just sense it without me talking), and I believe this is largely why I am no longer "messed with." I carry a weapon everywhere (even to places with metal detectors; i have a specially designed plastic knife meant to bypass them) and I constantly assess threats.
I advise people to treat being bullied like war.
Escalate- Attack.
De Escalate- Let them do what they want and hope they stop.
Maintain the status quo- Only if you believe something will change on its own
If you're not a tough kid, I'd advise you to talk to some tough kids. At one point I had two kids who would do assaults for hire (they're in prison now). Either way, discreetly pay some rougher kids (arrange a half up front or some sort of protection) to protect you and to attack your enemies. Of course legally you can be accountable- but if you're smart, you can cover your tracks enough to create reasonable doubt ("I only wanted them to protect me") and prevent conviction if it somehow managed to go to trial (never happens). Basically, grow a pair of balls and go to war or hire mercenaries.
I remember in one of my college classes (name drop to let you know how old I am ;) ), I heard an older woman (40s) constantly venting about her son's problem with a bully. Even after multiple "incidents," and several visits to court, this kid at her son's HS still was harassing him. He had shown up at their house and attacked her son. The typically inept police (not a slam at cops in general, but in my current state the cops are a joke. some states have higher standards.) did nothing after she attempted to file a police report. Basically, they system hasn't done shit except make it worse for her son. Could have gone much easier if she had gone down other paths such as:
Escalation: Paying someone to attack "the bully"
Escalation: Attacking the bully
De Escalation: Leaving town
Status Quo: Continue to be bullied
She chose-
Escalation: Putting the bully on trial
Worked out well, eh?
The system is terrible in most cases for justice. Either too harsh of sentences, or too light.
Actually - your sarcastic explanation of rape may not be as wrong as you assume. Give it some serious thought. In real life, I knew a girl who got rid of a a dog, because the dog didn't like her new boyfriend. I TOLD her that she should trust the dog's judgement. After years of abuse, and a divorce, she admitted that she should have kept the dog.
Of course, suggesting that people in general, and women in particular, choose to ignore hints, cues, and clues that they are in danger isn't going to win any friends or respect. Especially among the women's rights activists.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Whoosh, huh? Maybe something went over your head?
Bullies can't be bought, bargained, or reasoned with - unless and until you attempt to reason with them, in terms that they can understand. Bullies enjoy inflicting pain and suffering, but they don't enjoy pain and suffering. When they are shown that attempting to inflict said pain on someone will cause THEM to suffer, they often do stop bullying. Or, in some cases, they just move to different targets that don't fight back.
Which brings us back to TFA. Understanding bullies and how to deal with them is a good thing, whether you are socially inept, or not. Conventional wisdom in dealing with bullies generally doesn't work, or teachers could and would routinely change the behaviour of bullies.
Someone mod GP up a little bit, huh?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
We've been down this road a couple of times with our kids being bullied at school. In nearly all cases, I'd judge that the bully kids were the ones with the social problems. Here are a few case studies from 4th to 6th grade:
Upshot is that the kids being bullied need to build self confidence and know which relationships can be fixed, and which ones can't. Bullies are typically insecure, jealous, or lonely and this is how they feel empowered.
We can see this in adults as well. Typically its the momma bear personality,though sometimes not. Discussion on their secret need to be dominated and disciplined is a topic for another forum.
Let me extend on this with a brief experience of mine that drives this point really, really well. I was a really active debater during my high school years. (Not sure if it's there anymore, but I loved it!). Now, considering that most people I meet nowadays automatically relegate debate as a nerdy activity, one would (correctly) assume that the community attracts a pretty niche crowd. There were all kinds of people: liberals, hippies, scientists, philosophers, etc.. We had some slower folks, but they usually went by the wayside. Nonetheless, almost all of us had a really strong commonality: we were all geeks.
Many of us were tossed around and bullied during middle and/or high school, so the debate community insulated us from that somewhat. We could be weird and quirky, but still have fun being ourselves. However, there were always the elite folks. These were the creme de la creme: some of whom were the best debaters in the country. They formed their own cliques of greatness and practically shunned everyone "beneath" them. I've had people in my own team toss the less accomplished around in amusement, and I've even been harrassed by my own partners many times. I still loved debating, but that made it especially hard.
On top of that, getting bullied by smart people is, in some ways, worse than getting bullied by "brutes" because their methods of bullying people are usually more harmful and more subtle, thus being easier to let slide.
Once upon a time there was a bully. He bullied a lot of kids. One day he bullied the outcast. He shoved the outcast from behind as he was walking by. The outcast was slammed into the lockers and split his lip. The bully walked away laughing. That evening the outcast and his one lone friend came back to the school with a hacksaw, a school issue combination lock and two large garbage bags. While the friend stood watch at the end of the hall the outcast sawed the lock off the bully's locker. It took no more than a minute to empty the bullies locker into the garbage bags. The outcast locked the locker back up with the lock he brought. The garbage bags were tossed into a dumpster behind the gas station. The next morning the outcast watched from a distance while the bully tried to open his locker. The school locks all looked the same but his wouldn't open. Eventually the principal and the custodian came with some bolt cutters and the lock was cut. The locker was opened and inside was....nothing. No gym clothes, no textbooks, no almost complete woodwork project, no homework, no notes, no tennis racket, no leather jacket, no anything. The bully may have eventually realized that one of his victims had gotten even, but who it was, he never knew. He bullied a lot of kids.
i guess this study is for the kids not wiling to take a bully down a few pags.
Agree. I got bullied in grade school, but I beat the shit out of them. Most of them avoided me, though a couple still pushed me around. I always got punished whether I was beaten or beating - "zero tolerance" and whatnot.
Then I realized that since the consequences were the same (or even substantially better!) whether or not you were the aggressor, I decided I'd beat the shit out of the last recalcitrant bully first. Then they all avoided me.
Despite fully growing into nerddom in high school, I had zero problems with bullying there. I'm not sure if preemptively mauling your abusers in high school is as effective a tactic once you factor in juvenile court and expulsion. But, their files are still prone to deletion, their tires still prone to slashing, and their cars still prone to towing.
DATABASE WOW WOW
I went to a Malaysian Public Boarding High School. The environment there was closer to a military boot camp than Hogwarts, complete with barbed wire fences, guards and wardens. The eldest students there, called "seniors" lord over everyone else ("juniors"). You're pretty much at their beck and call and any perceived slights usually results in a beating. You dare not tell the teachers as it would probably get you more beatings from them as you are "tarnishing the school's reputation by making a complaint" and then even more beatings by the seniors when they found out you squawked. You also dare not tell your parents since you will let them down if you leave the boarding school. One of the tasks I had to do as a junior was to wash a whole dorm of senior's uniform, all 18 of them, once a week. There were no washing machines and you have to manually wash, dry and iron them. After a few times of doing this, I decided to strike back. After washing their uniforms, I carefully rubbed them on the communal toilet floor, in such a way as not to stain them. I then dried the uniforms and lightly ironed them. After a few weeks of this, many of the seniors developed very itchy fungal skin infections. To my great satisfaction, they never did found out what I did. From then on, I learned that revenge is truly best served cold. Seeing your tormentors in discomfort and none the wiser is much sweeter than fighting back physically.