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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."
Why are kids bullied and rejected?
Because sometimes, other kids are dicks. Next question?
Interesting, but very the analysis lacks any cultural context. Is this really the fault (or failing) of the victims, or a consequence of the values and morals of our society and culture? The only way to answer that question is through a comparison to other cultures, past and present. The report seems to accept certain social behaviours as given or natural when perhaps they are only specific to our culture. I think more study is needed.
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.
It really is an under-addressed public health issue
I really hope they don't _over_ address it (WAIT! this is a serious comment!).
I'm really glad to see them taking a "help the kids function in the real world" vice the traditional "turn schools into a happy fantasy world" approach.
At the same time, learning to deal with these kind of challenges on your own is important. Obviously there are lots of cases where things get out of hand, and as the article describes, kids grow up with all sorts of problems as a result.
I think the assumption here is that you are giving the kid a push in the right direction.. rather than hand holding.. which might work. When you start doing the latter.. I think you just serve to isolate the kid more (classic example.. when a teacher essentially forces a group to include someone).
Most kids are so desperate to have friends, they just jump on board
Personally I think this hints at the root of the problem... self esteem.
It's cliche.. but "just be yourself" works. If you're a geek.. be a geek.. you'll fit in somewhere.
Admit it.
Interesting -- at my school, the bullies were more likely to be the poorer kids, and the bullied were the rich kids. There were exceptions, of course, but the general trend was clear...
Wow, that article really has a 'blame the victim' mentality, with the coda "and here's why".
The article even ends with the appeasement of "what can you change about the way you act to avoid being bullied"
Just like Battered Wife Syndrome, bullying is something that, ultimately, is the fault of the aggressor. Appeasement is not the solution.
"Einstein argued that [...] God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer." ~ Brooks
Let me translate the article for you so you don't have to waste time on its bullshit: bullied kids are responsible for their own torment and it's really their job to stop it from happening. --> F-you Clark McKown. Right in the ear.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
In other news,
Studies Reveal Why People Get Beaten and Mugged
The factors involve a persons inability to pick up on and respond to nonverbal cues from muggers.
Studies Reveal Why People Get Prison Raped
The factors involve a persons inability to pick up on and respond to nonverbal cues from rapists.
Studies Reveal Why People Get Prison Murdered
The factors involve a persons inability to pick up on and respond to nonverbal cues from murderers.
<sarcasm>Who would have guessed? Those poor bullies are really the victims of the kids they beat up, because the kids being beaten up are practically asking the bullies to commit violence against them. I mean, obviously, if anybody doesn't want to conform to social norms or has interests other than those that the popular kids have, they are abnormal and hence need to be cured!</sarcasm>
That was my impression too.
The article basically says: children with Asperger-like behavior are bullied (so it's their own fault).
In the real world, bullying and social isolation do not necessarily happen together. The article seems to present both as unseparable facts though.
The article fails to address other factors like: What about the bully kid? Why does he/she does that? How some bullies are able to form mobs? Why not all kids behave like bullies when in contact with such child?
Apparently it's too hard and boring to research properly on that subject so:
- Blame the bullied kid.
- Say he/she needs treatment.
- Push tons of pills in order to fix all his/her social problems.
- Profit.
Bullies don't have initially preferred targets, I bet they try to bully everybody, but they continue with people who don't fight back or don't know how to protect themselves, what are the chances that those people are the shy ones, the ones that don't get social clues, the ones that are a bit slower? Do we need a study for that?
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
ANOREXIC ANDY
"There's a lot of hate around here."
-Gentry Robler, Santana High sophomore
The Santee rage massacre took place less than two years after Columbine, and this time, thanks in part to the pathetic figure of Andy Williams, people started to seriously consider the role bullying might have played. But there was resistance.
In the immediate aftermath, Santana High School officials and local law enforcement officials either denied growing reports that he was a victim of bullying, or else they argued that even if he had been bullied it had nothing to do with the shooting.
Andy's appointed lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Randy Mize (his father could not afford to hire a private attorney), listed eighteen incidents of bullying just in the weeks leading up to the shooting, including "burned with cigarette lighter on his neck every couple of weeks," "sprayed with hair spray and then lit with a lighter," "beat with a towel that caused welts by bullies at the pool," and "slammed against a tree twice because of rumors." These "rumors" of course were rumors of the sexual orientation sort, the most devastating of all bombs you can drop on a newcomer kid who is incapable of defending himself. Jeff Williams, Andy's father, later said, "Some of the stuff basically borders on torture."
As Andy quickly learned, Santana High's culture combined the lethal cruelty of coastal California suburbia with familiar, rural trailer park hazing. He wanted out. He visited his mother in South Carolina a few months before his attack, and hoped to move back with her. When he visited old school friends in rural Maryland on that same trip, he told them that kids at his high school regularly egged his father's apartment or stole his homework and threw it into garbage bins. They called him "faggot" and "bitch" and "gay" and taunted him for not fighting back when he was bullied. Worst of all, much of the abuse came from the neighborhood "friends" he hung out with, got stoned with (he turned stoner to try to earn acceptance), and from whom he tried and failed to learn to become a skate rat.
Some were students at the high school, some weren't. Andy's decision to hang out with students from another school, which suburban kids don't often do, in spite of the fact that these "friends" abused him at least as much as the Santana High "friends," says a lot about the choices he faced. If Andy could have learned to skate, he might have been accepted by a second-tier clique in the coastal California public school hierarchy. As it was, not only did he never live up to the skate rat standards on the ramp, but to punish him for being a dork, his skateboard was stolen on at least two occasions by his friends, who then taunted him for being too much of a fag to protect his board.
In spite of their relentless taunting, Andy joined them at the local skate park, where they got buzzed on liquor and weed, skated on the ramps (he just watched), and tormented Andy Williams.
"His ears stuck out, he was small, skinny, had a high voice, so people always picked on him 'cause he was the little kid," said Scott Bryan, a friend of Williams.
He earned the nickname "Anorexic Andy."
"He was picked on all the time," student Jessica Moore said. "He was picked on because he was one of the scrawniest guys. People called him freak, dork, nerd, stuff like that."
Laura Kennamer, a friend, said, "They'd walk up to him and sock him in the face for no reason. He wouldn't do anything about it."
Anorexic Andy: before puberty...
Even Andy's fifty-nine-year-old, neighbor Jim Crider, observed, "Williams looked like someone working hard to fit in with his peers-and not quite succeeding. His clothes did not match what the other kids were wearing. When he talked, others didn't always pay attention."
Anthony Schneider, who was fifteen when the Santee shootings happened, both confirmed Crider's observation and gave a small glimpse into the dumb, cool poison of this schoolyard culture there: "He didn't have that
Uh, it's pretty clear to me that there is an overtone in this article that it's victim's fault that they are not well liked or have social problems.
While I accept that this may be true in some cases, and a contributing factor in many instances, it's shocking and abhorrent to me that someone might suggest that it's the victim's fault that they get physically assaulted, mentally abused, pressured to do drugs, etc.
The common attribute to bullying is bullies. They are the source of the problem (as often a single link in a chain of abuse) and it would be wise to focus on identifying, exposing, and properly reacting to their abusive behavior against others.
I don't want to attack the entire study based on my perception of this article, and I'll support that having poor social skills can contribute to the likelihood of being a bully victim, but WTF?
Rorschach, is that you?
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
"People have always tried to end bullying by punishing the bullies, but it has never been an effective way to solve the problem."
Most bullies go unpunished, so let's not assert punishment is ineffective when it is generally absent.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Are you saying AP style is preferred these days?
Breakfast served all day!
You can be mean to me
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
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.
Aww, hell, join Slashdot and you can have friends just like you!!
Somebody apparently has never heard of self-loathing.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Bullies are cowards. All of them.
The best thing to do with a grade school bully (assuming I'm talking to someone the same age) is to hit them in mouth. Hard. You well then either get hit back a couple of times -- which will hurt, but not be tragic -- or not. In either case, the bully will find someone else to pick on. Learning that getting beat up on the playground isn't the end of the world can itself be incredibly freeing -- and usually leads to it never happening again.
I have no patience for bullies -- but I have even less patience for helicopter parents who replay their own sad lives as victims through their kids and insist the world be made into a padded safety zone where nobody says mean things or looses at tag any more.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
you are not describing western culture, or judeochristian culture, or american culture, or southern culture, or whatever you think are describing
you are describing human nature. its fundamental human psychology that is in play here, not the "mythology" of one group
there is not a society that has ever existed on this planet, or will ever exist, that the quote above does not apply to
know human nature for what it is: the good, the bad, and the ugly (yes, i intended that ;-). don't hold one culture or society guilty for what all societies and cultures are guilty of
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Really? Because never in my childhood was a bully ever punished. Not once. The only time I can recall a bully going to the principals office was after I fought back. Since I won the altercation I was in trouble and he was the victim, nevermind that he started it.
("You're here and you're smaller than me so you're gonna get beat up")
Believe me, I've been there. The solution? Accept that you are going to get beaten up, then set out to make the experience as painful as possible for the guy beating up on you. Yeah, he hammered you to a pulp - but if you managed to get in one good shot and broke his nose, he will never come back for more. In fact, the fight ended when the pain speared from his nose into his pea sized brain. Never give up, and never stop fighting, and even the densest of bullies will come to understand that you're not an easy target.
"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
Setup a plot to implicate themselves into some kind of illegal activity. At least that what some geeks do.
New Economic Perspectives
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.
to say that the response on a community level has any meaning for the psychology of the individual
Those members of the community aren't themselves individuals? The parents, siblings, friends, and other relatives of the victims had no 'psychology' in response to their loved ones being murdered?
are the amish robots? they feel no emotion?
Obviously not -- love, forgiveness and empathy are very strong and powerful emotions.
culture modifies basic human psychology. but human psychology never changes
Perhaps the situation is the reverse of what you propose. Perhaps a culture of sacred violence has modified the basic human psychology of love, empathy and forgiveness. Perhaps both feelings of revenge and forgiveness are inherent in human psychology, neither one being more 'natural' or 'artificial' than the other. I don't see any convincing evidence either way to show which is more basic to human nature -- revenge or forgiveness, but I see plenty of evidence of both happening. From my point of view, it's up to you to provide evidence of why revenge should be considered more 'basic'. I see revenge and forgiveness as universal. For every revenge anecdote you can find, I can find a forgiveness anecdote.
Why do you think it's invalid?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
People who beat up other people GO TO JAIL. They do not get peer mediation, they dont get 3 day suspensions.
Police do not tell victims "Suck it up, be a man, stop living in a fantasy world", they arrest the thug and put him in jail
for an extended period of time. They do not force victims to stay in proximity with their perpetrators.
We do not tolerate it when husbands batter wives and when parents batter children, we dont allow thugs to extort money from people
on city streets or to beat up people as a means of social dominance. Why do we tolerate physical violence by peers?
A physical bully is a criminal, there is no social ineptness that justifies being physically battered.
The article deals how to help people deal with social bullying. Socially bullying is not a crime even though it could
be considered a form of harassment similar to sexual harassment in which case schools could be found civily liable
if they do not intervene actively to prevent it.
No the schools have never really taken on socially popular bullies. Schools only now are reacting because they are getting sued.
"The article fails to address other factors like: What about the bully kid? Why does he/she does that? How some bullies are able to form mobs? Why not all kids behave like bullies when in contact with such child?"
But, that would involve surveying and talking to the bullies, and come on, those guys are scary. Our researchers have been found to much prefer doing studies on the submissive compliant kids, for some reason.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
unfortunately, I don't have any solutions with me. But I can tell you some long term consequences based on my experience.
I was brought up in south-asia in a co-ed public school. Public schools are a mix of all the social classes and it is still a habit of 3rd world country men to look down each other on minor nuances.
I was a bully victim throughout my school years (and to a certain extent in my college years.. but more towards 'work-wise bullying'). Definitely I didn't have the physique to fight back. So I had to submit it to survive school years as changing schools is not the solution for everything. As a consequence, I never had a big circle of friends in school. And I try to forget most of my school years and ppl I met there.
Most of my school time, I spent on home work and other stuff (including reading, thinking stuff up) while rest are having merry time in the school yard. But nevertheless, I met handful of good guys (mostly nerds), who ended up being my long term friends/confidantes.
But I really got to know I'm having a serious issue, only after I entered to college. I spent 4 years there without attending a single dorm party, going to college prom or road trips. I just didn't fit into people. I had hard time understanding ppl and only time I understood them was.. when they are ganging up to bully me.
Same thing with romantic stuff. Its a shame, even educated in a co-ed school, I never went on a date in my entire life (and not to mention, no first time yet). Simply because, I don't know how to approach females and talk to them nor have the confidence. Back in school days, when I approached a girl, there are herds of ppl shouting/yelling nasty stuff.... and to avoid that harassment, I opt not to talk with girls.
Moreover, I have issues approaching strangers and talking with them. And I'm worst in terms of bargaining things and manipulating situation for my advantage. No matter how much I try to fit into social groups, I always get kicked out.
Even in my office, I tend to limit my communication to e-mails/IMs. Even thought other staffers having great non-work bonds.. I only have professional relationships.. that's that.
If I didn't get bullied.. I would've interact with more ppl and probably complete 10,000 hours in social relationship training, hence I would've done much better in things I came across after school years. Plainly, I'm having hard time in terms of communicating with people, that pretty much closes most of the life experiences. In long run, all this have costed me quite badly. And yes, I agree with what the article explains.
On the one hand, bullies rarely if ever make a positive contribution to society. They are irrationally violent towards the kids that are smarter, not as socially developed, less physically imposing, and have odd interests.
On the other hand, the intelligent, awkward runts with unusual obsessions are pretty much responsible for every every bit of human progress since the invention of fire.
Guess which group of people the article says must alter its behavior?
"No matter where you go, there you probably are." -- Buckaroo Heisenberg
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.
Knowing the reason for something is not the same as using it as an excuse.
Knowing where one has deficits is not the same as not having a reason to find workarounds, or to work on improvement.
Having Asperger's does not make one a robot, without willpower, discipline or a drive to improve.
TL;DR: Fuck you. And fuck you if you think that spending my childhood being bullied has made me a victim.
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
All these years I thought "turn the other cheek" meant you just put up with bullying.
Then I read a sentence in this book by some Christian author I can't remember. Anyways, he said
"You can't turn the other cheek if it's been turned for you".
There is a key distinction between meekness and weakness I was not understanding. Now that I have discovered that, it is my choice whether I choose to fight back or not. I don't feel "morally obliged" to be passive. I evaluate whether it is important for me to defend myself at that moment, and I act on that. The real problem all along for me was a control issue. Now that I have that control, I realize the power struggle for what a silly thing it is, and it just doesn't bother me. I also am much older now and these things just don't happen anymore.
I plan to do what another /. poster wrote about a year ago. His daughter [2nd, 3rd grade or something] was being abused by the school bully. He contacted the teachers, several times about it, to no avail; after the girl was physically hurting his daughter. He contacted the school principle, who didn't do anything, shrugged it off, not a big deal, etc. So he told his daughter, the next time this happens, grab her hair next to her scalp tightly, and push her head down as hard as you can while you pick your knee up right into her face.
The girl did it, gave the bully a bloody nose, teachers and principle were ALL OVER her and /. poster; threatened him with a lawsuit over his daughter's conduct. So he explained everything to his lawyer and had him write them a nastygram. They and the bully's parents shut up.
I liked this story because
1). he tried to deal with it through the most acceptable means [of course they weren't going to do anything about it, but he tried at least and so had legal grounds to stand on]
2). The bully never bothered his daughter again. Neither did anyone else in school.
He's asking for evidence to justify your human psychology theory. If you don't have any real evidence then fess up. It's not enough to give anecdotes that don't really address the issue. It's even worse to come up with some bizarre theory on his thought process that doesn't seem to amount to more than an ad hominem attack.
Chris Mesterharm
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.
However if you feel good about yourself, and you feel that you're valuable just because you're a human being, you then will be able to treat others with the greatest true respect. They will pick up on that. They will love how it feels and they will WANT to be your friend.
This is great, but it only works when everybody is built the same way.
Fundamental, biological fact: Psychopaths exist and it is impossible for them to respond to love. In fact, telling people, when abused, to simply amp up the love they broadcast is a wonderful thing for the psychopath. They'll happily gobble up whatever you give them and then kick you some more. It is my personal belief that the whole Christ dying on a cross thing was a deliberate and false bit of social programming designed to make feeding easier. "Turn the other cheek" is a great thing for all the sheep to have hard-wired into their brains - if you are a psychopath. The only way to deal with a psychopath is to recognize the traits and RESIST them. It's not that difficult. It's shark hunting; sharks always respond according to their own behavior and thus they can be predicted and mapped, but first you have to educate yourself and not pretend yourself into danger by saying such comforting things as, "Everybody just needs love!" Not every human is really human.
It is estimated that about 6% of the global population is psychopathic. That's 1 in approximately 16 people. --And it stands to reason that power centers, companies, cities and entire countries which promote and reward self-serving and abusive behavior are going to attract psychopathic individuals. It is safe to assume that the concentrations of psychopaths will be much higher than 6% in some areas. And even if that isn't the case, the spread of cruel-assholes throughout my old school dayss was easily around 1 in 16.
-FL
I dunno, kinda seems like you didn't read the article. It leads with "The number one need of any human is to be liked by other humans", and keeps that chord going throughout. A person who is rejected and has no friends is unhappy, whether he's bullied or not, and the focus in the article is rightly on that issue.
If you focus on that part of the message, you see that there is indeed a problem that originates in the suffering child. You can't divide the world into "bullies" and "non-bullies" any more. It's "those who reject him" and "those who don't reject him", and for the kid suffering with no friends, nearly everyone is in the second group. The normative behavior is to reject as alien those who do not respond to social cues. Will you blame the whole world for behaving normally, or try to teach the suffering kid how to break through the perception barrier and get accepted?
Regarding bullies: of course the bully's behavior is non-normative, and needs correction, but that's really the lesser part of the suffering of the lonely child. The greater part is the inability to make friends.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Bullies are cowards. All of them.
Actually studies have shown the complete opposite (I read it on paper). It used to be fashionable to attribute this kind of behavior to low self esteem, until someone actually bothered to investigate this, and found that bullies actually tend to have unrealistically high self esteem and tend to be more bold and impulsive than average.
From this, the logical next step would be to subject a bully to so much abuse that his self esteem is shattered and see if this changes their behavior. This would obviously be immoral.
The TFA I read discussed social rejection, and noted that bullies often focus on the socially rejected. This isn't about using your social skills to charm the bully (lol), it's about using them to get friends and hoist yourself out of the immediate target population, or at least get yourself on a better footing to fight back (most bullies have their own social issues - if you can sort yours out that's an automatic advantage).
I've been bullied. I watched other kids get bullied too. I got rid of my bullies by not behaving like the other victims, not by beating anybody up (as if I could). I realized that the only targets were people who were isolated from the main social group and unwilling to fight back (in most cases by their own low self-esteem) and made an effort to not be one of them. I learned to control my emotions so I could think clearly in social situations that weren't going how I wanted. I learned to actually pay attention and read other people's body language properly. I learned the social rules. I made friends outside my usual circle.
The guys that spent 5 minutes between classes laughing at me in the halls every day (not hardcore bullying but hardly pleasant, I assure you)? Most of them weren't being sarcastic or mean like I thought. They were confused by how incongruously I acted. I was the one that was too stupid to read their expressions correctly. Once I clued in, I stopped escalating simple misunderstandings (I actually thought I was sticking up for myself) and quickly made friends with many of them. I had no trouble ignoring the few asshole opportunists (most of who were doing it due to their own self esteem issues) in the lot who were jumping in with a nasty quip just because they saw they had a chance to get a laugh at my expense. Over the next few weeks I got rid of a good two thirds of the grief I'd get at school (the low grade harassment) in this way. I'd say fixing this one mistake of mine is probably where I started to really build my self-confidence.
The scary looking thug (huge muscles, tattoos, scars, rumors that he's done nasty things - seriously scary fucker) that went around threatening people into giving him free shit? The confidence I'd gained making some friends was enough to keep me calm around him. Calm enough to see his insecurity screaming through every little gesture (fucked up home life, he had a lot to be insecure about). Flat-out told him "no" when he punched me and told me to give him my CD collection. He was stunned, I don't think he'd ever seen someone calmly stand up to him before (I admit, it freaked me out afterwards - he had opened up with a punch). He wandered off as though nothing had happened and didn't bother me again.
The asshole who'd steal my shit, trip me, shove my head into my locker, heckle me in class (WTF teachers, how did that shit ever fly?), throw things at me, etc every single chance he got? I was his favorite victim until a few months after I started turning myself around. He turned out to be desperately afraid he'd lose his friends' respect if he didn't act all tough. Getting the courage to go and talk to them (his friends) and find out that they didn't really like him was the key to getting rid of him. Desperate fuckers turn out to be easy to bait, and I only had to get myself seen with his buddies regularly for a few weeks before he freaked out about them ditching him and did something stupid enough to get them to actually ditch him. He never bothered me again. I'd actually been hoping to get something out of them that I could blackmail him with, but I'm not one to complain if a problem takes care of itself.
So I disagree that TFA's conclusion is some bullshit way to avoid having to actually punish bullies. We're social creatures, and learning how to navigate the social web (rather than hovering helplessly around the edges) is definitely empowering. I certainly wouldn't argue with anyone that would just beat the shit out of a bully, but it's hardly the only way to deal with things (and I've seen a couple of guys that did that get shunned even more for being "dangerous" hotheads).
Yet punishing both the victim and the aggressor remains a bad solution to this problem. It rewards the bully by punishing his (or her) victim twice: once at the hands of the bully, once at the hands of the authorities. The fact that meting out actual justice is difficult is not an excuse to discard the notion in favor of simple and brutal solutions.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
I think I may fall in this category as well. I still had trouble with bullies but on reflection it may have been because I was self-centered. With plenty of friends outside of school - which was the early 80's - it wasn't really a priority for me to be interested in the kids at my school. Computers and electronics occupied my spare time but I also played a lot of hockey and cycling.
I didn't share the things I played with because - frankly - most other kids didn't understand what to do with an electronics lab kit. One kid decided to trick me by acting all curious about what a 'floppy disk' was and when I showed him one (that contained the code I was writing at the time) he decided it would be a good idea to scrape his finger along the media. As I watched in horror he said 'you aren't supposed to do that are you?'.
As soon as the kids found out I was a computer 'geek' or 'nerd' the bullying started. I would try to hide and avoid a confrontation until I was cornered. Problem for them was I had a foul temper and didn't they get a nasty surprise. I think they thought because I was trying to avoid them and just play with my computers and electronics I was somehow afraid, which I was, but of them and my temper in equal measure. I hated being bullied and every time it happened the fear, frustration and anger would build until confrontation was unavoidable. I never instigated it but I finished it. Once every 6 months one of these losers would come along to make life a misery.
Towards the end of school everyone was asked what they were going to do when they left school. While everyone else was saying 'mechanic' or 'hairdresser' I outlined my 5 year plan to get into the IT industry. Most of the kids looked at me like I was some kind of loser but as I had already been paid for my code and magazine contributions I was confident that I wasn't. 20 years of IT work later it's a genuine pleasure to be talking to like minded people here. I still feel the joy of working with code that I did as a boy and no bully could ever take that away from me.
I wish I had this kind of advice when I was a kid so I could have controlled the situation a little better only because I feel I could have done better at school. Even so I feel that there it's a valuable life skill to have learned how to confront bullies. It's satisfying to look at them while they apologise with a black eye and a busted nose. Now I don't get intimidated easily and this has translated to the ability to deal with drunken assholes as well as confidence in business negotiations.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.