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Study Shows Standing Up To Bullies Is Good For You
It will come as no surprise to anyone who's ever talked to my grandpa, but a recent study has shown that standing up to a bully is good for you. Although being bullied can be stressful and lead to depression, children who returned hostility were found more likely to develop healthy social and emotional skills. From the article: "In a study of American children aged 11 and 12, researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, compared those who stood up to aggressors with those who did not. Children who returned hostility with hostility appeared to be the most mature, the researchers found. Boys who stood up to bullies and schoolyard enemies were judged more socially competent by their teachers. Girls who did the same were more popular and more admired by teachers and peers, the researchers found."
Good point! I doubt my standing-up would have done anything but result in my self getting hurt.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Standing up to a bully and getting hurt is better than just rolling over. Even if you lose, you still stood up to him. And that's worth something.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Study fails the acid test. What's an Adult bully? A mugger/robber/assailant. Is standing up to robbers/assailants/masked figures making demands or taunting @, good for you? The answer should be sometimes. Sometimes it is essential, sometimes it is suicidal. Sometimes it is just smart, that would be when the bully is bluffing, and you are the one with the gun.
Back to children... Its good for you, only if the bully's response to you standing up is something other than engaging you in a fight you can't win, knocking you down on your feet, beating you to a pulp, until ribs are broken, give you black eyes, knock out all your teeth, and stomp groin until it is guaranteed child will not have children later in life.
Maybe study should show standing up to bullies can sometimes be good for them, as long as child knows when to surrender, or makes sure they are actually physically capable of mounting a reasonable defense / in the superior position to physically resist bully / make it not fun for bully to mess with them.
Some children that have no deficit of mental or emotional strength are taught by their parents that retaliation is wrong, that the meek are blessed, and that they should "turn the other cheek" as Jesus taught. This is reinforced by teachers who punish both students involved in a fight if either one defends himself against the other.
It is a testament to the children's stoicism that they can accomplish this. Unfortunately for them, it looks like doing so may negatively impact their mental and emotional development (yeah correlation is not causation and all that...that's why I said "MAY").
This happened to me. My parents were evangelical nuts. They set me up to go be a victim in public schools, which I was. I have no idea what psychological ramifications that may have for me today...but I DO know that when I started training in martial arts in high school, the bullying stopped, and I never had to hit anyone (which actually kind of disappointed me, because I had a lot of anger I wanted to unleash on the next unsuspecting bully).
That's the problem: asking kids to differentiate between "alpha male" bullying and "budding psychopath" bullying. Standing up to one gets them to back down, standing up to the other leads to escalation.
I stood up to my bully once. Slugged him in the nose in front of everyone after he yanked me around by my backpack while I was wearing it and dumped all the books out. Felt great for a day, then the next day his friends held me down while he proceeded to put me in the hospital.
Well, that is something you can develop. I suffered with bullies during childhood. My parents were aware of that and sent me to a psychotherapist, while giving me plenty support (without actually trying to solve the thing for me). This simple act did no end of good; one less excessively introspective guy in he world.
After thousands of years of basically putting up with bullying as a natural phenomenon of growing up, the American education establishment has discovered that bullying is bad for kids and is actively pushing to prevent it. Google "anti-bullying" and you get dozens of links to anti-bullying programs, slogans, academics doing studies on bullying (one guy from Yale announced that victims of bullying are at higher risk of thinking about or attempting suicide).
Parents who grew up in the 1960s or 1970s are now pretty much in control in most school districts, and now they are bringing their politically correct methods to deal with bullying.
I was victimized a lot as a kid, though I don't remember ever contemplating suicide; I did a lot of fantasizing about skewering my tormentors in various nasty ways, however. Then I went and took karate when I was about 13, at an old fashioned school where the Japanese sensei would wander around the class with a long stick and whack us when we didn't do things right. And lo and behold, the bullying stopped. All it took was for me to suddenly become more self-confident and unafraid of the bullies, and they sensed it as a dog senses you are not afraid, and they went off in search of easier prey.
Would I have been better off if the teachers had intervened, instead of me going off and handling it myself? Of course not! What utter nonsense. I learned how to deal with life, and that lesson has stayed with me ever since.
I think schools should maintain vigilance for kids at risk of suicide, of course, and probably more studies need to be done to find the causes of suicide. It's easy to claim that bullying causes suicides just because there's a statistical correlation, but proving causation is quite another thing. A child who has suicidal tendencies from day one may need something more than just protection from suicide, and in fact maybe learning to deal with bullies would be quite therapeutic. For example, send them to martial arts training. I think all girls should take martial arts anyway, learn to protect themselves on the cruel streets of American cities. Martial arts is great for kids anyway; it teaches self-discipline, confidence, sportsmanship, honor, all that good stuff that they don't seem to really teach in the schools or in the home either.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
I always felt that bullying was an iterated prisoner's dilemma situation. It's well-known that the optimum strategy for the iterated prisoner's dilemma is cooperate first, then tit-for-tat thereafter. In this context, "tit-for-tat" would mean fighting back.
run a marathon . . . get[] nothing in return
In typical Slashdot fashion, anti-exercise trolls come out of the woodworks!
I did plenty of physical activities that damaged my body growing up and even I recognize the difference. Being opposed to getting kids to run marathons or compete in sports that are damaging is not anti-exercise. Marathons are pretty hard on the body, high impact on the joints. My cousins played basketball and several other sports and now they hobble around barely able to walk properly while not even middle aged yet. Calling opposition to marathons anti-exercise is like calling people who don't like poison ivy anti-plant people. A lot of us encourage healthy exercise while still not encouraging kids to exercise in ways that likely damage them permanently.
It's my experience that it's not just that people who stand up to bullies are demonized, it's that bullies themselves are lionized. It's not unusual for a bully to come up, demand your lunch money, then punch you in the gut anyways. Then when you hit him back, he gets 1 day detention, you get a week suspension. Because you escalated it to a fight. You're the badguy here. But don't sit there passively, either. That'll get you a matching 1 day detention under the "takes two to tango" doctrine. And don't you DARE tell. "Nobody likes a tattle, I'll see you in detention." Meanwhile, Mr. Bully should be getting detention for beating the shit out of you, but he IS on the football team, so he'll get a warning tops. Then a high five. That's why you get school shooting. The people being bulled are ORDERED not to fight back, and the bullies are rewarded. Even the teachers are on the side of the bullies.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
in my highschool, bullies had knives or pistols. if they didnt have those, they had friends who did not hesistate to jump in afterwards. you should run away, unless you think you can survive the immediate conflict or - more importantly - its escalation later. thats just frikkin reality. ~~~ now, at work: i DO NOT suffer bullies gladly. i dont care if they are on the executive team or not. they get what they get. if im fired, or let go - im okay with that. its never happened so far...
A bully used to pick on my son. I got tired of him coming home from school with bruises and scratches, so I taught him how to punch. At random times, I'd hold up my open hand and yell "hit me" and he'd smack my hand as hard as he could. He thought that was pretty fun, but we stopped once he good good enough that it started to hurt.
Then, I told him that if the kid ever touched him again, my son was to punch him as hard as he could in the nose. I told him not to talk, not to negotiate, not to try to come up with some witty comeback, but to smack him in the snout. Next, I told his teacher about the plan, and she hinted that it was about time someone did it.
The boy slapped my son. My son put the boy on the ground. Since that day, the bully never picked on my son or any other kid, and no one else has ever messed with my boy.
It would be great if everyone could just play nicely, but since some people won't do it voluntarily, we have to be prepared to make them if need be.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
My Dad tells me that when he was in school he had gotten into a fight. A teacher stopped the fight and took him and the other guy to the gym and put boxing gloves on them. They were then allowed to duke it out with supervision. After It was finished, they were good friends. The problem was solved.
Now, in more "enlightened" times, we would never do this. Instead, we make sure the kids can't resolve conflicts until one day someone flips out and does the murdering. We even go on to suggest how this should happen by having mock attack "lock downs".
I'm glad someone is starting to see reason.
It is a perversion of language to claim that American racism of the 1950s and 60s, or the British repression of India, was "non-violent".
Now, in the case of the American civil rights struggle, contrary to the popular narrative King and his nonviolence was not the only game in town; the militancy of the Black Panthers and similar groups played an important role. And in the case of India, the British Empire was exhausted; it was easier to make the cost of maintaining rule over India too high for it to bear, than it had been at any time since the Battle of Plassey. Non-violence resistance will not work against psychopaths of unlimited resources, no; and against the non-violent, resistance would never be necessary in the first place.
Somewhere in between, though, is the line where non-violent resistance can either appeal to the conscience, or can raise the price of oppression, sufficiently to win.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood