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I think NJGoat's point though is the kind of bullying that is "simply" (for lack of a better word) verbal snipes done out of earshot of parents or other adults (which is typically the kind of bullying practiced by teen girls), how does one even prove it is happening? It is "he said, she said"....and who's to know who is telling the truth in the matter? Then what? How do you impose a penalty on parents of kids when you can't prove anything?
Yeah, like I said, you wouldn't advocate for penalizing the parents in the real world. I was being somewhat facetious. And I'm not talking about the verbal snipes everyone has to put up with growing up. There are different levels of bullying. Here in Philadelphia over the last year, there have been some incidents of a bunch of kids physically assaulting and ganging up on one kid. I'm talking about that kind of thing, and the parents of these kind of bullies swear up and down that their kids wouldn't hurt a fly.
I'm saying that if the actions of their kids actually had some kind of affect on them, perhaps they would pay a little more attention to what little Johnny the thug is up to after school, and things wouldn't get this far. I'm sure the parents would find a way to stop their kids being bullies if that were the case.
When we first moved here we were driving around looking for houses. We saw about 20 kids out the front of a restaurant kind of milling around. We stopped at a light, and suddenly about 5 of kids converged on one kid and started beating him up while the others watched. This happened in a manner of seconds. A tiny Hispanic lady actually jumped into the middle of it and started screaming at the aggressors in Spanish to get off the kid. I called 911 it was so violent. Left me with a sick feeling all evening. And this was in a nice area outside of the city. Really scary, what mobs of kids can do.
I'm not advocating for parents stepping in at every little slight. But there's a common theme in this thread that the kids should always sort it out for themselves, and if you stand up to the bullies they'll always back down.
What if they don't? What if the bullying continues (or gets worse?). What then? Do you wait until your child has been jumped by 10 kids and the police are involved until you do anything? Do we have a line here?
Yeah, like I said, you wouldn't advocate for penalizing the parents in the real world. I was being somewhat facetious. And I'm not talking about the verbal snipes everyone has to put up with growing up. There are different levels of bullying. Here in Philadelphia over the last year, there have been some incidents of a bunch of kids physically assaulting and ganging up on one kid. I'm talking about that kind of thing, and the parents of these kind of bullies swear up and down that their kids wouldn't hurt a fly.
I'm saying that if the actions of their kids actually had some kind of affect on them, perhaps they would pay a little more attention to what little Johnny the thug is up to after school, and things wouldn't get this far. I'm sure the parents would find a way to stop their kids being bullies if that were the case.
When we first moved here we were driving around looking for houses. We saw about 20 kids out the front of a restaurant kind of milling around. We stopped at a light, and suddenly about 5 of kids converged on one kid and started beating him up while the others watched. This happened in a manner of seconds. A tiny Hispanic lady actually jumped into the middle of it and started screaming at the aggressors in Spanish to get off the kid. I called 911 it was so violent. Left me with a sick feeling all evening. And this was in a nice area outside of the city. Really scary, what mobs of kids can do.
I'm not advocating for parents stepping in at every little slight. But there's a common theme in this thread that the kids should always sort it out for themselves, and if you stand up to the bullies they'll always back down.
What if they don't? What if the bullying continues (or gets worse?). What then? Do you wait until your child has been jumped by 10 kids and the police are involved until you do anything? Do we have a line here?
yes, physical assault is another matter all together....as is teasing and sniping gone ballistic. As parents part of our job is to give them the confidence to handle teasing and minor bullying and to keep communication open to know if/when it is crossing the line and requires parental involvement.
yes, physical assault is another matter all together....as is teasing and sniping gone ballistic. As parents part of our job is to give them the confidence to handle teasing and minor bullying and to keep communication open to know if/when it is crossing the line and requires parental involvement.
Exactly. And I've been thinking - we don't allow our children to be thieves, or cheats, or liars. We set rules that that kind of behavior won't be tolerated nor condoned by us or society. Yet when it comes to bullying, it's almost a live and let live situation, where kids will be kids and all kids will either experience it or do it at some point.
We teach our kids not to do all sorts of things as parents. I don't really understand why bullying is out of our control. Kids would take other kids' things and lie their asses off if they thought they could get away with it. We teach them it's wrong to do those things - why can't we teach that it's wrong to bully? If it became just as socially unacceptable to bully as it is to steal, maybe there would be far less of it.
IMO it's not overstepping into kids' affairs, it's teaching the boundaries of social behavior, which is what we're supposed to be doing.
But there's a common theme in this thread that the kids should always sort it out for themselves, and if you stand up to the bullies they'll always back down.
What if they don't? What if the bullying continues (or gets worse?). What then? Do you wait until your child has been jumped by 10 kids and the police are involved until you do anything? Do we have a line here?
As maciesmom said, physical assult is when you step in. Learning how to handle teasing and bullying deminishes the chances of physical assult occuring. A child being jumped by 10 kids is very rare. When it happens, the child has usually been physically assulted by one of them in the past. There was a sign.
However, most of these unfair gang fights usually happen without any prior assult or bullying. Something usually sparks an incident and the gang quickly formulates. Anti-bullying programs wouldn't stop those types of things from happening.
Here's one time I stepped in:
Someone stole an xbox from my son's friend's house. His friend knew who the theif was and confronted him in school. The theif challenged him to a fight---meet me in X town at 4pm.
Right befoe hand, my son informs me that he is going to X town to back up his friend because EVERYONE in X town is going to be there. In other words, word got out that my son's friend was going to be jumped by a gang of kids. My son's friend was going anyway. My son wouldn't let him go alone. Out the door my son went.
I stood there for a moment thinking about what to do. I grabbed my car keys and drove down to X town. My son's friend's father worked in X town. I went to where he worked and got him.
We were standing in the parking lot. From where we were standing, we could see our two children walking down the rail road tracks. Just the two of them. In the distance, coming around the bend of the rail road tracks, there were 30 teenage boys. (That's when I called 911 with my cell phone.) I'm not exaggerating. There were other smaller groups of teenager boys walking on the sidewalk, heading to the location. These were all older teens near the same age as my son and his friend. These were not little kids. They were all adult sized.
There was about a half a football field length between our children and the gang of 30 teens. That's when the police pulled up to the large crowd of kids and told everyone to go home. Since there were smaller groups of kids coming on the sidewalks, the police didn't even know who the big gang was going to fight. My son and his friend stood there and watched. Eventually everyone left.
You'd think this wouldn't be the end of it. You'd think that someone would have jumped my son's friend somewhere else---at school or at a playground, etc. Not so. Word got out that he showed up with only one person by his side creating my girlfriend's crazy theory: nobody will mess with you if they think you're crazy.
This incident was not the result of progressive bullying. An incident sparked it. That's the way big gang beatings usually happen. Real bullies are subtle and systematic---targetting the ones who show they can't handle verbal teasing.
Exactly. And I've been thinking - we don't allow our children to be thieves, or cheats, or liars. We set rules that that kind of behavior won't be tolerated nor condoned by us or society. Yet when it comes to bullying, it's almost a live and let live situation, where kids will be kids and all kids will either experience it or do it at some point.
We teach our kids not to do all sorts of things as parents. I don't really understand why bullying is out of our control. Kids would take other kids' things and lie their asses off if they thought they could get away with it. We teach them it's wrong to do those things - why can't we teach that it's wrong to bully? If it became just as socially unacceptable to bully as it is to steal, maybe there would be far less of it.
IMO it's not overstepping into kids' affairs, it's teaching the boundaries of social behavior, which is what we're supposed to be doing.
Of course we teach our kids that....but we also have to teach them that not everyone behaves the way they should and they need to have the tools to deal with those people. There will always be unpleasant people. Some outright mean ones. But not all of the unpleasantness/meanness is illegal or punishable. If they cross the line into physical assault then there are ways to deal with that. There really IS nothing to do to a 12 yo girl who calls another girl names under her breath and doesn't choose her to be on her team at gym or sit with her at lunch. It's not nice but there is nothing to be done but teach our kids that, yes, some people are not pleasant. Best thing to do is move on.
Of course we teach our kids that....but we also have to teach them that not everyone behaves the way they should and they need to have the tools to deal with those people. There will always be unpleasant people. Some outright mean ones. But not all of the unpleasantness/meanness is illegal or punishable. If they cross the line into physical assault then there are ways to deal with that. There really IS nothing to do to a 12 yo girl who calls another girl names under her breath and doesn't choose her to be on her team at gym or sit with her at lunch. It's not nice but there is nothing to be done but teach our kids that, yes, some people are not pleasant. Best thing to do is move on.
I love all y'all, but I gotta disagree on all this. Please understand I'm not talking about one kid simply not liking another kid and all that that entails, or kids not being pleasant at all times. That's just life, and there is nothing you can do about it, nor is it necessary to do anything about it - and of course you teach your kid how to deal with it. I'm not saying you shouldn't.
But real bullying is serious anti social behavior, and what we seem to be advocating is that the kid who is doing nothing wrong become either crazy, an expert in self defense, or some other kind of different person in order to combat it. We're saying it's their fault if they become the target of a bully, that they must have done something to deserve it, and that they have to change who they are in order to stop it.
Do we put up with other forms of antisocial behavior, even when we're kids? If a kid steals something from a kid, and they get caught, the kid is ostracized from their peers, is punished by the adults and looked down upon as an unacceptable member of the community. We don't just say "hey, that's ok, kids will be kids, little Suzy shouldn't have brought that sweater to school anyway, she was just asking for someone to take it."
We are generally able (with a few exceptions) to stop kids being thieves. Why are we unable (or unwilling) to stop them being bullies? Why do we have control over other aspects of kids' behavior and not this one? It's just as damaging and anti social as it would be if we let kids take other kids things and then just left them to sort it all out between themselves, and blamed the kid who got stolen from in the process.
We need to make bullying a heinous social crime that no-one will tolerate. If we keep giving the bullies a pass and blaming the bullied, it will never stop.
(This post isn't aimed at you mm - just general food for thought).
I love all y'all, but I gotta disagree on all this. Please understand I'm not talking about one kid simply not liking another kid and all that that entails, or kids not being pleasant at all times. That's just life, and there is nothing you can do about it, nor is it necessary to do anything about it - and of course you teach your kid how to deal with it. I'm not saying you shouldn't.
But real bullying is serious anti social behavior, and what we seem to be advocating is that the kid who is doing nothing wrong become either crazy, an expert in self defense, or some other kind of different person in order to combat it. We're saying it's their fault if they become the target of a bully, that they must have done something to deserve it, and that they have to change who they are in order to stop it.
Do we put up with other forms of antisocial behavior, even when we're kids? If a kid steals something from a kid, and they get caught, the kid is ostracized from their peers, is punished by the adults and looked down upon as an unacceptable member of the community. We don't just say "hey, that's ok, kids will be kids, little Suzy shouldn't have brought that sweater to school anyway, she was just asking for someone to take it."
We are generally able (with a few exceptions) to stop kids being thieves. Why are we unable (or unwilling) to stop them being bullies? Why do we have control over other aspects of kids' behavior and not this one? It's just as damaging and anti social as it would be if we let kids take other kids things and then just left them to sort it all out between themselves, and blamed the kid who got stolen from in the process.
We need to make bullying a heinous social crime that no-one will tolerate. If we keep giving the bullies a pass and blaming the bullied, it will never stop.
(This post isn't aimed at you mm - just general food for thought).
I see where you're coming from, but do think it is a bit utopian.
What do you define as "real" bullying? I think that is the crux of the question.
I don't think society accepts "real" bullying if we define that in the physical sense, or even as threats against someones person. Those situations are frowned upon by society and are punishable both by the school and the legal system if that's what it comes to. However, that is the extreme minority of bullying cases. In that realm I would say just as there are kids who lie and steal despite knowing better, there will be ones who will engage in phyiscal/extreme bullying even though they know it isn't right.
I think the problem begins when we extend the definition of "real" bullying to include taunts, teasing, gossip, rumors, etc. and try to craft punishment and discipline systems around controlling this. To me these types of things are what kids need to learn to deal with and develop a tougher skin if you will. This is also what the vast majority of bullying is.
FR - I think we agree more than we disagree. I don't think anyone is saying to ignore the serious stuff. I think what people are responding to is the posters who don't want their children to "have" to change "who they are" -and are insisting that their shy, nonconfrontational children, shouldn't have to learn how to deal with unpleasant people because it isn't fair to make them change in response to other people. Our responsibility as parents is to give our children the tools they need to stand up for themselves and to stand up for them when needed. It's the "when" things go from one situation to the next that is the tough part.
Last edited by maciesmom; 04-05-2011 at 11:46 AM..
I see where you're coming from, but do think it is a bit utopian.
What do you define as "real" bullying? I think that is the crux of the question.
I don't think society accepts "real" bullying if we define that in the physical sense, or even as threats against someones person. Those situations are frowned upon by society and are punishable both by the school and the legal system if that's what it comes to. However, that is the extreme minority of bullying cases. In that realm I would say just as there are kids who lie and steal despite knowing better, there will be ones who will engage in phyiscal/extreme bullying even though they know it isn't right.
I think the problem begins when we extend the definition of "real" bullying to include taunts, teasing, gossip, rumors, etc. and try to craft punishment and discipline systems around controlling this. To me these types of things are what kids need to learn to deal with and develop a tougher skin if you will. This is also what the vast majority of bullying is.
Yes, thanks - that is indeed the point - I don't regard one off incidents of a taunt or two or fairly innocuous teasing as real bullying. I think where it crosses the line is when more than one person targets another (for whatever reason) and makes a point of making their life hell on a daily basis, for no other reason than to make the other person constantly miserable - that's real bullying.
Gossip and rumors can indeed fall into this category. Gossip and rumors are horrible tools that can be used against someone to ruin their reputation for their whole school career and can also make the recipient's life a dreadful existence and we should discourage our children from engaging in that kind of behavior as well. Especially in the virtual realm. Obviously that's where that kind of bullying has found it's niche.
Even if it's physical threats and or violence, the answer to it according to a lot of the posts here are that the kid being targeted is responsible for stopping it, because the bully is just being a bully and there are bullies everywhere. I think there are bullies everywhere because as a society we still allow them to get away with it.
We need to explain the devastating consequences this kind of thing has on people and raise kids to be compassionate enough not to engage in it, or if they see it happening, steadfastly refuse to join in, and to stick up for people who are being targeted.
We need to raise kids that are not only strong enough to not become bullies or bullied, but that also will not stand by and just watch it happen to somebody else. We need to make bullies so stigmatized it won't be worth it to them to keep doing it, and there will be no pay off to starting it at all.
Last edited by FinsterRufus; 04-05-2011 at 11:56 AM..
Reason: changed from most to a lot. Most was too extreme.
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