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I was reading this post in a thread about generic grocery products --
Quote:
I was teased in school because my mom gave me generic juice boxes...
And I almost gasped -- what a ridiculous reason for anyone to tease!
And it made me think how we hear so often now about teasing, name-calling, bullying, humiliation and intimidation in schools by kids against kids.
Why do apparently so many children and teenagers need to overpower, control and vanquish other kids?? What are they missing? What do they feel so angrily frustrated about, so inferior and threatened about?
How can the adults who touch kids' lives prevent, or heal, these feelings and behaviors?
Unfortunately, I think in a lot of these cases, the adult role models to these bullying kids are indirectly encouraging that behavior. So many people are so concerned with what is sitting in their driveway, what the tag inside their clothing reads, or what the big gate outside their subdivided, gated community reads that they don't realize that they are teaching their kids these values as well. Placing an inordinate amount of importance on material things devalues others who do not live by those standards to those who do, or at least to their children.
We've always tought our kids to love one another and that everyone is different. We should accept each others differences and love them for it. It started with our oldest child and she has pretty much been a role model for the other two. We may have a fight over a toy every now and then in our house but nobody picks on each other. And what they do outside our home is representative (if not better) of what they do inside our home.
As for the other dirtbag bully kids....it's their parents' fault for bringing them up that way and not teaching them love.
We also teach our kids not to put up with BS from dirtbag bullies.
My son is actually going through something like this right now.
It is during his flag football practices, and as much as I would love to walk over to that kid and say," Hey! What is your problem...I can`t.
I can`t fight my 9 yr old`s battles for him. This is something that he needs to handle on his own, unless it gets totally out of hand, ya` know?
It hurts me, more than it probably hurts him, to hear that bully mouth off to him, but I have taught him to try to ignore their behaviour.
A bully likes it, when he knows that he is getting to that kid, or upsetting him. If this approach don`t work, black his eye! Then maybe he will leave you alone.
I teach middle school -- we talk a lot about bullying and how to handle it. I think kids bully other kids because they have low self-esteems themselves and the only way to make them feel better is to tear other kids apart.
The girls seem to be even more vicious that the boys.
It starts so young I wonder if there isn't a hard-wired component to it. My son had the meanest little 14 month old in daycare with him when my son was 23 months old. This 14 month old bullied everyone there, even if they were 4 years old. He got expelled. Another kid a couple of years later was also a bully. His parents were very nice and sweet and mild mannered. They didn't know what to do with him, as the kid was born mean. Another kid, a neighbor kid, mean, mean, mean, and came out of the womb that way. Nice, nice parents. When my son started kinder there was the stereotypical "class bully" and again the parents were very nice, very proactive involved parents, and they tried everything, but there was no improvement over the years. They went for the "relocation cure" and moved away, but I heard through the grapevine it made things worse.
Then I see a milder form and that's when the kids are trying to figure out where they stand in the pecking order. This person has this, this person has that, I have this, I don't have that, that is normal to this person, this is normal for me, etc. I'm sortof a helicopter parent and have sortof evesdropped on my son (a teen) and his friends over the years and I haven't encountered one kid who didn't do this one-up-manship stuff to some degree or another. By middle school though, I don't see it much anymore. Only the really mean kids are still doing their mean thing and really, they don't stand a chance at my son's school. The bully's are so outnumbered and the school ultimately kicks them out after trying a million ways from Monday to stop the mean behavior through therapy, social skills training, positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, medication, parent education, etc. (This is a private school.) Not much helps which is why I think it's more nature than nurture.
This sounds like my son a few years ago. Up to middle school, we told him to let the teachers deal with it. If they don't, we will step in and go to the school. In middle school, we tell him to let a teacher know, try talking to the bully, on the third time, if the teachers/school won't do anything, give the guy a warning, telling him he has no more times to do that certain action, and the fourth time, put him on the floor, and we'll back him 100%. We've told his teachers of our instruction. We have seen that if we continuously tell our son to turn the other cheek, as we really believe he should, he will be a victim and a target, and that's not acceptable. We'd rather see him lose a fight than to be a victim and a target for other bullies because he won't do anything. This advice changes if the kid has a weapon, which happens here in Florida.
Quote:
Originally Posted by yankeegirl313
My son is actually going through something like this right now.
It is during his flag football practices, and as much as I would love to walk over to that kid and say," Hey! What is your problem...I can`t.
I can`t fight my 9 yr old`s battles for him. This is something that he needs to handle on his own, unless it gets totally out of hand, ya` know?
It hurts me, more than it probably hurts him, to hear that bully mouth off to him, but I have taught him to try to ignore their behaviour.
A bully likes it, when he knows that he is getting to that kid, or upsetting him. If this approach don`t work, black his eye! Then maybe he will leave you alone.
By REALLY being zero tolerant of bullying. By making their personal lives miserable so they and their little friends will not do it again. By making them 100% accountable for their actions. I guarantee their little self-esteem problems will magically disappear if they're washing 1000 school windows for bullying/mean girl routine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by allforcats
I was reading this post in a thread about generic grocery products --
And I almost gasped -- what a ridiculous reason for anyone to tease!
And it made me think how we hear so often now about teasing, name-calling, bullying, humiliation and intimidation in schools by kids against kids.
Why do apparently so many children and teenagers need to overpower, control and vanquish other kids?? What are they missing? What do they feel so angrily frustrated about, so inferior and threatened about?
How can the adults who touch kids' lives prevent, or heal, these feelings and behaviors?
"The fruit does not fall far from the tree..." I would say that perhaps the parents were bullies in their younger years but have outgrown it, but now the children have that inherent in them. Some parents have a very cavalier attitude as to what should be and should not be allowed. They pass it off as "kids will be kids" and leave it at that, while my child is probably the target of the bullying. Right now I am able to step in, but it upsets me when their role models such as mother/father/grandmother just shrug it off as "oh well..."and do not reprimand him/her, address it, nothing, UGH!!!!!!!!!!
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Then maybe he will leave you alone.
