What to do about Bullies?

Just from what you've told us, I would say that you should have gotten together with the other kids he bullied and ganged up on him. Maybe a good ass kicking is what he needed, it might have set him straight.

 

So tell me again, why should I feel sorry for him? He had a tough homelife? So what? Because of him I had a tough homelife, I had a tough school life, I had no after school life. If he didnt move away when he did I probably would have killed myself, I felt like I was the most worthless human being ever to exist. And its his fault!

As insensitive as this is going to sound, and as such betray my bleeding heart...

You let him get to you. The only power a bully has over you is the amount you give him/her. If you feel like the most worthless human being alive due to one person, I will flat out say you have some issues more than just a single bully.

No one person has /ever/ made me feel that bad ever. Self-confidence and esteem is what needs to be bred into our children, it seems.

*At this point GAT will realize due to a life full of self-esteem pumping as a child he is now one arrogant mofo, and doesn't let things affect him with a very tough iron shell, thus spuring more arrogance in turn*

Well, not too much self-esteem that is...

-GAT

 

Jedi-Xen well I never had something as bad as that happen to me. I know were you are coming form. But at lest you had some freinds. Me I had no friends at all. The people who made fun of me and bullied me took away my trust of others. For 12 years I was by myself. 12 years be being alone with no freinds. 12 years of having people pick on me. And you you had it bad to.

So I agree with what you say here. It's not right what they do. I don't care what there home life is like. What they do and take away form us is something we can not get back. It's not a part of growing up. It's not something we can just deal with.

Heck in 9th grade a kid slapped me in the face over a candy cane. I would not give it to him so he slapped me in the face. OVER A CANDY CANE. I had other make fun of me just because I went to a different class just to get some help. Well still others made fun of me because I was not good in gym class

I was always afread to that one of the bullies would hit me or worse. So if that is a part of growing up then the schools in the US and ever where else in the world have a big problem.

Edit:
As insensitive as this is going to sound, and as such betray my bleeding heart...

You let him get to you. The only power a bully has over you is the amount you give him/her. If you feel like the most worthless human being alive due to one person, I will flat out say you have some issues more than just a single bully.

No one person has /ever/ made me feel that bad ever. Self-confidence and esteem is what needs to be bred into our children, it seems.

He does. Well why was I made fun of. Why was he picked on? We never did anything. We did nothing to this perosn. Xen has issues. More like the bully had issues. More like the bully was a (something so bad I won't say it). I did nothing to any of the people that made fun of me. Guess what they did. They still bullied me.

 

Right, confidence is essential. It takes confidence as well as courage to plant that foot in a bully's arse.

 

If you feel like the most worthless human being alive due to one person, I will flat out say you have some issues more than just a single bully.

Sorry to say this, but this is wrong. Bullies have a way of turning legions of other kids against you. They can manipulate the weak minded into being your enemy, and destroy everything you thought you had. Former "friends" become the bully's allies. Old enemies become the bully's friend. And they all work together to make your life hell. You can't get involved in anything. You're afraid to speak up in class because you know what happens when recess comes by. (as a side note, when teachers force kids to go outside for recess, that is such torment. if I'd stayed inside instead, none of the bullies would have gotten to me) You can't join a sports team because the bully is on it, and they'll make your time miserable. They will have converted the other people to their cause, and you will be the target. That's what bullies do.

 

Sometimes having confidenxe is what attracts the bullies to you in the first place.

I agree that we should not allow children to be bullied anymore than we should allow women to be beaten and raped. Being hit, slapped, beaten, and harassed would land an adult in the courtroom defending his or herself. So why do we tolerate it with children? How can you tell someone "you're just letting them get to you" when they're being beaten up everyday? No duh, that *is* going to get to you. Not only that, but adults who were excessively bullied carry that with them their whole lives. Why else would Jenny Jones have shows called, "you called me fat, now I'm all that!"?

 

Basically you can't let them break your spirit.

I was bullied in elementary school(not nearly as bad as others in this thread though). I've gone to fairly poor schools most of my life(the TN education system is kinda crap), ghetto schools I guess you'd call them. White kids got picked on. For the first few years I just ran, or outsmarted the would-be bullies, But then I got tired of messing around and started fighting.

Fight like a demon and you will be respected. Fight like your life depends on it, do not give up, do not stop, until the bully is on the ground. Do not feel pain or fear. Easier said than done, I know, but once you learn to use your adrenaline, it works. After a few scraps, they stopped picking on me, and I was accepted.

Now admittedly these weren't the vicous, malicious bullies that yall seem to have encountered. They never tried to seriously injure me. It was just petty dominance games.

 

I think that might be the difference. Some petty bullying will always go on. Stuff like name-calling, which can be bad, but most kids can ignore. But I'm more or less addressing serious bullying where physical and mental harassment occurs. This goes beyond just shrugging it off.

 

I guess I have a certain culpability in this issue.

Growing up, my brother was real shrimp and was 2 years younger then I. I was considerably bigger, and one of the better wrestlers on the high school wrestling team. Anyway, when I was in the 9th grade and my brother in the 7th grade.....well, despite being puny back then, my brother had a HUGE mouth, and loved to shoot it off when he could. ALl of my brothers friends were runts as well.

Anyway, he had this habit of challenging much bigger people to fight, or groups of people to fight him. Very publically, too. Of course the fights were always after school somewhere......

the somewhere being where he would head home right after, wait for me to get home, offer to pay for video games; we would go to the 7/11 and go out back, where he would have the people already waiting for me to do his fighting for him.

And the thing I could never understand, is that I would basically wipe the floor with them; and then I would hear how the next day at school he was going on about how he had taken out these people all by himself, and people for somereason believed it. Even the people whom I had beaten for him would never actually say "IT was his brother that beat us".

And he actually had a reputation for being a bully at school, even though he and his freinds were all a bunch of little runts.

Amazing world we live in, I guess.

 

You let him get to you. The only power a bully has over you is the amount you give him/her. If you feel like the most worthless human being alive due to one person, I will flat out say you have some issues more than just a single bully.

Yes, but it's hard not to let people eventually get you down. Mine wasn't physical torment (I can often give back as good as I get on that scale). It was mental teasing and poking about my weight, my height, my complexion and anything else this one girl could find.

And chibangi was right when she said that one bully can make an army. This girl certain did. Not only that but because everyone else was afraid of her it was easy to gang up on someone else because if you did that then you knew that YOU weren't going to be bullied.

Three years later I still have issues with her. I don't go to stuff my friends are doing if she is there. Yes, I probably let myself be gotten by her mentally (although not hard after five years)...but I won't let myself ever be gotten again.

Both boy and girl bullying (but particularly girls) can lead to eating disorders, drug abuse and sucicide. You think in a day and age where youth sucide is one of the highest causes of teen deaths we'd look at what was causing it - rather then saying it was simply a rite of passage.

 

Yeah, chicks are friggin vicious, man. They might not beat people up as much, but they'll screw with your head. That's why I stopped dating highschool girls.

 

Well, there are several books out there about adolescent girls and the way they band together to make other people's lives miserable (especially other girls). Part of the problem is that many of the girls join in only because if they refuse, it'll get turned on them.

 

I think part of it is how girls are raised. There's still some residual(or not so residual in some areas) notions that women are supposed to be passive, so they subvert their agression into the passive-agressive BS.

 

If you feel like the most worthless human being alive due to one person, I will flat out say you have some issues more than just a single bully

What about feeling like you're the most worthless human alive because almost everyone in your life made you feel that way? And not just the bullies...does that still mean that in some way, I deserved what I got? That I should have just let what happened to me go? And that I should let it go even now? Not when they took my life from me, I won't.

Both boy and girl bullying (but particularly girls) can lead to eating disorders, drug abuse and sucicide

And this kind of harrasment can also lead to the person who was bullied entering into abusive relationships (this can apply to both sexes). I was bullied by a gang of male idiots for five years (murder and rape threats were prevalent amongst their list of abuses)...and I went right down the road into abusive and degrading relationships throughout my twenties. And bullying should have no long-term effects on a person's life? Well, only a bully would say that, because they never tend to remember their victims as time passes, now do they?

 

The thing about girls is that they learn to use words rather then fists. A girl beating another girl (in school) is regarded as much more abhorrant then a boy beating another boy.

I was only involved in one physical fight in high school - where another girl went me with a horse-riding crop. WHen I complained to the teachers, it wsan't so much about the fact I'd been hit - but what I'd been hit with. They were horrified that I'd been hit at all (and man if she'd come at me with fists there would have been trouble). She got in more trouble then the girl who did far more damage with the pyschological bullying.

Girls aren't allowed to hit or show any sign of aggression. Women who do are seen as pushing and aggressive (rather then assertive as their male counterparts are seen). Women use ostrisation (sp), word games, mental jabs about something they know their victim is already unsure about.

Women (girls) do more long term damage to their victims in terms of self-esteem and se-lf-worth areas. It's hard to have self-esteem when you've been told you are fat/unattractive for your entire school life.

Kithera

 

Women use ostrisation (sp), word games, mental jabs about something they know their victim is already unsure about.

Women (girls) do more long term damage to their victims in terms of self-esteem and se-lf-worth areas

In my case, it was all boys (though I do think that one girl in particular put them up to it initially). And they never touched me physically at all...but they didn't have to. Their words were weapons enough, and they achieved their purpose. They won in the end.

 

Yep, same deal there. Words hurt people and often far more then physcial bullying. I said women, as they are more likely to mentally bully someone then a man is.

Kithera

 

Jedi_Xen,

To be honest, I disagree with everything you said, and that whole thing about being happy when your bully died of a drug overdose is just sick. I would NEVER be happy about somebody dying, even if it was my worst enemy. Tell me, are you a Christian, like I am? Because you sure don't sound like it.

 

For a Christian you sure are quick to judge.

 

I know, I have a real problem with that.

None of us are perfect.

 

MY experiance with bullies and their ilk was so bad, my parents pulled me out of school. It was a good part of the reason that my father accepted a contract back in England. Funny thing was, I took the year book with me to school there and my new found freinds made the pointed observation that a good 90% plus looked all alike!

Needless to say, the change of perception gave me a whole new outlook on the situation that I had left and when I returned, I swore to my freinds that the only way I would go to a reunion was if I could carry a shot gun.... I was only half joking at the time and have still decided that I would never bother 'reuniting' with the group of people who made my life a living hell.

 

Grand Admiral Thran -

As has been mentioned before, different people handle bullying in different ways. Some people learn to grow a "thicker skin" so to speak, and these people would tell you they're better people for their experiences. Some people become bullies themselves, which obviously is not a good thing. Some people find it very difficult to forget their experiences, and these people will tell you they suffered side-effects from bullying (shyness, no social skills, etc) years after they were last bullied. I find that more often than not, people regret being bullied. More than regret, they wish they could just scrub out that period of their life altogether, or live those years over again in a different time and place. Grand Admiral Thran, you are unable to understand what most people feel when they get bullied because unlike most people, you had this ability to think of it as "no big deal", you had a "thick skin". You can't just tell someone else to grow thicker skin. You have to understand that what may be no big deal to you, is very much a big deal to someone else. I think you are wrong on this subject to expect that people can experience bullying and come out unscathed mentally.

You mention Columbine, and other school shootings. You say that kids would have to be mentally unstable in the first place. However, i think that a person, any person, can simply be pushed too far. Its possible that a perfectly normal kid can be pushed over the edge mentally by bullying, and it actually happens all the time. Look at the rates of suicides for example. I think you are definately wrong in this case to brand bullying as "no big deal".

 

they wish they could just scrub out that period of their life altogether

That's what I wish I coudl do. I had ADD and people would make fun of me for that. They would do it all the time. I did all my own homework. They would come back ans say I was dumb and never did my own homework.

They would say things that hurt to the point that I could not really talk to people. Sure some people can get a thicker skin. But when you do not have friends when you go to different classes then every one else and so on. Well that makes really hard to do. I never asked to be made fun of. I never asked to be mocked. They just did that. I was a happy kid on let people started to bullie me with there words. You can say words don't hurt. But they really do. The words they said were not things I could forget ether.

And to say people who were bullied should jsut let it go well KaineDamo, Kit, DerthNader, JediXen and a few others said it best. It's hard to let it go when the bullies took away the time in your life that you should be having fun with friends.

Why do you disagree with ever thing Jedi-Xen has said Darth_Jeremy? Thing's like this go on all the time. It's not right of passage. And me I to hope that the people who bullied me will get what's coming to them. They had no right to do what they did. Being bullied is not a part of growing up. Any one who say's it s really does not know what it is like to be bullied.

 

One of the best bits of advice I've ever received:

"Act like a victim, and people who need victims will come to you."

 

One of the best bits of advice I've ever received:

"Act like a victim, and people who need victims will come to you."

?

Do you know that must people who are bullied did nothing to the bullie. They had a normal life. They were happy, and so on. Then this person this bullie just came out of no where and started to make fun of them. Started to beat(sp) on them and so on.

Sometime there was no reason. Other times it was because they may have been different, and still yet other times it was to make the bullie feel better. Then there are they things girls do to other girls.

Know of us who were bullied asked for it. It just happend for no reason. And if there was a reason it was a pointless one.