Category: Let's talk
I started another topic called "do you believe you were abused as a child?"
and the responses are pretty good and pretty enlightening.
However, I'd like to see how many people feel they were bullied as a child, or perhaps who were childhood bullies.
I'm talking about kids being inhumane to other kids.
If you think that, as a child, you were bullied by an adult, in my book, that's abuse, so go post
here.
bob
As a nine year old child at the school for the blind, I was bullied by my two roomates.
For some reason they suddenly disliked me, and began to beat me up on a daily basis. They passed draconian rules, like I couldn't leave the room without permission, and I couldn't speak until I was asked a direct question. There were dozens of those rules.
I was frightened all the time, and dared not tell an adult out of fear of reprisal.
Surpriseingly, I became pretty good friends with each of them in later years, and they each appologized to me.
It was just that we were three immature kids.
Bob
no I wasn't. I never let the teeming get to me, so kids should make fun of me
because teachers at school would say i was mature and what not, so they would
call me a suck up. ow these kids dropped out of high school and are working low
pays jobs to pay child support for their kids and they're not with the mom/dad.
so. lol! I meant teasing
I do feel I was bullied, when I was about 9 and switched from a school for the blind into public school. In today's standards, I'm not sure it would be considered bullying, but back then, at least to me, it was. Lots of teasing, kids trying to trip me as I'd walk down the hall, chairs being pulled out as I'd go to sit down, kickballs being thrown at me from across the playground. But I'm also not proud of how I reacted. My way of dealing was to turn into a bully just like those kids were. One of the moments in my life that I'm most ashamed of was when I intentionally tried to trip a disabled classmate who had been nothing but nice to me. It took me about 2 years to come to the realization that, by reacting that way, I was no better than the kids who bullied me. But I do remember one incident where, as a 9-year-old, a boy who was 2 or 3 years older than me attempted to take my lunch money, and I punched him squarely in the face. That was a trip to the principal's office for both of us, and my mother has told me countless times that it was a call she'll never forget.
Brook you bring up a good point: the bullied becoming the bully.
A couple of years after the incident I related in post 2, I roomed with this kid who was obviously mentally retarded.
He stole a cookie from me one day, and I swore I was going to "put him in the infirmery" for that. I felt so big and strong (though I was neither).
I hit him in the face, and he didn't respond at all. He didn't get mad, he didn't cry; nothing.
I felt so bad about that, frustrated and just bad. I was the one who cried, and I gave him the whole bag of cookies.
That's the story of my life as a bully. What a flop!
Bob
Lol Bob, I know the feeling. As soon as I tripped that girl I mentioned in my other post, I felt horrible. She didn't cry either, never said a mean thing to me or about me, even after what I did. But I still felt awful.
Only in my public elementary school. There was one time, however, when a little boy kept asking innocently how much I could see, or something to that effect. I got irritated and punched him, and he cried. I was about 11, he was five or six I think. I've felt horrible about it ever since. Can't remember if I apologized, but I hope I did.
I attended public school. I don't know if I'd call it bullied. A couple of kids were jerks sometimes, but they got a nice telling-off from my TVI. I just remember being a bit of a jerk on the playground. there was a tire swing and I had no intention of sharing it until I got yelled at about that. lol
Yeah, sometimes it is hard to tell whether we are the bullied or the bully.
Bob
I am afraid I was both.
I think most were both at one point or another. I know I have been.
I have older brothers, so I learned one must defend yourself.
I never bullied anyone, but had to learn not to defend myself with such power. Smile.
The kids that decided to mess with me were kids, not my brothers.
I was playing checkers one day, and a boy was teasing me because I was losing. I told him if he didn't stop I'd knock him out.
Well he got knocked out. The had to take him to the nurses office. Not good at all.
My dad told me he had a bad temper when he was young and explained the difference from needing to defend yourself with all that power, and just letting it go.
He was tougher than me, so I stopped. Smile.
My dad also gave us boxing gloves, so we'd box all the time in the basement. You learn. Smile.
I was thinking about what I'd written. The boxing gloves would have come from my mother. She was the person responsible for buying the clothes, toys, and such things.
My dad probably just said "ah, get the boys some gloves!"
I'll bet she wouldn't have.
I can't remember if they were a Christmas gift, or just in the house, because we'd just get things from time to time not related to any special reason.
When I was a kid my folks gave me a pair of boxing gloves, but since I only had a sister (no brothers) I wasn't allowed to use them on her. <lol>
I did take them to the school for the blind, and lent them out quite often to roommates who were having problems.
Bob
I was both; I was a bit of a bully at the blindy school but when I intergrated to mainstream, I was bullied a bit myself; serves me right I guess. Lol but seriously it was not nice of course.
Maybe there's a bully gene. Oops! That's another board.
Bob
I was definitely both. I was spit on when I was 10 at a playgrounds at a fast food restaurants by a few children. I was chased around and mocked. Some girl decided to utilize me as an experiment once and attempted to examine how far backwards my fingers were able to be bent.
ON the other hand, I was a terrible bossy, son of a bitch with no remorse. Some of you on here cried or regreted, but I had no regrets until well in to my first or second year at the university.
To the adults, I was the respectful and pleasant sweet girl. I was bright, intelligent and a go getter. I was not exactly top of my class, but knew quite a bit and was known as mature. However, I disliked fools, and unintelligent children with a passion. I asked a few adults friends I was friends with "How come people are so stupid?" and I cclaimed, "I really hate stupid people."
yes, some of you know that I criticized vigorously, but that is not all I did.
There was once a girl with me at a blind camp, when I was attending the junior blind of America's camp. She was no doubt mentally retarded. She was not able to find her shoes when all the time they were under her suitcase. I told her "You don't need to be Sherlock HOlmes to figure that out" and generally mocked her and mentally manipulated her to feel worse. She reached across the dining hall table to figure out if someone she enjoyed to talk to was sitting across from her. Her hands touched mine. then she ended up spilling juice all over her person. I was one of the loudest ones laughing and jeering at her. She cried and bothered the hell out of me all week long. Midweek, was the major incident. She decided to date a boy at camp. I dispised her at this point, with a passion. I decided she was unintelligent. She did not fully ask out the boy. I didn't know this boy well, in the least bit, but I figured it would be both amusing and upset her more if I formally asked him out and dated him. This was worth it, if it was only for the week. I had no real interest in a date, but this would ease my passionate hate, and this is precisely what I did. No one liked me much after that. I had no shame or regret. After all, she was unintelligent "stupid" and did not deserve any better.
There was this other time, my group of friends and I was sitting at the cafeteria table at my middle school. This mentally retarded student came over after entering the cafeteria and tried to find a spot at our table. I stood up and chased him around the table blocking each seat that he desired. He progressively threw a larger tantrum. I had a enjoyable time geering and laughing at him.
There were smaller scale things I did, however, those are a couple examples of my manipulative bullying.
I was largely the bullied person as a child. I retalliated often, either to try to get back at
them or simply to defend myself, but being raised as prettty much an only child I had no
intelligent way to know how to do this properly. The other kids would time their actions
and my reaction so that I would be the one caught by the teacher or supervising parent. I
certainly was a social misfit until my junior year of high school, when I began to figure out
how to fit in better, but of course that meant conforming to peer pressure and engagin in
problem activities like drinking.
My way of coping was to throw myself into academics and isolate myself. I wish I had
parents that cared or understood what I was going through, but luckily I turned out
largely okay thanks to my own perseverance.
I do believe I may have been abused as well, and now believe that there may be some
post traumatic stress from my childhood that is not yet resolved. I'm hoping to deal with
this, but it does affect me still in my relationships with people and keeping too much of an
emotional distance sometimes. Now, it also manifests itself unhealthily in my expectations
of others, that they should just be able to be tough and deal with their issues on their own
as I thought I had done, when really I had just repressed a lot and did what I had to do to
survive. Of course, I'm largely okay but all I am saying is that there are lasting issues
that still affect me today, but I am certainly in charge of my own destiny of course.
Did I bully? I honestly did not think so as a child. Sadly I occasionally bully in my adult
years, in my attitude towards the people closest to me in an emotional way, but I am
really trying to change this in the past few years as I have gained this awareness.
I went to public school until grade 4 and then to private Catholic school until high school
graduation. In my experience, the bullying was just as bad in private school as it was in
the public school. Fortunately kids all grow up and seem to grow out of bullying, or at
least I grew up as well and figured out how to not let it happen.
Bob, your topic brings up an interesting point: internet bullying or cyber bullying.
I know apparently people claim some people have suicide after being cyber bullied. Where correlation doesn't equal causation, I'm not sure people have created the causal link, any more than the hysterical mommies of my childhood could create a causal link between Black Sabbath and rare suicides.
So, I asked my daughter to explain this cyber bullying business. I explained what it was like for us, bullying meant face to face interaction, giving and getting swirlies, being stuffed inside a locker (I was a small kid), me tripping the big gawky hulk dude and running, hearing him crash in the hallway, stuff like that.
So I asked her to explain this in rational terms to me. All I got from her was, this whole bullying business has been highly exaggerated now. All you have to do now, apparently, is call someone a name, and you're a bully. It may be that she was just young, but she claims we adults can't possibly understand how way out of hand this has really gotten.
Of course, people like you, or me, or she, would agree it's clearly unkind to be sending pictures to each other all over the school, things like that. But again, she and her friends claim this is often extremely exaggerated. She by no means lived a cushy existence, has a physical characteristic which would make her a bullying target I imagine, although for the most part she denies having been bullied. Again, her claim can be neither proven nor disproven: is it the invincibility of youth? Or perhaps it is as she claims, that she wasn't very often.
But her claim that modern 'bullying' is highly exaggerated, I find believable, being a child of the 1970s and 1980s where every yuppie adult seemed to be hysterically reactive to musical groups, claiming their songs were creating mass suicides and various Satanic rituals obviously a product of said adult's active imagination. Of course this is anecdotal. And while I have tried to raise the daughter as a young skeptic, a critical thinker, she is quite dualistic: has the faith of her mom and into all that spiritual stuff, and at least in the light of rationalism can admit her bias that way.
I asked what would happen if she dared admit this overreaching definition of bullying, as she supposes it is, in school. She said, first, many kids already are with her on this one, and second, you don't dare talk about it around the adults. Sounds a bit Orwellian to me, but there ya go, I will admit my unorthodox nonstatist bias.
So, younger people, what do you think? Has the term 'bullying' been broadened? Is it now a moving goal post?
Even the Wife ran into this, where She works. At a residential treatment program for teenage mothers. One of the children of the mothers was being labeled a 'bully' for his behaviors, until She and others put a stop to it. The label was put on by people of the newer establishment, to a 2.5 year old boy with what She calls developmental and behavioral problems. I don't know how She and they know with someone of that young age, but that's another matter entirely: the point being, it took a conflict between competing educator / social service types to stop them from labeling him this way.
Bob, I think your topic of abuse and bullying are extremely relevant. I took my fair share of abuse as a child, as I said in the other topic, my response to it being what She calls overcompensating and some other kinda words. Bullying, in the traditional sense us older than the millennials understand bullying to mean, I both got and gave.
I guess it's telling, about the new definitions, that they're not supposed to contest the definitions, or ask any of the hard questions. Betraying my aforementioned biases, of course. But as this is a relatively anonymous Internet site, anyone from that age range, but especially if you're not under the control of the State via guardianship or education at the moment, can feel free to post your thoughts.
If you do believe this bullying is linked to things, I'd be fascinated for you to provide the causal link barring other factors, in a skepticism-ready format. No such luck with the Daughter, as she already discounted the whole thing as ridiculous and nearly blew me off, saying she couldn't believe someone like me even entertained the idea.
Black Sabbath makes me wanna pick flowers and hug and love everyone.
I don't believe the right word for it is exaggerated, but rather, but over extended or stretched. I find that one has to be extremely careful when interacting with individuals in society these days. Largely bullying stretches somewhat to offense as well, and that is not a difficult achievement by any stretch of the imagination. I agree with the older definition, myself. The major problem is too many things are offensive in this day and age, and different people are offended by a wide range of offenses. It is sometimes difficult to interact and understand what is offensive or not offensive to whom. For some individuals not sharing an interest and the fact that one voices this difference is now offensive. To some disagreement to their opinions seem offensive as well. Sometimes, I am quite lost for knowing in which direction I should turn when interacting with people. I think because our society has become much more shallow and sensitive.
Leo, you raise a really good point. I would have to agree with your daughter. I think that school personnel are so afraid of things like school shootings happening, as a result of a student claiming to be bullied, that anyone with a grudge against someone else can claim that they're being picked on, and someone will try to stop it. Whether that's the parents bringing a lawsuit against the school, or the school itself enacting so-called "zero-tolerance" policies, which were a complete crock even in the 90's when I was in elementary school, what matters most is that incidents get smoothed over as quickly as possible.
There are peer mediators, and guidance counselors, and school psychologists who manage to diagnose kids with disorders they probably don't have. But in the end, I don't think that real bullying is being taken care of.
People who are actual bullies are going to inflict their torture on others as discreetly as possible. The kids who are committing suicide are the gay kids who are being harassed day after day, or the disabled students who teachers won't help, or the legitimately mentally ill. Basically, "at-risk" populations whom adults don't want to deal with anyway.
I think bullies probably have a radar about this stuff. They can sense when a person is already unbalanced. They hear rumors, and see that a student is unpopular, and know by the person's reaction when they pick on that person whether they can get away with it or not.
If the kid knows that they don't have any family support, they're much more likely to be a target. After all, if you know you don't have anyone to go to bat for you when you need them most, would you have any confidence in yourself?
Some of us manipulators were strategic, and careful people. I know for a fact I was disliked by children however the teachers would never identify me as a bully. However, presently, I reflect on the truth, I was. With the current method of identifying bullies, it would not catch the actual bullies. We are too intelligent, strtegical, and weary to be caught. I was always the "Go getter" the child who was inteligent and respectful to the adults. I was set as an example at times. No adult in there right minds would be able to identify that type of student as a bully with the current system of bully identification they are using.
I was both, at times.
When I was younger I would say I was bullied by other kids. I was about 7 or 8 when we were getting changed for PE class and a group of kids threw my stuff out of a window, so I had nothing to change into, and they moved the clothes that I'd already taken off. It was only really 3 people doing it, but in a class of 30, with about half being girls nobody else challenged their actions either.
I was also made to room with these 3 kids on a school activity thing, which was a pretty horrible experience. I'd started my period at that point, I was 10 and one of the few girls who had, I'm not sure if anyone else had yet. The 3 girls I roomed with hadn't anyway, and for whatever reason they didn't wear underwear to bed, just their pyjamas, I guess some kids do that. Anyway, for obvious reasons I did wear it, though I always had been brought up doing so regardless, and they said it was nasty to be doing that, which is crazy really...I mean, saying wearing underwear to bed is wrong. The worst part though was my TVI said I didn't need to wear it, and so I felt like they were being given more power because an adult agreed with them.
I use to have footballs kicked at me, people would try and push me into others, stuff like that.
But equally I can't have been easy to be friends with. I hated most of the other kids because they made me miserable, and so I avoided making friendships and probably pushed people away who otherwise I might have actually been friends with.
There were times, later on, when I teased people who looking back on I really shouldn't have, mainly because other kids were doing it and at that point I actually did want a peer group. Though, that's so selfish, to be a victim and then be the one being mean to others. It was never anything physical, just things like teasing them about who they liked, though, at that age it's all just as bad.