<p>Well, I won’t deny your experience, nightchef, and I’m sorry you were bullied like that. Nowadays I’d hope any parent would call the police with that kind of physical stuff going on. I know a couple of kids were actually arrested for assualt recently for this kind of thing. I was thinking of bullying and not assualt. But, I do take your point. Truly violent perpetrators need to be taken to the police.</p>
<p>I agree that attitudes have changed in very healthy ways. My experience took place in the late 60s/early 70s in a small, rural New Jersey town. My parents had moved out there from the NYC suburbs when I was 7 and my brother was 9. As newcomers, we were both targets; at one point my father complained to the school principal, and he said, “we let the kids work it out for themselves, that’s how they grow up to be men.” I remember my father said it was the closest he ever came to punching a grown man himself. After that, he told my brother and me that we had his support whatever we chose to do–run away, walk away, fight back, whatever worked. </p>
<p>If the same thing happened today, the principal would have responded quite differently. And hallelujah for that.</p>
<p>PS This week, a girl in my school ended up with 3 stitches in her head and some racial epithets in her ears - which I think hurt her more. The offending girl had an all-day in school suspension. (This is middle school - far worse to be stuck with the dean all day than to be home.) The very next day, the offending child threatened another girl. At this point, the police got involved but I’m afraid this will be an ongoing problem in my school for a while.
I really don’t have any solutions particularly when there are students who are simply immune to disciplinary measures that would terrify most other kids.</p>
<p>I advocate speaking softly and carrying a big stick. If telling my kids that they are allowed to fight back is advocating violence, then everyone who studies the martial arts advocates violence. Which is, of course, untrue; such people are almost universally peace-loving, but they carry their “big stick” with confidence, and it prevents them from ever having to use it.</p>
<p>I was a little bit angry when I made my last post, so please take it with a grain of salt. I don’t advocate turning the whole world into a cowboy town where disputes are resolved with pistols at twenty paces. I just get so angry when I hear of kids being bullied. And it’s true that my best experience with a bully was when I got angry enough to lay him out (which surprised me more than it surprised him).</p>
<p>But that was back before the days of gangs and guns, so God only knows how it would have played out today.</p>
<p>The problem with fighting back, as I see it, is that it perpetuates the belief that bullying is a behavior that is to be expected and that it’s up to the individual victim to devise ways to cope with it.</p>
<p>But a lot of people are looking for a shift to a culture where bullying is outside the range of expected behaviors. </p>
<p>We have had such cultural shifts before. When we were children, drunk driving and sexual harrassment were things that were to be expected (and in the case of the latter, a young woman was expected to know how to cope with it). Now, most people regard these behaviors as unacceptable. </p>
<p>In the new culture that we’re hopefully working toward, bullying would be as unacceptable as theft. People who have things stolen aren’t expected to take matters into their own hands; they report the incidents to the authorities, and the authorities take them seriously. For example, when a situation occurred in one of my kids’ schools where students’ possessions were disappearing from their gym lockers while they were outdoors participating in PE class, the school administration took it very seriously, investigated the situation, and eventually found the person who was responsible. This is the sort of approach I would like to see for bullying.</p>
<p>My son started middle school two weeks ago. There is a serious bullying thing going on in his class. Detention has been served by the same couple of kids 8 times in the 12 days they’ve had class. This group of kids is really tough – and the mom of one was called during class one day and she hung up on the dean, so there’s not much hope of help there. Anyway, my kid is the only one of the “small” boys (he divides the kids into small, medium and tall – I have no idea what the distinctions are) who hasn’t been picked on. THe reason for that is that the cousin of the ringleader, who is in another class, is aware that my son is a brown belt in karate and is a very talented wrestler. Cousin has passed this on, so my son’t brown belt is his “big stick.” Whatever works, as far as I’m concerned, because one kid who has been bullied got kicked in the testicles and had to visit a doctor.</p>
<p>Yep. And that is exactly when you call in the police.</p>
<p>I would agree- unfortunately there are school districts who prefer to keep it " inside", as when a developmentally disabled girl was raped in her high school and not only were the police not called but even though the principal was made aware of the incident the boys were only expelled well after the fact .</p>
<p>Seattle has a policy to refer cases to district security, even though I believe state and federal law requires teachers and others who deal with children professionally to be mandated reporters- which means report to the police and let the police do the investigating.</p>
<p>It is not doing the kids any favors to " get away" with assaulting peers. Their behavior then escalates until they are locked up.</p>
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<p>I’d love to know what constituted “in your face” and “embracing.” I’ve know a lot of people who think that gay couples holding hands is being “in your face.” </p>
<p>mantori.suzuki, You know what fighting back gets you these days? A label as a being just as much a trouble maker as the bully. So, unless you can hurt the bully enough for him to stop, you’ve just lost any other protection that you might have been afforded. </p>
<p>When a bully who had, easily, 20lbs on my kid (they were both in 6th grade) finally punched my kid in the face, we had to sit through our son being questioned because the bullies friends all said that my son threw the first punch (which would have been the first in his life, I might add.) Here’s the part that made us feel like we were taking crazy pills; a teacher had seen the entire interaction and had already told the Principal what he saw. But the bully, his family (I wonder where he got it from?) and the bully’s friends insisted that something happened before the teacher got there. </p>
<p>We had to threaten to bring our lawyer (of course, we don’t have a lawyer) in if they A) punished our child in anyway or B) lessened the punishment for the bully based on “conflicted accounts.”</p>
<p>We finally had to pull our kid out of that school. I will never forget how totally betrayed I felt by that school. They failed my child.</p>
<p>poetgirl, Your post reminded me that we also had to threaten to press charges against the Bully before his parents would back down. Keep in mind this kid had a discipline record two inches tall and my son had never been in trouble once. Not once. But we had to sit through hours and days of this “boys will be boys” and “maybe more happened than you know” bs. </p>
<p>If my kid had had to go to the doctors, I would have called the police that day.</p>
<p>Right, but I don’t know what difference it makes if the school district prefers to keep it inside or not. If I take my kid to the er or someone else takes my kid to the er,or my kid comes home beat up? I’m not calling the school. I’m calling the police. </p>
<p>Different topic, sort of, same idea. There were a group of ___ graders who were smoking pot and it was being sold in the bathroom. It was reported to the school and the school did…nothing. They prefered to “keep it inside.” Parents called the police. Suddenly, all sorts of things began to happen. Wealthy junior high. But the police really don’t care who has money.</p>
<p>pug-- I don’t blame you! You would have had every right to go to the police.</p>
<p>In the case I mentioned, the girl told a family friend and they were told by the school that it was being handled. I am assuming they thought that meant the police.
It didn’t.
When students are suspended when victims of unprovoked assaults, as in this police report ( link from article) it isn’t surprising families aren’t sure what to do.
[School</a> crimes under wraps: Assaults, robberies not always reported to police](<a href=“http://www.seattlepi.com/local/333337_schoolcrime27.html]School”>http://www.seattlepi.com/local/333337_schoolcrime27.html)
My own parents didn’t call the police when I was assaulted by a group of boys at my suburban junior high school. I vaguely remember talking to a counselor at the school-but I don’t think the boys were even suspended.</p>
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<p>Depends on the kid and the school. The bigger the school, the more likely you are correct, because teachers and counselors can’t know every kid well and may therefore have no bias for or against either kid when a fight occurs. At a small school, if a kid with an exemplary record gets into a fight with a kid who has been in trouble before, there may very well be a summary judgment in favor of the good kid. As long as it happens only once, that is.</p>
<p>Forty years ago, when I was in elementary school, one of my classmates was constantly bullied. He was “different” - he had older parents & he was just kind of an old soul at a young age - he wore “old” clothes, had an “old” hairstyle, sounded “old” when he talked. All these years later, I wonder why the heck anyone cared enough to bother him for that. Bother him they did, though. I remember wanting to help him but not knowing how. This boy was beat up on the playground when teachers weren’t looking, and he was beat up on his way home from school. The “solution?” He stayed in at recess and left school 10 minutes before everyone else (so he could walk home without being harrassed). </p>
<p>That young man has stayed in my mind over the years. I have always felt terrible that I didn’t stand up for him. I never called him names or hurt him, I never watched when others did, and I was kind to him. Yet I have always felt that I should have done SOMETHING. I raised my kids to be vocal when they see people being bullied, and this young man is the reason I intentionally taught them to be active rather than passive. We all need to do what we can to stop bullying - it shouldn’t be accepted as just part of growing up - and we shouldn’t believe there is nothing we can do to stop it.</p>
<p>I don’t believe in fighting either, but I have to admit that manitori.suzuki makes a point about fighting back. My son got into an argument with a kid who was trouble in 8th grade which ended up in shoving. They both got a one day in school suspension. The school was incredibly apologetic since they knew my kid was a good kid and academic star, but no one had really seen what had happened. (Knowing my kid I actually think it quite likely he lost it and threw the first punch.) The thing is I think it so shocked everyone that he was never ever bullied in school despite being a scrawny comp sci nerd. I still would recommend standing your ground or disarming the bully through friendship/joking or what have you first.</p>
<p>Historically, athletes have been a frequent source of bullies, because the culture of many sports emphasizes physical aggression; their size and strength makes them less fearful of victims fighting back; team loyalty prevents witnesses from testifying and students, schools and parents revere athletes and treat them as exempt from many rules.</p>
<p>If I were conducting school anti-bullying training, I would start with the sports coaches and tell them the school’s strongest kids are expected to protect the weakest, not bully them.</p>
<p>My son tells me that the athletes at his school make fun of kids all the time - but they are held up by the teachers & administrators are “role models.” My son can’t wait for college.</p>
<p>One of my kids is a serious athlete, very popular and beloved…etc…not the oldest one who was artsy and really didn’t love HS, at all…If I heard she was anywhere near a bullying incident and not defending the kid? She’d WISH they’d called the police. NOT OKAY.</p>
<p>I subscribe to the Wiesel theory that the only thing necessary for evil to exist is for good people to ignore it. </p>
<p>Kelsmom: just remember the famous Northwestern cheer: “That’s all right, that’s okay, you’ll be working for us some day.”</p>
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I dunno, this gets tricky. I know in my middle school (which is when the bullying peaked; by high school most of the jerks had mellowed a bit), all that would have been necessary to confirm a bullied kid as a permanent mega-target would have been for a girl to step in defending him. (Maybe in these less chauvinist times that wouldn’t be as true. I’d like to think so.) There was a girl who befriended me in 6th-7th grade, much as kelsmom did; she made a point of being nice to me, and never joined in when kids were cheering the bullies on, but she never spoke up for me, and honestly, I was very glad she didn’t. It would not have helped.</p>