Bullying and how to stop it

Well there's different types of bullying. Individual bullying and social bullying are entirely different things and have entirely different causes and solutions.

In terms of individual bullying, generally speaking things like fighting back or getting intervention work pretty well. Generally in these cases the bullying is more about the bully than the target, in any case. So if you fight back, they'll go find someone/something else or whatever.

Social bullying is an entirely different animal, in that it's often not about the bullies, it's about the community as a whole. Fighting back isn't an option because hitting one of many just makes you more of an "outcast", and intervention is rarely an option because again, you're the outcast, chances are that nobody is willing to intervene and go against the community grain. Besides, generally speaking the most active social bullies are viewed as being relatively successful, and that shouldn't be discouraged.

What can be done about social bullying...move? It's sad but it's often true. These types of bullies usually win, and they tend to be the most destructive. Every once in a while these things will blow up to a level where you start to get outside investigation/intervention, but generally speaking they're small scale enough that they're ignored.

It's basically town politics applied to youth.

some girl tried to pull that after she slapped me with her school ring on (I had a mark) i replayed "Don't dish out what you can't take yourself". the teachers aid agreed.

edited 8th Sep '11 10:40:09 AM by vanthebaron

You are not everyone, nor is every teacher the one you had.

I know. Just make i know to people so when you do finally snap and kick their ass the teachers know

Not everybody is capable of hitting very hard, or judging when it is appropriate to do so.

Indeed. As could strangulation or group beatings, both of which can happen in schoolyard fights.

Which was my point. The nature and severity of bullying is highly variable.

exactly unless you deal with it yourself if will boil down to a beating for you. best to show your strength early on then to get the shit kicked out of you by the bully and his gang.

Some bullies aren't looking for a victim. They are looking for a fight. You fight back against them and they don't stop coming. You are their new personal game night.

Truthfully there are way to many types of bullies out there to come up with a iron clad strategy that will stop them all. The best you can do is figure out the "why they do it" and "how to stop it" of each type.

edited 8th Sep '11 11:46:29 AM by TheDeadMansLife

what I figured out is "they have a pack mindset and they think they are the alpha, so they can nip at anyone they want." and how do wolfs move up in the pack, they fight for it.

Agreed on the 'many types of bully, solution depends on which one' statement. The best things I think you can do is: analyse and research your enemy, ensure your parents know, call an anonymous bullying helpline, get into a martial art or boxing and be in with a decent-sized group of mates. Childhood's not a good place to be withdrawn and friendless, and this is just one reason.

And it's probably best to escalate your threat response gradually and proportionately - mouth off, throw fists and use weapons - because you could go too far and the bully is the one who winds up with the sympathy. Or you might accidentally kill him - a bit of an overreaction that, usually.

It's in some children's nature to assert themselves by attacking anyone they perceive as weaker, and it's in some children's nature not to know how to deal with being picked on. The onus is on the bullied child to stop it; however, before things escalate to the point where every possible reaction, or lack thereof, on the part of the bullied becomes ammunition for the bully, (s)he should be coached on how to respond to bullying effectively as much as the bully should be coached to understand the impact of his behavior.

I would have liked to murder the parents of some of the bullies I encountered in school. One of them was a kid who liked psychological bullying, apparently his parents thought he was a "precious snowflake" who could do no wrong. Well, my metal lunchbox disagreed one infamous day in sixth grade. I never saw him again, and I never got in trouble for it because the administrators knew exactly what was going on. Adult Fridge Logic makes me wonder why they never did anything about it when I was the one being bullied, but I found out loads of stuff about that class in later years...

Anyway, if bullying is occurring, you have to look at the parents of those children and their home environment.

edited 8th Sep '11 1:57:42 PM by Fighteer

Learn to fight, learn to fight dirty, get really strong.

I was bullied as a kid. But fast forward to at least a half dozen fights in late middle school/early high school and more than quadrupling my physical strength, they left me alone.

There were no zero tolerance rules then, no sissy shenanigans about everyone wins or nobody loses, none of the bullshit seen today. And you know what? It worked. The bullies left me alone and I never had to snitch.

For once we agree Tom

In practice it's not necessarily reliable, though. They could play the victim and get you in trouble if you do that.

Okay Tom, you know that the word "snitch" in this context can go jump in a fire. Telling people that your having a problem based solely on the malice of some cocksure bastard with an inferiority complex is not a bad thing.

I hate the idea that "telling someone in authority means your weak" bullshit, its like saying "Your wifes been kidnapped, but if you contact the police you clearly can't handle this yourself". Its a kind of misplaced machismo that will (quite frequently) just result in another fuckin' kick to the head.

Getting tough and learning to fight will, I reckon, handle 90% of bullies. That's pretty good odds. The other 10%, as others have mentioned, are bottle coveys (is there a trope for that?), belong to large gangs that you just haven't got the resources for, or use other methods that you can't fight directly. That's playground bullies, of course. Workplace/prison bullies are a different ballgame.

The 'telling on someone' solution is really situational. For little kid bullies it's exactly the right advice. After that you have to be careful who you tell.

edited 8th Sep '11 5:22:13 PM by betaalpha

"learning to fight" is worth jack shit if you don't know whose doing it, or if they don't even know how much damage its causing you. Someone's playful banter can come across as activly harmful to others if for no other reason than upbrining and/or tempremant.

And I've yet to find a situation that cannot be solved by getting someone smarter and/or larger than you to intervene in your favour.

99.99999% of bullies are nowhere near that smart.

It's true however. The police are never going to be there when you need them so relying on being a snitch is the easiest way to be dragged down a dark alley and brutally murdered. (Especially since in urban schools do you know how much gang activity goes on? A lot I can tell you that.) If you can't defend yourself or handle things yourself, you are a miserable example of a human being.

Step one. Try the appropriate channels first. If that does get a result. Step two toe the line show them your not afraid and take them down a peg. Be a scary mean vicious bastard. I hate to say it folks but it works.

So what, you have to sit back and take it? Or people with disabilities should just be told to get over themselves? It is the job of those with power to help those without it, and whilst yes I would advise trying to learn basic defense it seems more like blaming the victim for not fighting back than blaming the bullies for being cruel to another human being for no actual reason.

@thread,

Make it stop.

I went to a school where the teachers didn't care what happened to me, since my parents weren't rich and my tormentors' parents were. So I left the school. I was homeschooled for several years, and when I reentered the school system, I went to a small, highly inclusive school with a much better support system. I didn't get bullied at all there.

Bullying is a problem with no solution for many kids. Most bullies don't want to get hurt, but they tend to beat up kids who are physically unable to hurt them.

I can give an example from my own childhood. I almost got kicked out of school, in 8th grade, because I "kept getting into fights". Different bullies would beat me up on different days, and the common factor was me, so the moron running the school deduced that I was the problem. After all, the bullies always said that I started the fights.

Never mind that I weighed about 90 pounds and was about 5'3" tall, while the lead bully was about 160 pounds and about 5'9" tall. To the moron running the school, it was perfectly logical that I would start fights with different bullies every week, because I loved getting beat up.

I actually had permanent injuries to my nose, as a result of these "fights", and have had a total of 3 surgeries to try to fix these problems.

The bullying only stopped when I got my growth spurt. Between 8th and 9th grades, I gained 25 pounds and 6" in height. The first bully who went after me, in the fall, got pushed over a bench. He was still bigger and stronger than me, but he realized that it was now possible for him to get hurt.

He lost all interest in beating me up, and warned the other bullies. All the principal ever did was support the bullies. He was probably a former bully, himself.

The only real solution is to not let dumbasses run schools. Of course, the education establishment is controlled mostly by people with education degrees, generally the least intelligent of college graduates, so this would be a revolutionary change.

^ Don't assume it's impossible to make teachers care. I don't know what methods it can be achieved by, but I know I've seen it happen at more than one school.