15
   

Do you know how to handle bullying?

 
 
Linkat
 
  1  
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 03:45 pm
@ossobuco,
Today in the papers, two kids were charged with some sort of bullying - they filmed a special needs child in their school, making fun of it and put it on Utube.

I doubt this special needs child would be able to physically defend (or mental defend) himself.
0 Replies
 
ossobuco
 
  1  
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 03:46 pm
And then there is the Phoebe Prince case - I can't immediately find the long article I read about it, but this is a start:

http://theweek.com/article/index/201372/Phoebe_Prince_and_the_bullying_phenomenon
hawkeye10
 
  1  
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 03:49 pm
@Linkat,
Quote:
but we don't see much beating or hitting.


I dont think that there is much beating or hitting in schools either, though a bit of shoving. Did anyone beat or hit Phoebe Prince?
Linkat
 
  1  
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 03:51 pm
@hawkeye10,
Shoving would not be allowed either in my children's school. It would be stopped when it occured.
Linkat
 
  1  
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 03:51 pm
@ossobuco,
And Joshua in Texas:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/033110dnmetjoshuateen.200bbc38e.html
0 Replies
 
hawkeye10
 
  1  
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 03:52 pm
@Linkat,
Quote:
Almost 30% of youth in the United States (or over 5.7 million) are estimated to be involved in bullying as either a bully, a target of bullying, or both. In a recent national survey of students in grades 6-10, 13% reported bullying others, 11% reported being the target of bullies, and another 6% said that they bullied others and were bullied themselves.[1

http://www.safeyouth.org/scripts/faq/bullying.asp
0 Replies
 
Merry Andrew
 
  3  
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 04:04 pm
@ossobuco,
Quote:
I posit that personal self confidence (not really arrogance but that'll do in a pinch) is the vital component.


Absolutely. An appearance of self-confidence is key. I know of any number of cases where bullies wouldn't approach a prospective 'mark' simply because it looked like it might be too much trouble. It's all in how you present yourself.
hawkeye10
 
  1  
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 04:10 pm
@Merry Andrew,
Quote:
Absolutely. An appearance of self-confidence is key. I know of any number of cases where bullies wouldn't approach a prospective 'mark' simply because it looked like it might be too much trouble. It's all in how you present yourself.
absolutely and with fewer victims there will be fewer abusers.
0 Replies
 
ossobuco
 
  1  
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 04:19 pm
@Linkat,
One of my cousins' sons (I have several cousins, as it happens) was bright and tall and skinny. I remember him being thought of in early elementary school as a pied piper, teller of tales, popular. Something happened later, new school, I forget what year, and he was dumped into one of those big trash cans, years of angst following, various acting out. He grew up and became an Army Ranger. He survived, bloomed as a person, but his realm of possibilities were narrowed via the troubled teen schooling years. He could have overcome that too, later, if he valued more education and had the drive for it, but that kind of trouble can take a toll on your self imaging, and formal education be non-identity. I don't mean that I'm disappointed, he's wonderful, but I knew him as that wee pied piper of endless possibility and saw him change. This is also not a peon to formal education as such. Just that I saw his moves as other directed by the trashers and his adjustments after that.
hawkeye10
 
  1  
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 04:32 pm
Quote:
•Bully-victims reported the most child maltreatment (44%), which included experiences with physical and psychological abuse and neglect.
•Bully-victims also reported the highest rates of sexual victimization (32%), which included experiences with sexual harassment as well as sexual abuse, and included familial and non-familial perpetrators.
•Bully-victims and bullies witnessed higher levels of victimization within their homes (e.g., domestic violence) and communities (e.g., witnessing attacks) than other youth (59% for bully-victims, 61% for bullies).

http://www.education.com/reference/article/bullying-child-abuse-sexual-domestic-violence/

but we are going to combat this with a "just say no" program and the police??

I dont think so...
0 Replies
 
ossobuco
 
  1  
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 04:41 pm
@Merry Andrew,
This is a problem, or seems to be, for the shy person - the presentation.

I made it through my preadolescence, as I explained, by the good fortune of being interwoven in neighborhood play/adventure, so was ok re confidence, but then was all new shy again in a new city as a dawning adolescent. I worked my way through my renewed shyness by hearing myself quiet on the outside and bitching in my mind, but only there. I spent a zillion hours talking with myself, or else daydreaming.

I was lucky again and got a job that in various hospital departments lasted for the next seven years from the day I turned sixteen. That brought me outside myself to learn to enjoy other people than the few I knew and was wildly bored by. I somehow got out of that only lonely child resentment of fourteen-sixteen and back to getting into 'neighborhood', this time a work neighborhood that forced me to learn.

Somewhere in there I identified my shyness as self absorption. Not my words then, I might have said selfishness.

Anyway, I think now of shyness as not cute except in the very young, and very separating.
0 Replies
 
ossobuco
 
  1  
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 04:44 pm
@ossobuco,
Ack, the word isn't peon...
0 Replies
 
hawkeye10
 
  1  
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 04:47 pm
Quote:
A significant link between bullying and victimization patterns at home and at school was found. Children who bullied siblings were likely to bully their peers, while victims at home were likely to also be victimized at school. Dr Menesini continued: "It is not possible to tell from our study which behaviour comes first, but it is likely that if children behave in a certain way at home, bullying a sibling for instance, if this behaviour goes unchecked they may take this behaviour into school." In conclusion this study gives immediate implications for interventions. In order to prevent and reduce sibling bullying, parents should attend to sibling relationships and attempt to mediate and reduce high levels of conflict, especially if they have older sons and if the sibling relationship appears negative and highly hostile

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091206185410.htm

but we are going to push all of this off on the schools right? give the schools yet another social reform project in the effort to protect the greater society from the failure of parents?
ossobuco
 
  1  
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 05:32 pm
@hawkeye10,
I think it is reasonable that schools would find a way to talk about all this. My doubt is that any two administrators would agree on any kind of rules, much less a whole district.

There was a body discovered burning nearby a Compton high school. This apparently wasn't a teen, but some neighborhoods are tougher than others..
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/03/compton-burning-body-update.html

The trick is civility with diversity. We're all still learning that. Best if it start, if not in toddlerhood, in elementary school. Sometimes I think the nuns weren't all so wrong.
Pemerson
 
  2  
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 05:50 pm
My grandaughter, at 12 or so, walked into the worse case scenario as far as bullying, when my son & daughter-in-law moved to Colorado. She was rather shy, I guess, but nothing serious. It's just that her new "best friend" was one of those hugely tall girls, absolutely spoiled rotten by her parents. She didn't like our grandaughter, but I think some kids who appear rather perfect to their parents look around for some "friend" to control. She's perfect at home but showed her anger and cruelty with Jes.

Jes became almost anorexic (skinny parents anyway). This girl made fun of her unmercifully, constantly picking at her, bossing her. She began to get rather hysterical and didn't want to go to school, said she had no friends (nobody wanted to be friends with her because of this girl).

I suggested to our son that he should get some help for his daughter, she just was not handling that girl. When next we visited I noticed she had some tapes & books related to this subject, but I don't know how they eventually handled the situation. She also started riding horses (English), grew a larger butt and stronger legs, played golf, wanted to be a vet and gave class speeches, wrote papers on the subject.

Now, going on 17, she has a group of friends more like herself and has switched her interests to art, singing and dancing (bigger butt and legs helped! She has never made less than 4.0. grade pt.The other kids' parents are divorced and that poor girl is just a bit changed.

My kids were both boys and nobody ever bothered them, they always had a ton of friends, which does help, and were involved to the limit in sports.

This bullying thing is so uncomfortable for parents, it's so difficult seeing your loved child hurt in this way. I think it's worse for girls.
0 Replies
 
hawkeye10
 
  1  
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 05:53 pm
@ossobuco,
Quote:
My doubt is that any two administrators would agree on any kind of rules, much less a whole district.
between politicians writing thick laws on school bullying and never knowing which victim is going to go home and hang themselves, discretion is minimal.
0 Replies
 
sozobe
 
  2  
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 07:43 pm
@Cycloptichorn,
Except when we're talking emotional bullying, especially the kind girls typically practice. Getting another girl to physically attack when goaded would be GOLD to the kind of girl I'm thinking of. That would be the mark of success, even if it hurt like hell. Because the trick would be to lay groundwork and the goad with something that didn't even seem that bad to onlookers, and then the attacker would be ostracized for "unprovoked" violence.

In the kind of situation I'm thinking of, no response is far better than a violent response. That's not from an adult, do-the-right-thing perspective, its from a utilitarian perspective. It'd be counterproductive for the bullied kid in that kind of situation.
Cycloptichorn
 
  1  
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 08:44 pm
@sozobe,
sozobe wrote:

Except when we're talking emotional bullying, especially the kind girls typically practice. Getting another girl to physically attack when goaded would be GOLD to the kind of girl I'm thinking of. That would be the mark of success, even if it hurt like hell. Because the trick would be to lay groundwork and the goad with something that didn't even seem that bad to onlookers, and then the attacker would be ostracized for "unprovoked" violence.

In the kind of situation I'm thinking of, no response is far better than a violent response. That's not from an adult, do-the-right-thing perspective, its from a utilitarian perspective. It'd be counterproductive for the bullied kid in that kind of situation.


It's a whole different universe with girls, I guess. I understand about the goading to attack part; the rest of it just baffles me, because emotional bullying wasn't even on my radar as a child (or an adult really).

Cycloptichorn
eoe
 
  1  
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 09:58 pm
@Cycloptichorn,
I remember a few girl bullies when I was a kid. One girl, about a year or two older, befriended me (we lived in the same apt. building) but when she came to my eighth birthday party and started a fight with another girl, my mother forbade me to hang out with her any longer. And then in junior high, there was this witch who terrorized all of us with a mere squint. Your best bet was to just stay out of her sight path.
0 Replies
 
sozobe
 
  1  
Reply Thu 1 Apr, 2010 07:07 am
@aidan,
I've been really busy this week, read this before but didn't have time to respond. It keeps kind of niggling at me.

Your daughter doesn't wear her hearing aids because she was teased about them? Isn't that a Problem? I speak as a former teen wearer of hearing aids myself.
 

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