Posted by:
Boughxb
(
)
Date: November 18, 2010 06:30PM
anonirregular Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This is facinating! Discovering boughxb suffered
> at the hands of bullies, and then watching him(?)
> defend bullying behavior relentlessly through two
> threads.
>
Sorry? I am not defending bullying behavior. I think you need to define what bullying behavior is. Is it a disagreement? At what point does peer pressure for good or bad become a bullying moment in your mind? Is it when you feel like the group isn't accepting you? That they don't like hanging around you because you are different somehow? Is it when they constantly harrass you because of your freckles or your early puberty? What if the team puts icy hot in your jock? Is that bullying? I don't believe that what was described in the orginal thread was bullying but oversensitity to an overwhelmingly homogenous environment that doesn't match our belief system. I may have misunderstood the original quote but handing out material to a friend (perhaps that can be clarified) on the playground or telling a classmate "People that don't go to the Mormon church are going to go to hell" is not what I would see as bullying. I guess we may have gotten to the point that any indication that someone may not like us or that we are weak or that we don't fit in is a bully tactive but I just see that as an indication of how emotionally weak we've all become.
> As he said, no assistance was given him against
> his bullies. And he characterized helping the
> atheist boy as making the child feel weak and
> afraid.
>
Your off base again. I certainly hope you aren't a therapist, because your inferences suck and are pretty quickly inferred. I'm actually coming from the angle of a phrase I heard while listening to "Love and Logic" which mentions that the most powerful communications we send our children are the indirect messages. A child whose parent hovers over them and constantly checks with them to see if they are ok, who steps into their social interactions to declare them unfair, etc are sending a message to the child that they are fragile and need someone to rescue them. I really do believe that the best tactic for this is to work through our children and train them on how to deal with difficult situations like this. Ultimately this will benefit them the most.
My son has a bully in his class and he is very non-confrontational. He came home one night because the kid had been terrible, he had broken all my sons pencils, gotten the whole class in trouble so they couldn't do art (he loves art and the bully hates it) and when they tried to play kickball at recess he threatened my son and shoved my son's friend to the ground. I was pissed at this kid! I wanted to go to the school and let them have it for not supervising the kids and for allowing this one kid to destroy the fun for all the other kids. I mean when did it become a 4th graders responsibility to police the other kids so they can do art? I was also pissed at this kid and thought of confronting him and protecting my son. As I thought through it though I realized that my son is certainly able to defend himself and can grow stronger by learning to deal with this kid than by me dealing with it for him. So I told my son "Above all else you make sure that you are safe, if he threatens you make sure that you are safe, stay away from him. If that doesn't work, make sure that you are safe. MAKE YOURSELF SAFE, don't allow him to make you unsafe. etc etc etc." My son felt empowered and the indirect message from me was "You are a smart capable boy and I have no reason to step in and protect you"
Eventually these kids will grow up to be adults and will have to deal with this stuff anyway. Bully's don't go away because we want them to, they go away because we make them go away.
How do you expect your kids to stand up to the church if you won't let them stand up to a 4th grader at school? You cannot control the other kids perceptions/beliefs/boundaries but you can help you child control their own.
> The mechanism at work here is obvious. When
> complaining about being bullied as a child to
> parents/authority figures who could have helped,
> boughxb was most likely told to "toughen up", and
> was he "too weak to defend himself?", and "what's
> the matter, you afraid?".
Again, bullshit, you just make this stuff up or did you go to school for it? I had to figure out for myself to toughen up, and believe me I played the victim card as much as I could, and for as long as I could. But eventually I got tired of it and realized that I was giving them all the power. No one needs a nanny, bullies prey on people who portray their differences as weaknesses and they will incessently attack the weak.
It's biology at work.
> After all, his parents suffered the same things
> and they're probably "just fine". Even though
> they are obviously damaged enough to not even have
> the heart to keep their own child feeling safe.
>
Bullshit again, my parents were remnants of anything that had any confidence, happiness, or sense of belonging and they preached it to us all day long about how horrible their lives were growing up in this hellhole. They kept on playing the victim card and giving us children all the tools of the victim. They never ever stood up for themselves, and their self esteem is still amongst the lowest I have ever seen.
> I hope you work on your past with a therapist
> before you continue the cycle, boughxb.
> This thread triggers such strong feelings in you.
> You keep coming back to defend an undefendable
> position. If this child deserves assistance, so
> did you. But you did not receive it and now are
> advocating denying help to this child.
> It's projection.
I'm glad you weren't my therapist. We would have been off on guesswork and tangents all day long.
And no, I am not advocating denying help to this child. I am advocating teaching children to know how to navigate a world that does not play by our happy go lucky view of how the world should work.