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Pop wrote

Depends on the people involved and the kind of bullying at least

One time a person would stalk me around school slapping me on the back when they got the chance

until I grabbed them and kicked the shit out of their shins

things were fine after that day :)

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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rot wrote

In the u.s. if you touch another kid it makes the verbal bullying way worse. the teachers will join in and shame you for using violence and you could get expelled.

I wasn't really bullied as a kid tho so if someone hits them yeah they should fight back

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theblackcat wrote

Parents of bullies are usually bullies too, who emotionally torture their kids and then the kids repeat that behaviour on your kid. That's been my experience anyway, so talking to the parents of the bully probably won't help.

When I was a kid my aunt took me to the door of my bully's parents and talked to them, and it only made the bullying worse the next day at school.

The parents probably bullied the kid even more as punishment, which led to the kid taking it out on others even more.

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NeoliberalismKills wrote

If the adults in the area aren't intervening physical self-defense is the only solution. Put another way, when "civilized" means aren't possible "jungle" rules apply. I used to think otherwise because those kids are likely victims of terrible parents, as theblackcat already said, but getting bullied fucks you up. Believe me. Sometimes you have to choose the least bad option.

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edmund_the_destroyer wrote (edited )

When we reported it to our school, they interviewed our child, the bullies, our child's friends, the bullies' friends, and some kids that were in the same classrooms but not friends of either side. Each interview was one on one, and they just told each child that someone had noticed the bullying and contacted the school administration.

They got some picture of the situation which they shared with us in general terms, and they wouldn't tell us what was said but provided a list of times they called the other kids' parents to discuss the situation. It seemed to improve the situation slightly.

I know a lot of advice is to just tell your kid to fight back, but in our case we have two reasons not to say that:

  1. Our son is one of the largest boys in the school, and his bullies are girls.
  2. A big part of the feedback from the kids, even from my son's closest friends, was that he was causing more trouble than he was getting. So either the girls were extraordinarily skilled at saving the worst emotional abuse for when no one else was around, or he had (has?) tunnel vision and doesn't realize that if you insult someone and they insult you back it does not make you the innocent victim.

As a parent the whole situation drove me nuts, because I was left wondering if my own kid was being secretly terrorized by an especially vicious group of girls. Or if he was, in fact, the actual bully and they were just defending themselves but he had no idea. And we couldn't even confront him with the situation and ask for more information, because it would reveal that his own best buddies didn't back him up when the school counselors asked their view of the situation. We stay in touch with the counseling staff at the school and have him in counseling. He thinks it's for dealing with bullies, but a large part of it is to help him understand and empathize better with others.

I hope like hell I'm not raising an asshole jock.

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rot wrote

I was in school a few years ago and most kids are assholes in school just as the result of pressure.

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RedEmmaSpeaks wrote

I don't know. I don't currently have kids, but I was relentlessly bullied from age 11 to age 18, so I know about that. I know I won't tell them to just ignore it, because then they'll leave you alone, because that shit doesn't work and it doesn't stop the insults for hurting. Or as the website, Sadly No!, puts it:

Ah, yes, the well-worn refrain to bullied kids everywhere. Ignore the bully and he’ll use your silence to believe he’s untouchable and torment you for months while you internalize your own worthlessness and believe you can’t even speak out about the abuse because it’ll just be “encouraging” the bully to beat you more.

No wait, I’m sorry, I got reality mixed up with platitude again. I meant to say, ignore the bully and he’ll go away and leave you alone, because you showed you were the bigger person and there’s nothing a bully loves more than someone they look down on for their identities or existence also acting smug that they are morally superior to them.

Ah damn, just keep accidentally kicking the switch for the reality/platitude inverter. But yeah, any bullied kid learned the hard way that this advice is garbage. Once a bully is on you, they tend to stick around and turning your back and trying to ignore just makes them more likely to escalate and feel invincible because they know that everyone likes a bully victim to suffer nobly and so the systems of power are behind them and will protect their actions.

I wouldn't want them to use physical violence to solve everything, but I will tell them that if someone swings at them, they have the right to defend themselves. To heck with what the zero tolerance policy says, just do it. Cops may be bastards, but even they recognize the basic idea of self-defense, that if Bill swung at Joe, Joe would be in the right if he hit him back.

Then again, I'm really not sure what to say. Most of my bullies were girls and girls go more for the psychological approach than the violent kind. I'm not sure what to do. You can't stop people from hating each other and it's damn hard to keep kids from whispering to each other. I try to think of solutions, but more often than not, I throw up my hands and say, "Stun baton, I could use to shock them every time they came up to me?" but there are probably hazards associated with that.

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PerfectSociety wrote

Teach your child about forming protective social groups with their classmates so that whenever a bully picks on someone, they are confronted by a group of people and intimidated away from bullying. Your child can initially reach out to people who have also been bullied and then from there expand the protective social group to include others as well who are sympathetic despite not being personally bullied.

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0w0 wrote

I would try to find people that suffered the same and try to orginize a protest.

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ziq wrote (edited )

I've been bullyin bullies 4 years. Pay a kid to beat up your kid's bully?

Im not a parent so ignore me lol

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