Writer's Block: Thanks for the Input

[seawasp]

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"If you ignore the bullies, they'll get bored and go bother someone else."

Comments

[midnightlurker.livejournal.com]

The complete and total disconnect between adults' advice on bullies and bullies' actual behavior has always bugged me. Makes me worry that if I have kids, some international Bully Conspiracy will brainwash me in my sleep. :)

[seawasp]

Well, they didn't get me. I told my son the way you stop bullies is make it so that it hurts them more than it hurts you.

[salkryn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the bullying didn't stop for me until I showed a willingness to hurt them. For some reason, after you grab them by the neck and throw them to the ground, they find a reason to be somewhere else, really fast. It also helps to cultivate an image of being scant inches from going postal. Nobody fucks with the crazy kid.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

Often, you don't even need the violence. Once I cultivated the "I can hurt you whenever I want to, so don't make me want to" look/attitude, bullies seemed magically evaporate. A lot of the time, not showing fear of them is all you need.

[guy-jin.livejournal.com]

THIS.

Teachers, School administrators, and parents who give this advice need to be smacked until they apologize.

[thette.livejournal.com]

Oooh, good one!

If we're offering our own, I'm partial to "You can do so much better than KJ," as his sister in spirit once told me.

[kayshapero]

Never understood that one - even if it worked, the bullies still continue to BE bullies even if they were picking on someone else, which is not exactly a solution.

[guy-jin.livejournal.com]

if everyone did it there would be no new victims for the bully to pick on.

[kayshapero]

So s/he'd go back and pick on the old ones....

[krwlr.livejournal.com]

To the advice-maker: Not, not really. They'll stay until you break, actually.

To the advice-poster: I like this entry very much. =P

[dragoness-e.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

I learned late in high school that fighting back, and showing you weren't afraid of getting hurt and were willing to hurt them made them lose interest in you real fast. Way faster than all the years of trying to avoid or ignore them did.

Bullies are cowards at heart.

[kayshapero]

A lot of 'em are bullied at home, and acting out what they've been taught. Breaking that cycle needs doing.

bullies

[mzrosemary.livejournal.com]

My school teacher, oldest of six voice often stopped kids in their tracks when I was young and children were conditioned to obey authority. Ignoring often works for teasing, but gets the teasing increases before it decreases. The most effective method for dealing with a bully depends entirely on the circumstances, my younger sister whose social skills have always been very strong got suspended in jr. high for fighting because she defended herself when attacked. She told the principal that meant she could have let the girl who pushed her down pound her into the sidewalk, or be suspended for trying to protect herself. When the school called my mother she kept saying Paula! My Paula? She would have been much less surprised by any of the other five of us getting in trouble for fighting. Ignoring verbal bullying can sometimes cause teasing to become physical bullying. For years I used the quick and funnier comeback, I try not to do that anymore, because these people already have very low self esteem. Making them look stupid just changes their target. If you can get it coordinated, peer pressure is the hardest thing for most young people to withstand.
Years ago, I taught at a residential facility for people with severe developmental delays. At one point we put all the aggressive clients in one class. Soon their attacks on each other decreased and the teachers who were working with other classes got more done. Attacks on staff increased, but we were able to limit the damage by assigning more of the residential staff to assist with that class. Another teacher and I each took that class for half the day. We ended that schedule because the residential staff hated working with clients from a number of units as opposed to just those on their own unit even though all the units had some clients in that class and their was more staff. Aides seemed to prefer the devils they knew to the devils they didn't.
Another common piece of advice from teachers and parents is just ask nicely if you can play. However, observation of children who were successful at entering a play group showed that those children never used that technique.
When I taught child care and parenting classes I always told my students that certain methods and techniques were generally more effective than others especially over time than others, but that nothing worked all the time with every child and it was amazing what would work at least once with some children.