<p>I was teased pretty mercilessly in middle school when I switched to a new school. Kids are smart though – often the worst stuff happens during passing period, during lunch period where there is little supervision, after school, in the bathrooms, etc. They don’t do it right under a teacher’s nose usually. I am not disagreeing with those who think schools need to do more, but the difference between a school and a parent is that a parent is on duty for very few kids compared to the ratio of adults to students in a school – especially during the periods of the days and locations I mentioned. And, unfortunately, a lot of kids just don’t tell. I never told my parents what was really going on and I’ve heard some stuff from a couple of my kids once they were older that surprised me. Kids seems to really believe, and not without reason, that as bad as something is, it will be worse if they tell. They think it because often that’s exactly the case.</p>
<p>I agree that it is incumbent on parents to teach their kids compassion and good social behavior, and impose strict consequences at any sign their kid is acting badly toward another. But I’ve seen enough parents, who are very nice people, totally oblivious to the meanness that their children are capable of. I also think that teachers must often miss the hostility shown toward others by manipulative students who are very good at keeping up a facade for adults.</p>
<p>But I’d like to look at what we can do as parents to make our kids less vulnerable to being bullied. I offer the story of my oldest daughter who was a freshman in HS four years ago, when she was the target of attempted bullying by a group of seniors. I think they picked on her because she dressed “uniquely” and had many friends in her grade as well as the grades in between the two. One girl was the leader and seemingly determined to take this freshman down a notch. But what prevented the situation from getting too bad was my daughter’s self-confidence. She has always had strong true self-esteem (realistic not narcissistic). She simply did not react to the snide remarks, the pointing and whispering, and the stories coming from others about how she was disliked. I knew the nice mother of the girl who was the leader as she had been a music teacher at the school, but I resisted all urges to intervene because D and I both knew it would make it worse. I was a witness once to how this girl and some others tried to intimidate my daughter and throw her off as she was playing background duets at a school reception, but D remained cool and I restrained myself with difficulty (they obviously didn’t realize I was nearby). But after a few months, they got tired of it because D just went on, happy as ever with her life, she didn’t even ignore them, she just acknowledged to everyone that they didn’t like her but said it was funny since none of them had ever spoken to her. By the end of the year they had given up and ironically, D ended up going out with a senior that was good friends with the girl (he had not been with the bullies). </p>
<p>At the time, I did a lot of reading about bullying and motivations…the literature seems to say that both the bullies, and the victims lack self-esteem. The former are trying to bolster their suffering egos by showing power and superiority over others. While the latter questions if they actually deserve to be despised by the group. The best thing we can do as parents and as a society is to address the huge self-esteem crisis that is pervading our youth culture and creating an ever-increasing number of bullies and victims.</p>
<p>Your last paragraph in #42, Wildwood, represents old thinking about bullying – that the bullies and victims both lack self-esteem. In fact, the “self-esteem” movement in schools has been a resounding success for kids who need to dominate others. They learn to manipulate the situation fairly early to make it seem like THEY are the ones that are actually persecuted.
[Dealing</a> With Bullying](<a href=“Dealing With Bullying (for Teens) - Nemours KidsHealth”>Dealing With Bullying (for Teens) - Nemours KidsHealth)</p>
<p>(I had an incident written here, but a couple of my kids’ requested I not write about them on CC and in respect to them I deleted it.) Suffice it to say – even the little Eddie Haskells show their true colors sometimes, and will be boldly mean in front of adults in charge. It is up to adults to say “Hey, that is unkind! Say you’re sorry right now.”</p>
<p>Comments that said that parents need to crack down on their kids’ mean behavior are right. It’s messed up, but many parents are terrified that their kids won’t be “popular” that they prop up their egos beyond all reason. Self-esteem is not lacking in these Golden Children! The football player is the pride of the school, the cutie cheerleader can do no wrong. I remember that after Columbine, a Columbine star football player was quoted as saying about ‘misfits’ who don’t play sports that they’re “a bunch of homos”.<br>
I mean – did you learn NOTHING?</p>
<p>The point about shoring up your kids against mean kids is a good one, but look at this particular case. From here:
[Phoebe</a> Prince, 15, Commits Suicide After Onslaught of Cyber-Bullying From Fellow Students - True Crime Report](<a href=“Jobs For Felons Now - We do all that we can to bring ex offenders together with real employment opportunities to help them readjust to society”>Jobs For Felons Now - We do all that we can to bring ex offenders together with real employment opportunities to help them readjust to society)</p>
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<p>Nice welcome, right? Great job in welcoming this young lady. How were her parents to get an inkling that the school was populated by the girl version of “The Lord of the Flies”? They are all new in town, new to the country. They came here with hopes and dreams for their lovely daughter. You are saying that the parents should have expected this?</p>
<p>From here:
[Bullying</a> expert: South Hadley case bungled by officials - BostonHerald.com](<a href=“http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20100130bullying_expert_south_hadley_case_bungled_by_officials/]Bullying”>http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20100130bullying_expert_south_hadley_case_bungled_by_officials/)</p>
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<p>Well, there you have it. I hope the family does sue and it sends a shudder through school districts all around the country. There could be a “Phoebe’s Law”, similar to sexual harassment laws, where people reporting bullying would be protected, bullies held accountable through expulsion/probation (I don’t care how old they are), and adults turning a blind eye will be named and shamed.</p>
<p>Reading the newspaper article about Phoebe made me physically ill. AnudduhMom, thank you for that link. My daughter has been bullied by a roommate at college this past year - the girl wants someone else to move into the house so she worked all semester to get my daughter out. She lives off campus and there is absolutely no support available. When my daughter tried to stand up to her, she would twist the words to her favor and make my daughter look like the villain. The landlord didn’t want to get involved. The other roommates just stood and watched the harassment and wouldn’t get involved. My daughter is so afraid of this girl that she finally decided to just move to another apartment to get away from the bullying. We suggested she report the girl to someone at the school but she is afraid of retaliation. It angers me that the girl has gotten away with this and there is nothing the victim can do. Unfortunately a lot of these kids feel entitled to anything they want and will stop at nothing to get it.</p>
<p>Anunndah, I’ve seen articles erroneously refer to bullies as thinking very highly of themselves and having an overabundance of self-esteem, but this echoes a huge misconception about what experts consider real self-esteem to be. I agree the schools has been misguided in trying to teach self-esteem through “you are special” campaigns, and may have greatly contributed to the problem.</p>
<p>People with authentic self-esteem do NOT think they are special. On the contrary, people who feel true self-worth are realistic about their abilities, feel competent to accomplish things in some areas and genuinely like themselves overall, even if they are aware of their own faults. They feel no need to bolster themselves by knocking others down, in fact, they do little comparing of themselves to others. They are not highly competitive people and are not narcissistic. </p>
<p>Many, many people appear to have high-self esteem–they brag, are arrogant, and may claim to be very happy with themselves, but these characteristics are really just symptoms of insecurity. </p>
<p>One of the best parenting books I’ve ever read is “The Manipulative Child”–a terrible title as it is not just for people with devious children. It explains in depth the association between manipulation and self-esteem. It led me to do a lot of other research on what self-esteem means. Bullying is just one form of manipulation and one kind of manifestation of low self-esteem. I am not making excuses for bullies, I’m just saying the problem has deep roots.</p>
<p>As parents we have to be vigilant on both sides, that our kids acquire the coping skills and self-confidence to be neither perpetrator nor victim.</p>
<p>This is a very sad story. Bullying happens everywhere, but throwing things, head slamming, public postings on the internet – this is so blatant as to really make one wonder where are all the parents in this picture? I think the school should take this very seriously and take steps to change the culture at the school. I hope the community will step up and demand it.</p>
<p>In my opinion our current culture supports, even showcases, narcissism, entitlement and bratty behavior. Some of the popular TV shows for teen and pre-teen girls are the worst, IMO. </p>
<p>This is a wake up call to all of us to watch our children (and monitor those facebook pages/texting/etc.) and to step in and remind our kids to treat each other respectfully.</p>
<p>Several years ago, my elementary/middle school came together online and formed a Yahoo group. As I mentioned earlier, I was treated badly in middle school by some of these same classmates. It was quite interesting to meet up again decades later and process some of that. It turns out that some of the most popular “mean girls” were living lives of private hell during those years. Their lives were not as perfect as they seemed on the outside. Most of those people felt badly for the way they had acted towards students who were not in their group, etc. In fact, recently a “mean girl” (but not in the “in group”) found me on facebook and apologized profusely for the way she had behaved - saying it had troubled her all of these years and she was so glad to have found me and to have a chance to apologize. She also disclosed that she had been going through some very difficult things in her own home at that time and was very unhappy then. I, of course, was happy to hear from her and found it interesting that this had stayed with her so much more than it had stayed with me. I always told my kids when they were young that, for the most part, “kids who act bad, feel bad.” I think that’s often the case. </p>
<p>I also think that sometimes the emphasis on dealing with bullying only one way - what to do with the bullies. I went to a workshop put on by Bullies to Buddies and while I’m not sure I agreed with everything there, the emphasis was on how to train kids to deal with bullies – how to defuse situations and shut them down. The idea is to empower kids by giving them skills, by teaching them various strategies and by exploring what works and what doesn’t.</p>
<p>Wasn’t there a case a few years ago of a mother pretending to be a boy on the Internet and a young girl ending up committing suicide because of their contact with each other? What ever happened to the mother?</p>
<p>mimk6 – I’m so glad that some of those <em>mean girls</em> turned out to be nice people as adults. And I think it is wonderful that you were able to move on and decades later accept apology from one of them and re-connect in a different way. I remember a friend of mine saying, “I sure wouldn’t want to be judged for the rest of my life for some things I did in Jr. High school.”</p>
<p>For those who haven’t read them “Queen Bees and Wannabes” by Rosalind Wiseman, and Odd Girl Out by Rachel Simmons focus on the mean girl mental cruelty type of bullying problem. Another resource for public schools, and for those of you who are teachers there is a lot of free information at operationrespect.org., as well as programs to train teachers, and workshops for students.</p>
<p>From my own perspective, I think that there are a lot of people who are sick and twisted and get pleasure from other people’s pain. Maybe it is their low self esteem, but in a way that root cause is not the major concern. We all should be concerned with stopping bad behavior where ever and whenever we see it ASAP. Whether it is cheating on tests, on the sports field, bullying by mental cruelty or (and in my opinion the worst) physical abuse. We must bring incidents to the attention of educators even if we make a pest of ourselves. I too have seen the parents whose child miserably tortured another child take NO responsibility. Their darling can never do wrong, after all. These are people to be avoided if at all possible because their parenting is TOXIC. I think teachers try to see the truth, but are often hoodwinked because the manipulators are good at manipulating even the teachers. It is helpful if there is a school psychologist that can be involved; they usually can see the bad behavior for what it is.</p>
<p>Mental cruelty is particularly troublesome, because you do not see physical bruises, but it hurts terribly, and maybe a lot longer.</p>
<p>My prayers go out to the family of that poor girl.</p>
<p>I hope Phoebe’s parents sue the pants off that school system and are awarded pots of money, not because any amount of money will ease the unspeakable pain they feel in the absence of their daughter, but because a stiff money penalty is sometimes the only thing that makes people sit up and address that which they have previously willfully ignored. I also think they should sue the parents of the girls who are so heartless as to remain unremorseful over their role in this poor girl’s suicide. The responsible parties must be held accountable. Aggressive accountability is the only thing that will stop this kind of thing.</p>
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<p>So true. It is also harder to get a handle on, some people are such good manipulators, they fool a lot of people, sad to say.</p>
<p>When I was in k-12 there was a HUGE emphasis on anti bullying and it was completely ineffective, all it takes is one teacher or other faculty member not on board to destroy the entire effort. When I was in middle school my parents had to file a police report because I was hit with a 2x4 on the playground and nothing was done to the boy and I was punished instead. It was such a circus that the assistant principal (who was responsible for discipline) wasn’t allowed to talk to me without my attorney present because he was being such a bully himself that my mom had had to pick me up from school twice because I was coming out of his office sobbing uncontrollably, he apparently was thinking that the situation should have just toughened me up and I was being a baby about it, and he ended up “retiring” (ie moving to the high school). Had we not had a lawyer in the family I probably would have had to switch schools. All it takes is one teacher with a fiber of tolerance for bullying, and the kids can run wild with it. And, unfortunately, when that one person is the assistant principal it can be huge.</p>
<p>Twisted, I agree. When the school administrators themselves are bullies or afraid to stand up to kids/parents and enforce anti-bullying policies, yes, kids quickly figure out they can get away with things, in spite of feel good assemblies.</p>
<p>This article is on the yahoo homepage today:</p>
<p>[Studies</a> Reveal Why Kids Get Bullied and Rejected - Yahoo! News](<a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100202/sc_livescience/studiesrevealwhykidsgetbulliedandrejected]Studies”>http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100202/sc_livescience/studiesrevealwhykidsgetbulliedandrejected)</p>
<p>I’m not sure what to think about it. While I don’t doubt the issues the article raises could actually be issues for a lot of kids (probably a young TxK included), I also think too much emphasis is placed on the bullied child trying not to be obnoxious anymore. Some kids are not bullied just because they lack social skills, some kids are bullied just because the bully knows they can obtain power by stepping on people. I feel like the article leaves out a huge element of bullying that can’t really be ignored. We can’t assume everyone who is bullied is just a social dunce, and if they stop it suddenly they will be accepted. I don’t think it works that way.</p>
<p>“kids who act bad, feel bad.”</p>
<p>I am going to use that phrase when talking to my 12 yr old who is in the throws of peer pressure and witnessing bullying on a daily basis.</p>
<p>Thank you mimk6</p>
<p>Maybe it’s a factor. But to say that this is what causes bullying in general comes way too close in my mind to blaming the victim, and pushing conformity as the highest value. Both of which are repulsive attitudes in my opinion. That <em>really</em> bothers me.</p>
<p>I’ve never had trouble picking up social cues in any significant way. But sometimes, people get bullied just because of who they are, or because of their physical size or appearance, not because of how they act.</p>
<p>The profile of the victim is irrelevant. Bullies should be called on their behavior every single time they bully. They should be punished and shunned until they get the message. Teachers should be teaching from kindergarten that victims of bullies should speak up right away, and that no one should penalize another child for speaking up for what is right.</p>
<p>I agree with Donna and Bay above. Plenty of people are picked on because they are “funny looking”, short, tall, or whatever, before a word ever comes out of their mouths. This type of behavior starts at a young age. I can remember kids in first grade who picked on others. Fortunately some of those bullies did not continue this behavior, but others did right through HS. Schools should do everything in their power to nip things in the bud, and to punish bullies not victims. I also think things like “in school suspension” or detention do not work. Punishment should be of the nature of forced community service, school beautification or similar, as well as verbal and written apology.</p>
<p>I am inclined to think the bullies lack social skills more than the victims, anyway. It is a social skill to be accepting and patient of others, and not one that is beyond the reach of most children.</p>