Hey Lady Gaga, Kids Have a Time-Tested Answer for Bullies: Punch Them in the Mouth
The sad case of Jamey Rodemeyer, a 14-year-old gay kid who committed suicide after being bullied, has inspired Lady Gaga to try to get involved in the situation. She’s insisting that bullying be made illegal. Since she’s a spoiled pop star suggesting an idea that’s about as sensible as wearing a meat suit, she probably won’t have much luck with it. And she certainly shouldn’t.
That being said, I have more empathy for Jamey Rodemeyer and other kids like him because I was bullied in high school and can tell you that it’s a horrible experience. Not only are you afraid that you’re going to be physically attacked, you flinch from the terrible things that are said about you. Worst of all you feel badly about yourself for allowing it to happen. It turns run-of-the-mill experiences — like walking from class to class, getting on a bus to go home, or finding out who’s going to be in your homeroom — into anxious nightmares.
You know why I was bullied? I was a quiet, meek, non-confrontational kid who liked to read and had zero interest in getting in fights. In other words, I was an easy mark. There was really nothing more to it than that. As I look back at it now, I can’t think of a single thing I ever did to merit being bullied. I didn’t mouth off, I didn’t pick on people, I didn’t want any conflict (as opposed to the present, where I’ve learned to revel in political warfare). This is one of the many reasons that to this day I roll my eyes when people say, “Why do they hate us?” I damn well know from personal experience that there are a lot of evil people who will try to hurt you for no other reason than because they think they can get away with it.
Let me also note that the tactics most people advocate to combat bullying are laughably ineffective. If you get bullied, go tell your teacher! Call a bullying hotline!
Yeah, right.
The reality is that if the teachers were really keeping a close eye on everything that’s going on around the school there wouldn’t be any bullying going on in the first place. The biggest reason bullies can exist is because teachers don’t pay attention to what’s happening most of the time.
I had to fist fight so many bullies growing up, but I’d like to think all my bullies made me stronger person today. I never back down from a political fight.
You nailed it down. Schools teach self defense to bullies is wrong , because when you grow up and find out the government is a bunch of bullies, they want you conditioned to the idea of pacifism.
My wife was a teacher. If a kid told her about a bully, all she could do was send him to the office. If a kid was beating on another kid, my wife couldn’t physically stop or restrain the bully or she could lose her license, be fires AND sued by the kid’s parents…and all the kids knew it.
I think one of the worst lessons bullied kids learn in school these days is that you are guilty if you defend yourself. Your body is no longer your castle. This is exactly why I do not, not do I let my children sign the student handbooks that schools pass out at the beginning of each year. The school may not give a damn about my child’s well being and dignity by pushing a “limit of liability” dressed up as a book of rules, but i won’t endorse it.
Wanna see an administrator, principal or teacher squirm? Next time when you go to “meet the teacher” night, ask them what they will do if a bully is beating your child. The most common answer these days is “call the police” to which I ask how long it takes for police to arrive because I need to know how long my kid has to take a beating because he’ll be punished for defending himself!
I always tell my kids to fight back.
What you’re saying is all true, and it’s also a great argument for home schooling and for abolishing governmental involvement in schools at ANY level.
If your child is of slight build and small stature, or happens to be slightly younger than the bullies in the class, you’ll need to take the kid to a really good martial arts dojo and make sure that the kid practices enough to really learn self-defense techniques. Not every kid is physically capable of defending themselves on their own. And if you find that there is a situation when much older children are ganging up on the kindergartners, it’s time to get the small kids outta there PDQ.
Yes, and there are larger conclusions that one can draw from this microcosmic example as well. I see too many Republican folks feeling some odd compulsion to hold back from calling the Left on the constant duplicity, demagoguery, race- baiting, inciting phony class warfare and the rest of it. We need to speak clearly and articulately, without apology, of First Principles as many on the Left are simply not aware of the underpinnings of the Conservative mindset & therefore have only the hackneyed stereotypes the Left provides them with until informed differently.
As to the self defense points of this article I would recommend the work of Tim Larkin of Target Focus Training; Jeff Anderson of Close Quarters Combat, as well as Dr. Ignatius Piazza of Frontsight. Am a peace loving man, but there are loved ones to protect besides ourselves. We consider this training & knowledge a civic duty. Persevere.
I’m with you. This whole thing about making bullying illegal is just a can of worms. What rises to the level of bullying? Making sarcastic remarks? Teasing? Or does it have to be physical? I have a feeling that it would be defined by liberals to mean just about anything that wasn’t “nice”.
My oldest son is a very passive boy. When he was 5 or so, we belonged to a play group where another boy would pick on him pretty consistently. I would utter such platitudes as “Use your words, honey.” and it would continue. One night, we were talking about it at dinner, and my husband said “Every so often, you’ve just got to punch someone.” I was HORRIFIED and tried to tell him that violence was never the answer.
The next playgroup, the other boy came running up to the group of moms with tears literally shooting out of his eyes. “HE HIT ME!” My son had punched him right in the gut for pushing him around. I was really embarassed, but asked him why my son hit him, which made him stammer and amble away. Next playgroup, no more trouble with this boy. A little violence goes a long way.
I hope you learned – I mean REALLY learned – this fundamental life lesson.
And by the way, you owe your son an apology for trying to make him a sissy, and your husband an apology for interfering in his efforts to raise a MAN.
Dude, I kind of think that was the point of her coming on here and admitting that she was wrong….
Sometimes violence IS the answer. It was the answer to the Axis powers.
First of all, if a teacher didn’t see it (s)he has no “proof”. Second of all, you are pegged (correctly) as a fink.
I got bullied at first, but the judicious administration of a couple of judiciously applied knuckle sandwitches produced a most sabubrious effect.
First, it sent a message that if you decided to beat me up, you will likely succeed. But you WILL get several mouthfuls of knuckes in the process. We call that onr “Type I Deterrence” in the nuclear strategy biz.
Second, you win universal respect. The teachers just smile and turn a blind eye and tip a wink when a bully gets a good poke in the snoot — if they’re any good, that is.
Third, you want self-esteem? You’ll get more self-esteem in ten seconds by standup up for yourself than you will in 10 years of phony-baloney self-esteem class.
And, Ah, the sweet memories!
The current policy of equivocation, which includes suspending a kid who has the temerity to hit back a.) makes the actual problem worse, and b.) provides a horrible life lesson.
First of all, if a teacher didn’t see it (s)he has no “proof”.
Not always.
About 10 years ago, I heard of a case in the outlying regions around my home town where a high school teacher had been accused of sexual impropriety with several girls in his school. He was suspended and, if memory serves, charged with some kind of sex offense by the police. He insisted that he was innocent but the girls insisted that he was not. The proceedings dragged on for some time and everyone seemed to be on the side of the students who had raised the complaint. I believe even his wife turned against him, although I may be mistaken in that. Anyway, after a considerable time of being accused of things no teacher should ever do and not having anyone in his corner, he gave up and committed suicide. It was only then that the girls admitted they’d made the whole thing up and that he had never done anything to them!
Of course this is not quite the same thing as described in the article, which is focussed on student-on-student bullying so perhaps this remark will be deemed irrelevant. Still, I have to ask why the teacher failing to witness a child bullying another child earns the bully the benefit of the doubt but a student accusing a teacher of a much more serious offence is treated almost as gospel, even though no one witnessed the teacher’s alleged offence?
Yes !! Some people only understand force, and look at any attempt to get along as a sign of weakness. . . . as much of the moooslim world seems to be. The nim-nims in our State Dept. need to learn this very thing.
I have always told my kids- don’t start a fight, but don’t back away, and also defend the weaker, smaller, mentally challenged, etc. that you see being bullied. I have told them I will back them up all the way to the School Board, if it comes to that.Enough of this PC bs. . . .
Rick, that’s exactly what I’ve always taught my children, and neither one of them has ever complained of being bullied. In fact my daughter has been almost a little TOO proactive but it’s served her well at concerts!
Exactly. Every time I got fed up enough to fight back, adults were immediately there to protect the little “darlings.” Or buy replacement toys for the ones they “didn’t” steal.
God forbid an adult should confront a bully on a bus (http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2011/09/21/mother-disciplined-after-confronting-boys-about-bullying-son/). But for all the proliferation of administrators, there seem to be no funds for help for the bus drivers. At least give ‘em the power to stop the bus and sit until the little beasts behave, and figure out the tardies later with selective enforcement. And as for the mother “boarding” the bus, the bus driver should have known the rules, which brings us back to the administrators. Kudos to this mother for early intervention in an assault case. There’s your law. Harassment on social media? Easily documented public information. Enforce the laws on the books, then I’ll go gaga.
I’ve always taught my boys to fight back if they get bullied, and I’d come get them – no punishment from me. I also taught them to defend each other. They don’t get bullied, ever.
Besides that, I’ve made it very clear from the time they were pre-teens if they did something BAD, like stealing or drugs or bullying other kids, Mom was not necessarily going to be there to bail them out of jail. Actions, I explain, have consequences.
I have very, very good kids.
I was in the third grade and my tormentor was in the seventh grade. A very tall, mean, rich girl who thought she could do anything to the smaller children and get away with it. I told her to stop bothering me, she just laughed. One day on the way home from school she came up behind me and booted me in the behind, that was the last straw for me. She was running away and laughing, I pick up a rock and let her have it, right in the temple, so happens she had turned her head to laugh at me.
She got a black eye and I got a whipping (in those days teachers still whacked hell out of you) the teacher didn’t stop the bullying, I did, it was David against Goliath, only I didn’t get to be a hero, I got a beating from the teacher who liked the rich kid, even thought she was a bully.
Bullying will never stop, so girt you loins and knock hell out of them.
Oh! I forgot you not allow to defend yourself these days. Ridiculous
Excellent advice!
And let’s remember this. Kids get bullied for any number of reasons. The main ones who get any attention are the homosexual ones. These celebs don’t care about kids. Trust me, if it was a conservative or a Christian kid, they wouldn’t be making all this noise about it. The only reason they are involved at all is because they want to continue to push homosexuality on society.
The solution is not programs and telling teachers and celebrities mouthing off. The solution is teaching kids to fight back against these cowardly punks who are tormenting them. Problem solved.
I had similar experiences growing up, but I lived in a pretty rough neighborhood. While it didn’t happen to me, sometimes standing up to a bully led to somebody showing up the next day with a knife or a gun.
Amen brother. When I was a kid I started in the 8th grade at an all boys high school. I was one of the shortest, skinniest kids in the school but I had a quick temper and big mouth. Singled out by many of the older boys it wasn’t a week before I had a couple of juniors corner me and start shoving me back and forth between them. Now in my 50′s I show my two sons the scars on my knuckles from one of the two ‘bully’s’ braces. No one ever tried that again.
Our schools have an “anti-bullying” campaign. It is the most idiotic, flaccid, pointless excuse for feel-good stupidity that I have seen in a long time.
As you point out: ratting on the kid is only good for documentary evidence. I would encourage my kids to do that the first time, and perhaps a second time. But on the third offense, they have a moral obligation to beat the snot out of that punk.
I don’t care that he comes from a broken home, that he has mental issues, or that life is cruel for him in some way. We all have our crosses to bear. It is no excuse for theft, threats, or thuggish behavior. If authorities won’t do anything about him, then it is your duty to defend yourself.
We are raising our kids to be pansies…
Bullying was part of my school day, every day. If it wasn’t the rich girls making fun of my clothes/lack of money, it was guys I went out with who thought it was cool to make up the events of the date to the detriment of my reputation. I learned early on that if I didn’t go beyond defending myself, I’d pay for it the rest of my life. So, I learned to fight back verbally, going for the jugular, and usually the verbal comeback centered on something the bully didn’t want others to know. It worked. Pretty soon, no one messed with me. To this day, when I encounter some insecure ignoramus who is emotionally still in the 6th grade, a single-sentence comeback usually does the trick. The best advice my dad gave me was: Never take shit off of anyone. I still don’t.
John, I am betting you were the same height/weight as your peers or less. What you say is okay when you are short, people support a little guy who is defending himself. Sadly I wasn’t so lucky.
Many people, children and adults told me that because I towered over my classmates I should be well placed to deal with bullies but bystanders who may not have seen the innitial incident (and there were many) almost without fail singled me out for the “you are bigger than him, why don’t you pick on someone your own size” speech no matter that I was the victim reacting to yet another vilent or degrading act. It was me, not the bullies who was removed from classes day after day and put in a 4 foot square room to do book work. It was me, not the bullies that was labelled a “discipline problem” and sent to special programmes that focussed on making me even more passive “Even if they are dragging razor blades over your throat you do not nave the right to respond inappropriately” (direct quote from the student councillor Just before I was expelled (actually “permanently suspended” because they weren’t legally allowed to expell me for technical reasons) for reacting when one sod tried to break my neck.
At the school’s insitence I was pumped full of mind altering substances that certainly didn’t help me learn (when I was taken off these drugs it was like waking from a dream).
I could have been something but I am a broken charity case in part because I couldn’t get educated in this town.
Also your theory is no good if one of your dayly bullying experiences is at the hands of the deputy principal.
C’mon, Brian
If you can write this well you are capable of helping yourself. Go to community college, get a GED, whatever it is you need. Reach out, get help. It’s there. Private and Government.
America is the land of second chances, or as many chances as it takes. It is never too late. I’ve hanged fields three times, and had it far easier than some people I know, who nevertheless prevailed.
Partrick, I should say I’m in Australia (let’s call me a citizen of the net hehe) but what you say is more or less valid here too. I have improved myself along the way like learning how to use words (doing a short stint at her majesty’s pleasure where the bullies will kill you if they can). Now, as an adult I can take my life in my own hands (more or less) but my point is that I reacted the way John said and it made me a problem to the school administration (threats of legal action by the bully’s parents, innocent bystanders caught up in melee etc) and it was far more expedient for them to blame me and wash their hands of me than for them to even admit bullying took place.
To this day I have anxiety issues that keep me off of campuses and prefer to teach myself (the only really useful thing I learned at school was how to read) With little stable checkable work history the best contribution I can make to society is caring for my elderly mother (for which I get a pension but I earn it I tell you).
First, sucker punch him in the nose hard enough to break it.
From there you own the SOB.
If that doesn’t stop him take out a few of his front teeth.
When the principle calls you into the office just say;
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt him.”
Hawkins, you are a trouble maker.
I like that!
I don’t know…I stood up to a bully in middle school, basically just told him to leave me alone and he back down. Two days later him and two others jumped me outside of the gym at the end of the day. I ended up with a broken leg, arm, and a serious concussion. Best part, we all got an equal 3 days suspension because of “zero tolerance” for fighting. I didn’t even know there were three of them, I only thought two, until they started ratting each other out. Apparently getting your head bounced on concrete is the same as punching someone.
One on one, could I have hurt them?…yeah. But bullies rarely fight a target one on one unless they know the odds are stacked for them. I’ll tell you the best revenge I found. It wasn’t going down to his level. It was living my life they way I wanted. About two years after I left home for the military, I came back to visit my folks. Who is pumping gas at the local dive?..my bully. Since then, I’ve gone on to college, moved to another state, traveled to Europe and the Middle East, done and seen things few get to…and that mean little bully is still a gas pump operator, slowly rotting out his brain with gas fumes and meth, in mt tiny crappy hometown.
I would never advocate violence just as a default. It can cause a lot of problems, especially today’s litigious society. I was also raised by extremely religious Catholics (they practically disowned me when I joined the military in 2000) and taught me never to strike another person so that obviously affects my opinion on this.
One on one, could I have hurt them?…yeah. But bullies rarely fight a target one on one unless they know the odds are stacked for them.
That probably accounts for the increased incidence of swarming-type attacks, where a whole group attacks an individual. We saw an incident of that on national TV here a few months ago. During the riot that followed Vancouver’s loss of the Stanley Cup, one individual stood in front of a store window and tried to dissuade people from looting by simply asking them not to. He may have pushed one prospective looter aside but then all the looter’s buddies jumped him at once and beat him up pretty badly. No one died in that riot but I have to believe that at least some of the injuries were worse than just cuts and bruises.
The bottom line is that while there are many stories about bullies being defeated with a simple punch in the nose and never being a problem again, there are also stories of mass retaliations and/or cases of the defeated bully coming back with a gun or knife to have another go at his intended victim.
If I were a parent, I would be cautious about recommending that bullying victims stand up to bullies with physical force for fear of just such a result. I’m not very happy to say that though because I’m also reluctant to see a young person having to endure bullying to avoid that sort of retaliation. That is tantamount to letting the bully win through intimidation.
I wish better means existed to protect children but I have little faith in the schools or other social institutions to do the job. Most parents cannot afford a team of bodyguards for their kids but it almost comes down to that in some cases.
If the bleeding hearts in Hollywood really want to do some good, they would have their films and videos start preaching the message that gang-on-one attacks or responding to a punch with a gun or knife is just plain unsportsmanlike.
My father once gave me some sage advice about dealing with bullies. You don’t have to be the toughest guy around, you don’t even have to win the fight. You just have to make not worth the pain to bully you.
Case in point. During my freshman year of high school I got into a fight with a bully. By the rules of the day I lost becuase I quit. The next day I was in shcool and he wasn’t. The next day he shows up with his face swollen and bruised. Nobody every bothered me again.
“You don’t have to be the toughest guy around, you don’t even have to win the fight. You just have to make not worth the pain to bully you.”
Right on! it works in foreign policy as well.
Excellent article. I am in the midst of teaching my 10 year old son those very principles. Two years ago I suspected he was being bullied more than he let on. an 8 year old should be full of life, not sullen and withdrawn. this year, in the first week of school, he had to take one nemesis to the ground twice, which he did as i had taught him to, and invite another to make good on his threats if he dared.
An equally serious problem in our society are the red meat and cedar shingle wearing mouths who pester, then fester, in their demand to be recognized as legitimate advocates for one thing or another in legitimate public forums. The clue to their distorted sense of reality is evident in their fashion and insolence. But that is an article for another day
AMEN.
When I was young female (which I still am — female, that is –) of about 13 or 14, a boy was tormenting me in a sexual manner. Without a second thought, I hauled off and slugged him hard in the solar plexus with my fist. Problem solved. Funny thing, I never again had problems with sexual harassment from anyone, ever again.
The writer is absolutely correct.
Similar thing happened to me; some really big (I mean really big) kid in HS kept coming up to me after school (when no teacher was in the hallways) and lifting me up so I was riding on his shoulders; putting his head between my legs- not pleasant for a shy girl- and just standing up. After politely asking him to put me down, and then firmly asking- I just extended my legs and kicked him in his gut- hard. He dropped me like a hot potato, and never even looked me in the eye again. Problem solved.
Today, I’d probably be sued, but sure worked out fine in 1972. Hopefully the lessons to both of us were equally instructive.
“If you get bullied, go tell your teacher!
Yeah, right.”
I told my son to tell the teacher to cover him from what needed to be done next, not to stop it.
Step 1: Tell him to leave you alone,
Step 2: Repeat loudly!
Step 3: Tell the teacher.
Step 4: Surprise full force punch to the nose and tell the teacher to call Dad if she has a problem with that.
“Inevitably, since bullies like to pick on people who are weaker than they are, they were always bigger than I was. So, when I fought back — and that happened several times over a two-year period — I won some and I lost some. But in every case, the bullying stopped right there.”
Same thing happened to me. I was in high school and was bullied by these two particular kids. The teachers could actually see it happen, and did nothing about it. This was back in the 1970s, before all of this hand-holding about bullies and how we should all sit in a circle and discuss our “feelings” about it.
Well, after being bullied for a while, I had enough. I punched one of the bullies right in the head in one fight and I got a crowbar and literally took off most of the front of the locker of the other kid, just because that punk decided that he liked messing with my locker. And I told the two of them that if they wanted more of this, I was ready to help them out. And you know what? The kids magically left me alone after that. Not another word to me until I graduated from high school.
Sometimes, force is a hell of a lot better than being somebody else’s pinata.
Sage advice. I was a small, wiry farm boy with good coordination and quick hands. I was taught to walk away from a fight but if that was not possible I should fight ‘dirty’ and be vicious. Go for the throat, the eyes, and the balls, bite, try to break fingers, stomp on feet, and in general do whatever was needed to remain standing and put the other guy on the ground. Show no mercy, give no quarter. After a two fights in grade school (6th grade if my memory is accurate) no one ever tried to harass or bad talk me all the way through high school. This was in the 1950s in a very rural school district with fewer than 600 kids total in grades 1 thru 12.
Mr. Hawkins,
Praises from a former-bullied kid. Unfortunately I learned too late the value of a punch to the mouth. I never let them get away with it verbally, but I never took it to the next level back then. I believe children should be taught that if you cannot resolve the problem verbally, then a punch in the mouth can be tried. But only then. We can’t have our kids becoming the bullies that they were trying to fight. That being said, the emasculation of the American Society, I fear, is teaching children the only answer to bullying is calling Lady Gaga. May this not be the case!
Thank you! I was bullied in high school until the day I woke up for the first day of 11th grade and said, “The person who touches me this year is going to get it for the last 5 years!” No one ever laid a hand on me again. It had to be my attitude, because there simply were no more altercations.
Heh, I like your stories. My father had one like that, too. I’m sure I’ll never meet “Richardson,” but I know something about him that he probably wishes I didn’t.
And then, there’s the national socialist point of view, whereby the kid who is being bullied clocks the bully and lays him flat out. Said bully then oddly becomes the victim and the kid who clocked him gets punished in a very bizarre way. Perhaps by forcing the parents to send him to some anger-management soiree’, paid for by the parents.
I agree, intervention by the school is usually a disaster, but when I went to school, there were many teachers who had interesting ways of dealing with bullies; One of which was public humiliation, which, by written code is now forbidden in the education world.
Additionally, teachers are prohibited from participating in anything having to do with discipline; Something they are very glad about because they, themselves are largely cowards and can now conveniently use the excuse that it “allows them instead to focus on teaching”. But if a kid spends 6+ hours a day at school, who is going to reinforce the “code of growing up” if not the teachers? One teacher told me that “setting a good example in how to act is enough” to which I disagreed.
So with teachers taken out of the role of enforcing discipline, they never have to look like the “bad guy” which leads to teachers only wanting to be looked upon as good, positive influences in a kid’s life as opposed to one who upheld a strong code of ethics and manners.
And there will always be bullies. And, interestingly nowadays, they often prefer to bully teachers when they think they’re big enough to do so.
This is likely about her being the bully in imposing speech codes.
I find it interesting that in our “blame everyone else” culture, no one has called out Dan Savage (a professional cyberbully obsessed with Rick Santorum) for his role in Jamey Rodemeyer’s death. Jamey’s ordeals at school got worse after he made a video about being gay at Savage’s urging, part of the “It Gets Better” campaign. Any adult halfway paying attention to how Savage and other activist gays (people whose entire lives revolve around their orientation) treated people who supported Proposition 8 realizes the whole premise of the campaign is a lie: It does not “get better” when you become an adult. You will always have to deal with jerks. You have to learn to take care of yourself.
Oh, I see, you’re going to blame the guy who tried to reach out to teens and tell them not to kill themselves.
Wow, that’s just beyond crass and insensitive.
So is licking doorknobs, even more so when you have the flu.
Bull. Dan Savage isn’t trying to help anyone but Dan Savage.
Hmm… after watching one kid with a fat harelip scar in class (we were 8/9 years old) get harassed for weeks without any help from the adults, we realised that, whilst some people manage to eventually stand up for themselves, don’t expect it, it often does not happen for them, and trying to toughen them up makes things worse for them.
So, we decided to bully the bullies… and unlike the myths goes, we found that one fight was not enough because revenge was of course the next ‘entertaining’ step, and in the end things got madly obsessed and serious and one bully lost all his school books (expensive) and had his nose broken, and I got ambushed and mobbed by two of them and scored one bullies’ new front tooth with my metal bicycle pump as they tried to throw my bike and myself into the river.
In other words, not a good scene, and all because adults absolved their duty to protect us from ‘playing’ at this level. We were very lucky that only books, bike and one front tooth got drowned in that river, it could easily have been far worse than it was.
And the other disaster here was that I was the only one to get into serious trouble over this: because the insurance was not all too happy about the cost of the dental treatment for my victim and my mom was unhappy at having to pay more for the insurance, and so my pocket money ended up docked for a few months. That’s about all the grief we’d gotten for this — not one of us was in any way admonished for what horrid behavior we actually gotten into(even if it was with the best of intentions), nor did anyone think it important to figure out what happened and how it happened, and worst of all, it was because they simply didn’t care at all about us. Even the cops were only involved to get the details for the insurance claims!
That was fairly much the end of any moral authority the adults ever had over us and also the end of our belief in that the world is fair.
It’s not a good idea to let kids ‘sort it out’ or expect the weak to stand up to bullies, nor is letting the situation fester until the rest of class starts a to form a posse in defense. And what do kids have parents and teachers for if it’s not for preventing this sort of Lord of the Flies type disaster?
So, more power to Lady Gaga here, at least she is getting the issue talked about, even if she misses the target somewhat.
And please, let’s talk at length about the ‘adults’ that set kids up for this kind of thing, including those who think that by sending the kid to martial arts class, it helps them. Well, it does not, when it gets out that you do MA, an orderly queue of idiots forms who want to see if you’ve learned anything and if you refuse, they view this as a reason to start bullying, and you’re even viewed as a legit target, because you should know how to ‘look after yourself’. Cool eh?
There is absolutely no future in the idea that you can toughen up a gentle child by hardship or MA, all you end up doing is bullying the poor kid even worse than the actual bullies, or worse, set them up so the only way out is to become a bully themselves.
Ps.: Now, MA is always good for kids, but the idea that it makes you ‘hard’ is a fail. A good MA school spends years teaching kids how not to hurt themselves as their top mission(you learn to fall, how to wrestle/throw your partner safely etc), and that is long before they teach any locks or throws that could go wrong badly in any way. Instructors leaving footprints on juvenile students are not a good sign, and teaching kids to kick other kids in the chest is simply applied stupidity. Gah!
MA isn’t the end all be all, but I’m a long time practitioner of Muay Thai and my seventh grade son was getting bullied. I told him to keep the training to himself(for just the reasons you outlined), but he started going with me to classes. One, his self confidence raised somewhat, and two he met a couple other kids from his school in the classes. After befriending them he had people to hang out with that were more protective of him, and the bullying settled down quite a bit. I think MA is good for young boys for many more reasons than just self defense.
I went to a Catholic school from first to eighth and I was still bullied somewhat, but bullies had to work a whole lot harder to bully you because the teachers were not non-confrontational and trapped in the liberal school system, in addition, parents of the bullies usually reacted aggressively towards their kids when it was discovered they were doing the bullying. It was both embarrassing, and a threat for expulsion.
When my son got a voice mail from two kids describing in great deal how they were going to severely pummel my son after class, we took it to the school staff. My wife had to endure a week of phone calls from one kid’s mom who kept insisting that my son was the one responsible. My wife had to finally tell her not to call us again in a very stern fashion to get this dimwit off here back. So yes, it’s a case of both parents, and teachers being both unwilling, and unable to deal with the situation.
In the case of the teachers, it’s often liberalism incarnate that thinks a magic string of words, and incantation if you will, will suddenly cause the bully to reevaluate his bullying.
This extreme is just as bad as hypervigilance – it leads to a Lord of the Flies mentality, because kids are at base savages. If you tell your kid to stand up to bullies, you better be right there ready to stand up with him.
One thing you don’t mention: there’s a good chance you’ll meet bullies all of your life. Adult bullies usually aren’t so physical, but if you never learned to stand up for yourself as a kid, it can still be pretty hard when you’re grown up. Rule of thumb: people will dish out to you exactly as much as you’re willing to take.
BUT, you also have to know when to stand, and when to run.
You are right! This happened last year to one of our friend’s sons. He was hit, kicked and punched every day by a kid that out-weighed him by 30 pounds at nine years old. The mother went to the school but because the kid and his parents didn’t speak english they couldn’t get the kid to understand that bullying was not allowed at the school. Their solution was to have our friend’s son arrive late to school in the morning (so he would not be on the playground with the kid) and leave early for the day (to not be alone with the kid unsupervised). He was spending his recess time in the classroom away from the bully. Well, we talked her into teaching the boy to fight. A couple of teenage boys worked with him one Saturday afternoon. The next Monday he walked confidently into school on time and went to the playground. He didn’t wait to see what the bully would say or do – as soon as the bully ran over to him the boy knocked him to the ground. The school called it an unprovoked attack and suspended him for three days. Our friend’s son called them the best three days of his life. This bully has moved on – probably to another victim now.
“because the kid and his parents didn’t speak english they couldn’t get the kid to understand that bullying was not allowed at the school.”
Sounds like very convenient Mrs.-Swan-style noncomprehension to me. Bet they understood a lot more than they let on.
I was bullied all the way up through 8th grade. When I got to high school, I joined the wrestling team. Then I learned the true value of deterrence: The bullies left me alone from that point forward. The best part was that I didn’t even have to get into trouble for fighting.
Way back when, in the olden days, when the president’s name was Johnson, I too had a bullying problem in the fifth grade…
I preferred not to fight because I was genuinely afraid of hurting someone badly. I think this stemmed from an early fight when I was in Kindergarten and all of the admonishment I received from the teachers then regarding what I’d done to the other child.
Anyway, I dutifully told the playground monitor about the bully. She gave me some profound advice, “Then stay away from him.”
So I immediately put her advice to use, for about 5 minutes because when bullies seek you out staying away from them is easier said than done.
It is also important to note that dealing with a bully is like retaliating on the football field, for some reason the only person the playground monitor sees acting is you.
Now I was in real trouble. Not only did I hit the other kid, I had “disobeyed” her order to stay away from the bully. The playground monitor took me directly to the office.
That’s where I got the second piece of profound (and totally useless) advice. “Ignore them, they’ll grow tired of it.”
The brilliance of that advice was exceeded only by it’s complete idiocy. Let me explain something about bullies, the more you ignore them the more they intensify their attacks. (And they still manage to go unseen by the playground monitor, who will always, and only see your response.)
That’s when the third profound and this time insidious exclamation was rolled out, “Don’t you think you bring this on yourself?”
NO! I never did anything to these guys, I tried to avoid them, and they still came looking for me. And why, when I fought back, did the bully never bring my retaliation upon himself. For some reason the bully never got in trouble for his actions, only the one responding to him. I was always sent to the principle, he was always sent to the counselor.
Then, one day I decided it was time for the bullying to stop. I decided if I was going to be in trouble for fighting, I’d fight until they stopped me. I even broke the bully’s rules. (Oh yes, bullies have these stupid rules too, like ‘Only sissies kick,’ this insures that the victim doesn’t hurt them when fighting back or something.)
This landed me in the principles office for some Real Trouble. And that’s when they trotted out THE BIG LIE.
“It Takes Two To Fight!”
“No,” I said, “One not fighting back will still get the snot kicked out of him.”
Back talk nets you a two day suspension, a not to your parents, and an appointment with your father and ‘the Belt.”
I did finally deal with the bullies once and for all.
It involved a softball bat at recess and some serious injuries, a five day suspension, and being banned from playing at recess with any of the equipment for the rest of the year and during my sixth grade year.
But it’s a funny thing, the bullies found someone else to torment, so all in all, the price I paid was well worth the result.
So in “new-think” that is the liberal-based crap-fest of logic that they use, you caused the bullies to vent their frustration on another person, having had your way and also thus, their being told to leave you alone, lest you attack again (unprovoked, the way they most likely saw it).
The other incorrect assumption teachers make is that kids have the ability of reason. Some do, but always in the template of their own intellect, which is all one can expect of any person, really. But a child’s mind is wired a bit differently than a rational adult’s. I say rational because a vast majority of democrat adults think like children.
But when a bully is squarely clobbered, even if they win the fight, they will think again about going after the person they bullied before. The fact of the matter is that the reasons for bullying have been examined ad-nauseum and it really comes down to the kid having to stick up for him or herself, and hoping they don’t lose a tooth or get seriously hurt in some way.
Teachers and adults in general are incredibly useless in today’s world when it comes to this. And one interesting outgrowth of it seems to be kids who bring guns to school and/or resulting in something like Columbine. That is an extreme case from a kid who wasn’t well, but who also felt persecuted and bullied, left out, ridiculed and so forth. In all, I’d say the adult community did, in fact let him down by failing to see or recognize an obvious problem that had the potential to grow into something more serious.
But although no one ca foresee the future, you can make some good judgement calls to prevent outcomes from becoming a certainty. Teachers are far more removed from the interactions of their students than ever before. This is by design. Their unions have made it so they do not do anything that’s not directly involved with teaching the curriculum, except, perhaps, coaching sports. But watching the lunchroom, recess, any activity that does not directly involve teaching is administered by other people. Hired security or other state functionaries. This further distances the teachers from knowing their students, again, all by design. The motivator for this is that the teachers’ unions all want to eliminate the potential for any teacher to be seen in a bad light…ie when a fight breaks out in the lunchroom, the teacher doesn’t want to be seen as “taking sides”.
It’s all a mess and further undermines what we once had as a decent, moving forward society. Thanks, liberals. You’ve done a hell of a job.
A second piece of sage advide delivered to me by my father: Rules are for sports. The first rule of fighting is that there are no rules. Kicking, biting, scratching and especially hitting below the belt are perfectly fine.
Exactly. The fair fight is the one where only you are left standing at the end.
“Don’t you think you bring this on yourself?”
No wonder so many leftists hate Jews. They think Jewish people deserved the massacres and second-class status in ancient times, and the Holocaust, pogroms, and terrorist attacks in modern times.
The whole purpose of making anti-bullying campaigns is to create a new industry for people who are socio-psychology charlatans.
That’s EXACTLY what it is. The left, just as they’ve done out of thin air with the Climate Change scam, is create cottage industries out of thin air creating problems that don’t exist and getting rich ‘curing’ them when all they’re really doing is trying to socially and physically engineer God’s work to make THEM GODS. That’s all this is and they’re winning right now. See the link in comment below if they allowed the comment. I don’t mince words to say the least.
I kicked the crap out of so many bullies in my childhood it made me an adult who doesn’t take guff from anyone and never will and I’m damnnn proud of it.
ANYTIME a kid was being bullied around US, me and my friends, the most popular ones and athletes of the school btw, where I became and still am a good friend of Academy Award winning Actress Marlee Matlin) we kicked their azzes if needed so they never did it or so much as thought about it again.
That’s what these schools need, kids not afraid of everything around them, and instead strong enough to take on anything that comes their way. This nation can’t tell good from evil anymore. period. Bullies are like animals, they smell and thrive on fear. Break their nose they cry home to momma and are begging to be your friend the next day
I smacked a couple of bullies, and got left alone. Thinking back, the best thing I could have done was walk up behind them and hit them with a rock. Repeat as needed.
Today, I’d add “Kick the teacher in the shin, then ask why she was blaming you for her being hurt.”
fist control => gun control?
teasing control => free speech control?
This broad along with the out of control mental health industry/field and psychobabble and dabble field twisting children into freaks to substantiate their freakishness. Don’t believe that go read this freakshow headline over at CNN today on this little boy who’s first words supposedly were “I’m A GIRL”…. http://bit.ly/nFq0C3
So now the parents if they can be called this now have the little kid turning into a full fledged 11 year old freakazoid as people like GAGME write songs for the “monsters” as she correctly calls her demented fans and voila, the US gender bender freak-parade is normalized by the MSM and left.
Our country is dead on arrival and happily ever after destroyed just as the planted communists wanted and achieved by sticking with their 45 rules for destroying America from within.
Oh, geeze, Nick, why don’t you just go out and bully some people so you can feel better about yourself. It sounds like you’re pretty obsessed with the freakazoids of the world. But while you’re doing it, remember that one of them may take this author’s advice.
Seriously, why are you getting so worked up over the idea that SOME OTHER PARENT’S child thinks he’s gay? If it were your kid, having strong emotions on it might be appropriate. But, truly, this kid isn’t yours so how does his being gay or not being gay or etc. affect you?
If bullies didn’t think they could take you they wouldn’t be bothering you to begin with.
“Oh just punch them”
Wanna know what comes after?
Them punching back and they’ve had practice…
Most bullies don’t care if you get hurt worse than they get hurt. They care if they get hurt. Hurt them and they quit.
With the spontaneous appearance of supa ninja skillz.
Like I said. They wouldn’t be on you if they thought they would lose a conflict.
And the verdict is in. You hurt them and they will hurt you worse.
Fool.
They are in it for their amusement. Hurt them and it is no longer amusing to them.
Fool?
Wow, Phillep — find it hard to carry on a discussion without immediately resorting to name calling, eh?
@Indie from Indie. I don’t know about being a fool, but you seem to be behaving deliberately obtuse.
A target (victim) does not have to win a fight or do more physical damage to the bully than is done to him.
Many bullies would rather pick on and harass those who will not fight back at all, and will give up on a target who puts up any kind of fight at all, even if the bully can beat that same target into the ground. Bullies don’t want the hassle of beating on someone who will put up a fight, no matter how feeble it is.
That was the point being made.
I was bullied all through grade school. All the kids hated me. I was small (underfed), poor, and dirty. I was wicked smart, knew it, and let you know it. I had no social graces, and was incapable of learning them, no matter how much the other kids tried to force me to learn them. I was not foul-mouthed, or aggressive. I just had to open my mouth and be right. It didn’t matter that I WAS right. In fact, that made it worse.
So, I often fought. I learned I could not fight safely on the playground, because while I was fighting one kid, someone in the crowd would hit me in the back, no matter which way I faced. They were on the side of the bully. The teachers never, ever got involved. I had to fight the bullies when they were on the way home, when no one was around. Thus the bullying continued, because no one saw the fight, and word did not get around. Unfortunately, fighting back only deters if others see it. If a bully falls in the forest, does he make a sound?
My Dad bullied me, too. I often bucked him, too. I just never learned to cower. Pain just has never been a deterrent to me. Only the carrot has ever worked with me. The stick never has. It just makes me more ornery. I am just plain weird.
Sometimes, I put up with the bullying, and sometimes I didn’t. Depended how far it went.
I am still sensitive about bullying today. I have a guy in my game club who is domineering. He does it to all but the combat vet in the club. He is not physically aggressive, nor threatening. He just talks over you, and just steps over your boundaries in every way. I have twice gotten very loud with him. People sympathize, but they get uncomfortable with the confrontation. They would rather I suck it up, rather than I make them uncomfortable, so they blame me. It is human nature. I do not let it deter me. I just never learn. Peer pressure just never has had any effect on me. I am weird.
The Bible tells us not to allow ourselves to be bullied. “If a man slaps your right cheek, turn the other cheek.” The only way then to slap the right cheek was a backhand blow, a weaker blow meant for women and older children. One did not slap with the left hand, the one you used to wipe your backside. It was unclean. It wasn’t done. You’d be shunned. So the phrase means you have to stand up for yourself, if only to make the man slap your other cheek as he would a man.
You don’t have to stand tall in this world, but you do have to stand up. Of course, how it is done is important, if you want to also get along with the non-bullies, afterwards. I do not counsel you to follow my example. A little more thinking and tact is called for, not just plain resistance, else you just recruit a mob. Even the good kids will cheer the bully, if they do not like you, because we are pack animals. The pack will turn on you, if you stand out.
But don’t punch too hard and do it off school grounds. My son learned the hard way.
A few things said so far I agree with. A kid should know how to defend himself and Martial Arts does teach you how to be more self confident. If taught correctly it will also teach you how not to use it. In other words how to avoid a situation where it is necessary to resort to violence.
I was lucky growing up as I was not a target for any bullies. The closest I came to a run in with the school bully was when he threw another student’s book over a locker and happened to hit me on the shoulder with it. When I came around the locker with the book in hand ready to fight the bully backed down. He was my age and bigger than I was so probably would have kicked my butt but luckily nothing came of it.
I did have one more run in with him later though. My girlfriend at the time was a year behind me in school so she invited me to the school Snowball dance. I happened to be in town so I went. The school bully was also there, (he had failed his senior year)and he decided he was going to have some fun. He was in the bathroom and thought he would punch the first kid that walked through the door. That happened to be me. Imagine his surprise when I not only didn’t go down but just stood there looking at him holding his sore hand from where he had hit me right in one of the buttons of my Marine Corps dress blue uniform. He not only disappeared from the restroom but left the whole dance. I never laughed so hard in my life!
My son was bullied in High School, fought back hard – as in whacking the other kid in the face with a soup can, and the bullying stopped. I had to go see the principal and the school cop, where I told them that I supported my son defending himself, and invited them to press charges or drop it. We disagreed, but I’m not running for the school board. The suspension got dropped – what a surprise – and that was the end of it. Well, except for me laughing at the bully’s dad when he acted upset that my son used a soup can to hit his kid. I guess it was unsporting. That was somewhere around fifteen years ago. My son never had a bit of trouble since that day.
My son’s classmate later got his head slammed into a locker from behind by some bully at school and he has never been right since. Nobody admitted seeing anything, but this time the meek did not inherit.
Putting up with it is not an option. Nor is tattling. If you don’t stand up for yourself and yours, no one will. Oh, and if you are going to pick on someone who will fight back, don’t do it on the day they are doing a can drive for charity.
I’m not the best qualified person to write on this topic but here it goes.
First, it’s not a good idea to punch in the mouth: teeth are harder than bone. Better punch somewhere else. Perhaps with a preliminary kick to the shins, to take them off guard.
Second, martial arts help a lot. Just by improving your posture, taking martial arts classes make you look like someone bullies don’t want to mess around with. But I’d avoid full-contact martial arts: the point is to avoid getting hit, isn’t it?
excellent
many are suggesting to hit the nose, face, teeth, etc. of the bully
these are hard targets to hit and you can do some serious damage to your hands/fingers if you actually connect
much better to go for the gut as it’s a more stationary target, much easier on your knuckles, fist, & wrist and a solid quick strike will incapacitate the bully much more efficiently than the head and you can make your get away easier– it also wont leave any evidence
another thing is that many a school yard bully is the teacher’s pet and, as another poster mentioned, a retaliation against a bully may involve weapons in the next round
Martial arts are a good skill to learn but most of them have little to do with real fighting. A friend of my told me about the first day in karate class taught by a former Army special forces NCO who said:
“If you are here to learn how to fight you are in the wrong place. If you want to learn how to fight go down to the local biker bar pick out the meanest looking dude in the place and spit in his beer. When you get out of the hospital go back and do it again. Eventually you will either be the toughest guy around or you’ll be dead.”
Pardon my disagreement, but practicing losing is going to make you good at losing.
Your former Special Forces NCO instructor might not have shown his class what the Army taught him, but training matters. If you think about it a little, the military has a different objective. We trained to kill the enemy. The Military Police were really the only ones who trained to subdue people without really hurting them.
I want only to cause you enough pain to make you leave me alone. If your martial arts can’t do that, you picked the wrong one for this situation.
Believe what you will about them being useless.
Fighting was a regular thing when I attended school in Oklahoma and Texas. It was one of the first things you learned about school. You did it whether you wanted to or not, and the more you had to do it, the better you got at it. I was the smallest kid on my street, and was often chosen to fight the smallest kid from another street, which settled many disagreements between the two neighborhoods. After a while it took a pretty big kid to whip me. There was one particular bully I remember who stopped bullying completely and dropped out of school after three smaller boys took him on with clubs and beat him mercilessly.
With respect to the author’s advice at the end of his essay, what I learned as a smaller kid was to punch a guy’s adam’s apple. I had no idea how dangerous that was in those days, but it stopped a lot of fights right fast.
There is one thing I am shocked nobody has commented on: what about the responsibility of the strong to protect the weak?
The reason bullies go after people is because they can get away with it. And most of the time, the bullied cannot effectively protect themselves. And, sadly, most people just let it go by. “Not my problem. I didn’t like him anyway.”
Ever notice how popular kids never get bullied? Because bullies know how find those who can’t protect themselves and whom nobody else will protect.
The first time a bully finds out that no, that weird fat kid is not a free target, he’ll stop.Itjust will probably take a strong person acting on his behalf.
The first time I learned to use my feet and my fists was the day I was set free from ‘bullies’.
> There is one thing I am shocked nobody has commented on: what about the responsibility of the strong to protect the weak?
Maybe it’s going the way of Christianity in this country. That’s a Christian perspective, after all.
Or maybe kids just aren’t wired that way.
I saw it happen once, though. I was in tenth grade. My high school band had just played a performance, and we were back at the school, getting out of our band uniforms. Then one of the seniors, Wally, started yelling at one of my classmates, Jim, about how badly he had marched. Wally was usually a funny and engaging fellow, but he had a mean streak, and we all just stood there gaping as Wally worked himself into a foaming frenzy. His tirade was getting more and more abusive, while every timid, sheepish apology from Jim just seemed to stoke the fire.
Just when it seemed about to get completely out of control, I saw a right cross whiz past my field of vision and Wally went down in a limp heap. He was actually unconscious for a few seconds. When he opened his eyes, Wally eyed me and angrily asked if I had been the one to hit him. He should have been so lucky. Our drum major, a tall and wiry junior named Tony, stepped forward: “I hit you, Wally.” Then he stood there and chewed Wally out like an expert drill instructor. “Somebody had to hit you, Wally. You’re not going to bully one of my guys here.” Wally glared, and mouthed off, but he knew better than to take a swing.
I never realized until just now how much further Tony was morally advanced than the rest of us were that day.
@072591: “There is one thing I am shocked nobody has commented on: what about the responsibility of the strong to protect the weak?”
When I was a kid, any time I saw a person picking on someone else (even if they were bigger than me) I would jump to the defense of the kid being picked on, and that always put a stop to the bullying.
I’ve also stuck up for, now as an adult myself, adults who are being harassed by other adults.
Ironically, one of my parents was very loving, but very passive, and discouraged me from defending myself against bullying, lest the bully’s feelings get hurt (all these years later, I still do not understand that).
I normally did not defend myself when getting bullied (as a child or as an adult), but I wish that I had.
I grew up bullied and picked on incessantly growing up.
As I grew up, I realized that the reason I was bullied was because I was “pretty” and “poor” which is a bad combination apparently [well, my two handsome male teachers didn't think so though]. Being “Teacher’s Pet” didn’t help me much either.
By age 16 I learned how to kick-box and nobody messed with me ever again once they found out how apt I was at kicking the crap out of someone with one swift move.
When my little sister was picked on by a gang of boys one winter, she came crying to me that day and I marched my ass down to where they still were picking on my one neighbor’s little brother and I took them all on and high kicked the crap out of all of them. It was hilarious [yes, I'm still quite proud of that moment hahaha]. Yes, they were a few years younger than me but I was quite out-numbered and I dare say I handled myself well. The funny thing was, they all wanted a ‘whack’ at me because I seemed so invincible… and I kept kicking them in each of their smug little faces. They all ran off like the little pansy@sses they were once they realized that they couldn’t defeat me. My sister looked up to me as a “Super HERO” from that day forward.
*chuckles*
I loved this article! It is just so full of truths. As children, my best friend and I were bullied unmercifully at the bus-stop, in the neighborhood, etc. Why? Because she was a shy, quiet girl who was “different”. She was Asian in a time when our neighborhood was all “white bread”. Once I stood up for her, I was a target too. We were pushed, shoved, our books spit on, called names, made fun of in every conceivable way. It was hell on earth.
Our bullies were several of the neighborhood boys, older and bigger than we were. We were afraid to walk around the neighborhood, to wait at the bus-stop – but somewhere along the way, about two years into our ordeal, we realized something. Our bullies sounded pretty stupid … couldn’t they come up with any other thing to pick on than our shoes were ugly or that her mother drove a car with a “red dot” on it? So when we were alone, we come up with a comedy routine using their taunts that had us in stitches. Very shortly, they were insulting us, we were looking at each other and laughing, no longer hurt by their stupidity because we realized how idiotic they really were.They were confused, stopped the “insults”, but stepped up the physical abuse … but given self-confidence by no longer being hurt by their words, one day when one of the boys shoved me and I almost fell, I got my balance, pulled back my arm and rushed at him, punching him in the stomach as hard as my 13 year self could.
We were never bullied again. Never insulted, never hit, pushed or in any way bothered. The bullies just left us severely alone. More than 30 years later, my friend and I are still best friends and have a level of friendship that is one of my greatest blessings in life, forged by the fire we went through together. We often joke and laugh about those boys and their stupid insults – little did they know what a blessing they bestowed on us by their behavior. A lifelong friendship and the knowledge that we could make it through anything together because we were strong and smart
So thanks, Bully boys … we owe you a debt of gratitude!
Time tested medicine for bullies. Fight back. There are no rules. Teach your kids to defend themselves at all costs. If a bully gets kicked, bitten, stabbed with a pencil stick, rock cracked over his head, bat smashed over his head, shovel smashed over his head he will not return. Bully learns real quick that his odds of getting hurt increase exponentially when he messes with you.
When I was in middle school we played outside all summer until dark in the streets. We had a wiffle ball game one night and a bully from the next street came over to play. He had no interest in the game as he had no atheltic talent what so ever. He was there to fight me. I was a lot smaller at least 60pds and knew if we went to the ground I was done. I had been in a few fights and held my own so I knew what was coming. He got up to bat and had been mouthing off about what was coming for me at the end of the game. I was playing first base and he got a hit and ran to first. I had no intentions of waiting till end of the game to find out my fate. As he came to the make shift base he had his hands down and mouth running. I stepped into my swing and absolutely blasted him in the mouth.
I blew his front teeth out of his mouth with one shot. He dropped liked a rock in front of me. I didnt stay around to find out about his health care plan after that. From what I was told he picked up his teeth and went home to his parents who took him to a emergency room. Concussion,Stitches and a year of braces and dental work. His parents called my parents and I had to go apoligize for my behavior. Wow, was I shocked as well as my Dad when we showed up to make nice. Dudes face was a mess. He had failed to tell his parents why he came down to our neck of the woods so I filled them in regarding his intentions so they were a little upset when they found out he was there to beat me up. Yeah my dad was pissed but that fat bastard never said boo again.
I had a few more fights over time because I could not stand bullies. I took a few beatings but bullies hated when I stepped up because they knew something bad was going to happen. I stood up for a few in my life and have no regrets.
If they ran their mouths I did what I had to do. Today they would call it assualt with a deadly weapon. Back then they called it defending your turf and rights.
Yet another aspect of society that took care of itself and served as a valuable character-building life lesson before liberals got involved…
in order to “negotiate” with someone you must either have something they want or they must fear you. So, you are never in a position to successfully negotiate with a bully. After you show them that you are not afraid to hurt them …then, and only then, can you negotiate.
As Jean Shepherd wryly said in the classic movie, “A Christman Story”, in the world of boys, “you were either a bully, a toady, or one of the nameless rabble of victims.”
Bullies of any sort make me steam with a white-hot passion. It’s been forty years since I was in high school, but to this day the memories still smart. If I could change only one decision I had ever made in my life, I would go back to my high school band and give a knuckle sandwich to the senior who had ruined my entire ninth-grade year. Yes, I too was an easy mark — a fat kid who just wanted to get along with everyone. (Apparently, there’s something very satisfying about picking on the fat kid — I don’t know what that is, but I did get to share in the experience.)
The justice behind giving a fat lip to a bully is something women just don’t get. Since the schools are essentially run by women’s sensibilities, it never surprises me, but always disgusts me, when I hear about some school where the victim gets the same punishment as the bully when he fights back. You just know that was a female decision. Challenge it, and you get to sit in the reviewing stand for the Parade of the Bromides. E.g., “Fighting is wrong, period.” And the ever-popular, “Violence never settles anything.” Pardon my French, but bull-loney. No one believes that hitting a bully is the sort of “Let’s save the world!” grand cosmic-justice solution that gives liberals a tingle up their leg. Rather, it’s a modest but effective conservative solution to an age-old problem — namely, man’s inhumanity to man, junior edition. It’s all about making the world a better place, one miserable bully at a time.
At my high school, at least once, justice was served with a cherry on top.
In my eighth-grade band class (our high school was 8-12), there was the saga of (I’ll call them) Joe and Dino. Joe was our best trumpet player, but he was a trouble-maker of the worst sort. Not a big guy, just mouthy and bullying when he thought he could get away with it. And Dino was his favorite mark. Dino was a big kid, still sporting some “baby fat”, but was so clumsy and spastic he almost seemed mentally retarded (which he wasn’t). Though he was a head taller and much larger than Joe, Dino just wasn’t aggressive, and Joe loved to ride him mercilessly — constant mouthing off, shoving, etc. Well, a couple of years passed, and what happened to Dino was no less dramatic than watching a chrysalis sprout into a butterfly — by the time he was sixteen, Dino looked like an NFL tight end. I’d guess he was about six-four, probably 240 pounds, and chiseled. For the most part, Dino was still a big Twinkie on the inside, but not completely — Dino’s attitude was slowly changing, too. Unfortunately for Joe, Joe’s wasn’t. It was inevitable. We all kept wondering, when is Dino going to do it? And then one day, it happened — the news spread all over school that Joe had bullied Dino one too many times. The evidence was splattered all over the hallway. I would have given a hundred dollars to have seen it. The next year, Joe transferred to a different high school. I’m still hopeful that the experience made him a better person.
It would be an interesting psychological study to follow bullies and their victims into adulthood, to see how their personalities developed. How many of the bullies experienced a moment of self-awareness and came to their senses? How many of their victims overcame their cowardice later in life? And what were the consequences for those who didn’t? Maybe there are some happy endings there, for both. Redemption is a beautiful thing.
But I doubt it works out that way in every case. A couple of years ago, my brother started working at the local mill again after many years of living and working elsewhere. He asked me, hey, you remember so-and-so? This particular so-and-so had once been the most feared bully at our high school. I said, yeah, what’s he like now? My brother answered, “Like a sad old drunk.” A year later, so-and-so’s name was in the obituaries, not even sixty.
At the end of life, wouldn’t it be awful to be remembered as the worst bully at your high school? I guess even bullies deserve some compassion.
Reformed Trombonist wrote:
“The justice behind giving a fat lip to a bully is something women just don’t get. Since the schools are essentially run by women’s sensibilities, it never surprises me, but always disgusts me, when I hear about some school where the victim gets the same punishment as the bully when he fights back. You just know that was a female decision.”
My reply: If you’ve read the other posts on here, many women said when they were kids, they beat the snot out of bullies who picked on them or their friends, so no, it’s not a “female” thing.
There are also limp wristed, wussy males who tell kids not to fight and all that. There are some boys and men who fear confrontation and don’t want to fight.
I’m a female who was strongly discouraged by one parent from fighting bullies, but I went ahead and beat up a couple of them anyway, out of frustration, and am glad I did.
Once I beat the crud out of the bullies, they left me alone. There are women out there who get what you’re saying, not all women are pacifists.
There are several “issues” with martial arts training to deal with bullies.
Probably the most important is that if you hit the level of “trained” you wind up in the same position as a professional boxer when you wind up in court. That you actually sought out the training with the express intent to deal with bullies kinda sorta establishes intent. So . . .
Of course you are asking the instructor to cooperate with you in preparing for this “duel”.
Even without that, you are asking the instructor to teach your pre-teen, or even pre-school, child how to inflict potentially crippling injuries on another child of the same age.
And don’t kid yourself, if you are talking about “effective” martial arts then that is what you mean – strikes that inflict enough injury that the opponent is incapable of launching further effective attacks.
Anything less than that is just playing pretend. It is not even on the level of boxing, which still has a goal of knocking someone out. (And as such is a fully legitimate martial sport – it just doesn’t include training for explicitly lethal attacks.) You can hope that “hurting” someone will make them stop fighting, or that they the extra beating they give you for daring to hurt them isn’t “that” bad, but in the end it still means that you failed at your goal of getting the person to stop hitting you right then and there.
So while training at a good martial arts school will be beneficial, you may be better off with the benefit not being in actual fighting skill, but in more general life skills.
As I commented to someone earlier, I can only guess you do not and never have, done any martial arts training.
Your guess is absolutely wrong.
Sam wrote “but in the end it still means that you failed at your goal of getting the person to stop hitting you right then and there.”
Who says that’s the goal?
Most of us who were long term victims wanted ultimately to be left alone.
We’d put up with being hit, kicked, ridiculed, spit on, or called names for weeks on end, we would would tell the bully a 100 times to leave us alone during that time, but they would not.
So yeah, the bully got off several free shots at first – but when you, the victim, finally stand up to these jerks, they usually back down.
They might even at that stage get a few more kicks or punched in, but most bullies, when they see you are not going to be an easy target like you were before, decide you are more trouble than you are worth and seek out a new target.
Being finally left alone, is, IMO, the big goal of most victims, even if they get punched a few more times when meeting that goal.
True story. My 8 year old daughter was being verbally bullied at school. I coached her on her responses, and she was really resistant to them because she didn’t want to get into “trouble.” Well, I seriously offered her $20 bucks if she told off this jerk of a girl bad enough to get sent to the principle’s office. That seemed to give her courage and she told off the jerk, and hasn’t been bullied since.
Fast forward 2 years later- some customer at a drive-up restaurant was ticked off at the staff. This mother swore every swear word she could think of until I got fed up and got into her face and told her off. She walked away. At that point my son said “MOM! That’s the mother of the girl who bullied Hannah!” The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and bullies of all ages need to be taken down by society of all ages, not just children.
My experience is more varied and different from most. I went to a private military school that went co-ed while I was attending. The few girls on campus weren’t required to march, salute, and drill like the rest of us, but they had to wear uniforms (Catholic girl’s school ones) and of course attended classes like everyone else. There were bullies on campus, a lot of them. It was actually a sort of bully heaven, at times. When I first started at the school there was a group of boys who, as an initiation, jumped the new guy, held him down, and beat him up. There also were several kids who were individually bullies, who made things hell for the other students. One of them was me. Part of the problem was that the whole thing was complicated by this being a *military* school, not just a regular school. If one of the kids got into a fight with you, if he outranked you, that created an extra problem. Theoretically, the more senior, high-ranking kids, could order the rest of us around, and we had to do what they told us to, at least sort of. One kid was on the school football team, and wanted to practice his tackles: I had to stand at attention and let him tackle me from behind, repeatedly. Silly thing was that he was the team’s quarterback, which of course means he didn’t tackle people usually. Our house mother finally intervened and stopped it (it was a boarding school, and there were a couple of adults who lived in the “barracks” with us, to supervise us when class wasn’t in session).
The other incident that sticks out in my mind is even stranger. Remember I told you that we had a *few* girls in Catholic Schoolgirl uniforms. One of them was a very pretty blonde girl named Ellie who had a bizarre habit of kicking boys in the shins repeatedly. It hurt like hell, but she was a girl, and this was 40+ years ago, so when a bunch of the boys went to the school’s assistant principal and complained, she cheerfully told us that even if she believed us (and she clearly didn’t) she wouldn’t do anything to stop Ellie. It wasn’t because of any newfangled politically correct silliness or anything, it was because of the old “sugar-and-spice-and-everything-nice” attitude of people towards girls, back in the day. We had one young, attractive female teacher at the school, who had a son who was a student. One day he got into a fight, and she asked me to be candid and tell her if her son had been in the wrong in the fight. I don’t remember if he was or not, but after telling her that I took the opportunity to tell her about Ellie and her obnoxious habit, and it never happened again. Point is, there we *couldn’t* have fought back against the bully: we’d have been punished, badly, and she would have clearly been the victim. Besides, this was back in the day, and boys weren’t supposed to hit girls anyway.
I did fight one kid in school who’d been bullying me, then, and while I don’t remember it being as decisive as other accounts here, I don’t regret what I did. A few years later, at another private school (but not a military one) I got picked on by a bully, and him I beat up pretty good (to the point one of the girls in the class told me to stop, because I was going to injure the guy). He left me alone afterwards, and just about then I had a growth spurt, and was the tallest student save one or two for several years…stopped growing, but by the time everyone caught up people had matured enough it didn’t matter.
You keep saying “back in the day,” but my son is having a similar problem even today. There is one girl who was in his class last year (third grade) who sent him home with a bruise or more than one occasion. This is the only girl in a family of three boys (one her twin, the other two older), so I’m sure she comes by her fighting skills from having to deal with her brothers. My son is no wimp, either. He’s a very athletic and strong kid who has even broken school records in P.E. But he is no match for her since he can’t fight back due to her gender. One of the bruises resulted in the girl having to sit out of P.E. for five minutes — which, again, shows how a girl can get pretty much a free pass for bullying a boy (I guarantee that if it had been my son sending her home with bruises, he wouldn’t have gotten off with a five-minute time-out — and that doesn’t even begin to cover what he would have gotten at home if we’d known about it!). Thankfully, he is not in the same class as the girl this year.
You are absolutely correct. However, contrary to theory, bullies are not necessarily cowards and many CAN and will kick your butt if you hit them. Punching them in the mouth may get you beat up BUT they never come back for more. Oh and I prefer the nose. If you connect you will win the fight against 99 and 44/100ths of normal human beings. Besides, the mouth contains teeth that may damage your hand.
I remember being picked on a few times by boys when I was in grade school. Each time it made me so mad, I took after them with fists or a stick, or whatever I could pick up. I usually couldn’t catch them, but they left me alone after that, so you’re probably right.
The worst part of it was, though, my dad telling me they were only picking on me because they “liked me”. It didn’t feel that way to me.
For the complete opposite take on how to respond to a bully, check this nonsense:
http://spadoffice.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/the-greatest-secret-how-to-win-against-anyone-just-dont-fight/
While he doesn’t intend to be funny, his blog almost always is….
Didn’t figure it out until fairly late in life, but it’s an undeniable truth of life:
1. Bullies are not looking for a fight; they’re looking for a victim. Don’t be one.
2. When you realize that you’re dealing with a bully, there’s no point in trying to walk away or placate him. He’s looking for someone to humiliate.
3. When you come to this realization, your brain and body will tell you exactly what to do to to kick his ass.
4. Once you’ve done this, you are never bothered by bullies again. They can smell fear and indecision; they can also smell someone who’s going to fight back.
I got picked on a lot in school because I was the “weird kid”–every school has one, the one that everyone else is convinced is going to shoot them all. There was a boy a year older who bullied me constantly, pushing me and my two guy friends around and insisting that we were only playing cops and robbers if he was approached by a teacher. After a few months of this, I got sick of rescuing my friends from him and left bloody claw marks on his face. He never bothered us again.
. . . Unless you count the incident two years later, when he turned up at a school party tricked out to the nines, and asked me to dance with him.
Asking the teachers for help didn’t work. My mom had already sent a note to school, and that just made him more persistent. It took making him bleed to get him to back down, and I think to make him respect us, too.
You must always adopt Grant’s strategy, though. If you can’t box, don’t try. Combat is not boxing. The only rule is overwhelming force, applied as swiftly as possible.
I was in homeroom with a total jerk. Today, he’s in prison, because he’s just a scumbag. When he gave me trouble in 10th grade, it was a bunch of trouble.
Unfortunately for him, I had accelerated courses, and took some with his older brother. His bro was a black belt at 16, and he had a reputation as a badass. But he liked me, and when I mentioned his scummy brother, he told me what to do: Don’t box him, because he will black your eye in a second. Use your weight. You’re much bigger than him. You’re smart. Think strategically. You’ll know what to do.
So, the next time he gave me crap, I stuffed him in his locker and slammed the door. It had a combination lock, and it took them 2 hours to get him out. By then, he’d been screaming and crying for at least an hour and a half.
It might have been too much. He became such an object of ridicule that he transferred to another school. I felt bad, but not real bad.
And his brother is still my friend. And he’s still in prison. And a scumbag.
I was a big farm kid in a high school full of big farm kids. We didn’t have much problem with bullies, because anyone who acted that way got his hash settled pretty quickly – usually by being ambushed in the parking lot by two or three big kids who wrestled dairy cattle and tossed around hay bales and feed sacks mornings and evenings.
Never once in my life have I ever started a fight. But I sure as hell ended a few.
Being a big farm kid had advantages. When I graduated I was recruited to work as a bouncer in the local wannabe-biker bar. That was another experience entirely. I stuck with it for three months, then took a job repossessing cars, then finally joined the Army, figuring it to be safer than either of the other jobs.
You know I’m still baffled about Palin’s husband Todd…If I was in his posiition I would have punched a bunch of sleazy
libs by now…There use to be a time when men stood up for their wifes & daughters…they called it chivalry…
Are you kidding? Todd can no longer fight, ever since Ma Grizzly put him in the choke hold and repeatedly punched his teeth out. Her choke hold was too tight, and he ended up suffering a permanent shoulder injury.