Home Forums FineTunedMac Community Lounge Bully Whacking

I saw a news item this weekend from Australia. It was about a boy who had been the target of bullies and who, finally having had enough, reacted with disastrous results for one of them. What I found interesting were the snippets from various bleeding hearts who referred to the boy's reaction as "vigilantism" and suggesting he didn't handle the situation properly.

Sorry, but I'm of the school that believes you can only deal with a bully by giving back in equal measure.

I recall when I was about 10 years old and our school had a bully named Dick (talk about an appropriate name). He was head and shoulders taller than any other kid in school, and I can still see his curly red hair and giant freckles. Anyway, whenever he caught either me or my friend Adrian alone, he'd whack us silly.

One day we decided enough is enough, and we ambushed him in the alley that ran alongside the school. The two of us were more than Dick could handle, and Adrian and I wrestled Dick to the ground and punched the snot out of him.

He never bothered either of us ever again.

But, that was the fifties. I suppose if it was today we'd all be sent for counseling to get in touch with something or other.

ryck

I saw the same thing several times on TV news. The kid being bullied was pretty hefty, considerably larger and stronger than his persecuter, who seemed to smacking him with some lightweight materials. The hefty kid grabbed the bully, lifted him into the air up to his shoulder level and then gave him a wrestling slam face down onto the concrete sidewalk. That really wasted the bully, who could barely walk afterwards.
Without my being a bleeding heart, the bullied kid may gone beyond the pale in retaliation (although under the apparent circumstances it seemed to be a spontaneous and legitimate reaction).
We shall see (how it plays out).

I don't think that matters. Just because a kid is larger, it doesn't automatically follow that he can't be bullied by someone smaller. I remember a couple of kids, smaller than me, who I would never have annoyed.


I saw a kid smacking the other in the face with his hands. However hard the bully was or wasn't hitting the other kid is moot. This was a public humiliation which is likely even more hurtful than a bruise that clears up in a day or two.


Better the victim takes his revenge on the bully directly than coming back to the school a few days later with guns and mowing down a bunch of innocents.


If nothing else, this points out how little is being done anywhere to curb bullying properly. Instead the problem seems to be growing.

ryck

Unfortunately that's usually what it has to come down to. I'm a pretty passive person by nature but I was getting harassed on the schoolbus and playground by the same person almost daily. Teachers on the playground could only do so much with so many kids to manage, and the schoolbus driver for some reason refused to help at all.

Parents complained and got nowhere. Finally told me to deck the kid. And so one day on the bus he tried to jump me and got a knuckle sandwich surprise. I actually don't remember any of it but it must have been a one punch fight. Bus driver very nearly threw me OFF the bus after slamming the bus to a stop. (which looking back at it, probably would have gotten him suspended) Got physically hauled into the principal's office by the driver when we got to school, I'd been there before trying to solve the problem so she already knew what was going on and had already tried unsuccessfully to help. But the bus driver apparently has final call on all bus related issues so the week suspension from the bus for fighting was unstoppable. I can only assume the kid and the bus driver had some relation, he got real upset over the incident.

Parents were a bit irked to have to arrange for transport to/from school for a week, and that they could not appeal the issue. But the kid never bothered me again, on the bus nor on the playground. And my actions had the full support of my parents and my principal. So I guess "happy ending"?

1. Size doesn't matter. I was just setting up the picture.
2. No argument. Again, just setting the scene.
3. A face-down body slam with attendent possibility of concussion, broken ribs, punctured lung, etc is a tad excessive under the circumstances.
But you're certainly correct in pointing up the lack of teaching how to approach being bullied.
You also have to consider that this took place in Australia, known for its pretentious machoism (which I don't think the hefty kid was exhibiting, only frustration, anxiety and wanting to put an end to the harassment).

I used to be bullied as a kid. I found that the only way to stop the bullying was to speak the language of the bully--reach back, grab Texas, and let the bully have it right in the face. Do that once and you'll never be bullied again.

Bullies don't bully everyone. There is a relationship between bully and victim; bullies gravitate toward victims who don't fight back. Bullies, at least in my experience, tend toward cowardice. They don't choose targets who they believe might hurt them.

Now, having said that, I absolutely do not believe that ANY retaliation against a bully, no matter its scope, should be considered appropriate. There are forms of retaliation that are clearly not appropriate, regardless of the scope fo the bullying. It would not have been appropriate for me to take a knife to school and stab the bullies who were harassing me, nor for me to find out where they lived and visit them in the middle of the night with a baseball bat, nor to poison their school lunch, nor to plant a pipe bomb in their locker. At some point, retaliation makes the victim worse than the perpetrator.

Look, this kid had been bullied for years, and had not taken any corrective action prior to this video. What you see is not a one-off of a bully approaching a kid and getting a faceful of concrete for it. What you see is a kid who for a very long time did not have any effective tools for dealing with his distress, and more importantly, didn't seek to develop any.

The kids who shot up Columbine High School had reportedly been bullied for years. The bullying turned them into sociopaths. That's not OK. It's not cool that they were abused by bullies, but that doesn't justify their retaliation either. At some point, cheering for kids who stand up to bullies becomes excusing sociopathy.

To my mind, this doesn't show a heroic boy defending himself from a bully. This video shows a psychotic break triggered both by a pattern of bullying and by a school that obviously tacitly permitted and condoned the bullying. It also shows a kid whose parents neither protected him nor equipped him with the tools to deal effectively with bullying.

So I see a lot of villains and one potential sociopath, but I don't see any heroes.

and what is the proper way to curb it? at my school, bullying is a constant topic, and we talk about respect daily. bullying still happens. kids see disrespect everywhere, from the entertainment/sports world to governments. why should we expect them to act any differently?

I assume that by "ANY retaliation against a bully" you refer only to the immediate response of the victim defending him or herself against a bully. We don't agree. I think that if you always turn the other cheek, in the absence of someone who will stand up for you, you're always going to get your butt kicked.

I'm not in the school system, and my children have long left it, but it looks to me like the important piece "someone who will stand up for you" is missing. That piece is the system. Bullies should receive immediate and harsh consequences. Instead, as I recall from a piece you wrote, some schools have been complicit.

A bully should be tossed out of school and there should be stringent conditions for getting back in. Any staff who has been complicit should be fired without any avenue for return. Parents of victims should also have avenues for redress.


I don't think so. Anyone's support for a kid standing up to a bully doesn't translate into "Rooting for Dahmer".

I grew up in a rough neighbourhood and, if a kid came home with a bloodied nose, most parental responses would be "You have to stand up for yourself". Looking back I'd say it's mostly the bullies who ended up being societal problems.

And I don't mean just those who went to jail. There were a couple who became successful but took their bullying approach into business with them which is a whole other problem that has adverse effects in society.

ryck

See above. That's just off the top of my head but I'm sure that any group talking about the problem daily must have come up with more in their notes than the original question.


But what meaningful action is taking place?


That sure sounds like a cop-out. I will concede that the teacher gets children who have been conditioned by parents, but it's still not good enough to use that as an excuse. It just means that teachers (who do have the power of their unions) should be pushing harder for reform that has consequences for both bully and parent.

ryck

I believe close to 100% of schools are complicit. They don't want to be considered babysitters, usually have way too many kids to manage for teaching let alone socializing, and usually don't offer effective help when approached.

Kids that complain to authority figures usually create a net negative result, being viewed as a crybaby or tattletail etc by your peers (which is usually the reaction the bully will attempt to foster in the group) can be as bad as the bullying. Bullies will just change venues, catching their victims in places farther from the authority figures, be it a dark corner on the playground or walking home from school or waiting at the bus stop. The bullies are rarely given effective reason to stop and so they just look for ways to beat the system and continue business as usual. It's impossible for the authority figures to protect the victim 100% of the time, and they know it. Protection is never a solution, the only way to stop the bullying is to deal with the bully directly. (either the victim or the authority figure) Trying to protect a kid from bullying by "keeping an eye out" is like doing away with the police force and only dealing with theft with bigger padlocks. In the end a purely defensive strategy will always lose.

And because authority figures are usually ineffective in confronting bullies, that leaves the only hope in the victim taking a stand. The example I provided earlier is an excellent example of why this is a difficult option. The system usually requires you to take your problem to them to solve, and NOT take matters into your own hands. If you DO take matters into your own hands, the system not only doesn't support you, it usually places you at the same level as the bully, and because you are someone that the system will be able to more effectively sanction, you end up taking a bigger hit than the bully. (notice I got suspended from the bus for a week and the bully did not) And yet "the system" is intractably ineffective with the bully and unwilling to admit to their inability to help, because to admit to it would be to acknowledge their inability to do the job they claim is theirs to do, and would justify the victim taking matters into their hands.

Sorry, that sentence is ambiguous.

What I meant to say is "I do feel that some retaliation is justified, but I don't feel that if a person is bullied, he can take ANY action that he wants to and be justified." For example, punching a bully in the nose is probably more justifiable than, say, burning down the bully's house.



Yep.

I think there are school teachers and administrators who feel they either can't or don't want to get involved, and as a result, bullying is permitted to continue.



Not always, no. That's why i said "at some point." Cheering for a bully's victim who does retaliate by, say, burning down the bully's house is clearly waaaay beyond that point, for instance.

In which case, we agree.

This whole bully issue is troubling to me on another level, which is that some basic sense of honour seems to have left playgrounds and neighbourhoods. When I was a kid there was the odd bully. Now they seem to be rampant and I chalk it up to missing unwritten rules.

I recall getting into plenty of scraps (and having plenty of bloodied noses) but, not to put too fine a point on it, that's the nature of little boys. It's in the genes. However, it was always one on one.

Whenever there was a schoolyard skirmish there was usually an audience but no one would even think to step in and help one or the other. There an unwritten code that said a fair fight involved only two people. "Ganging up" just wasn't done.

Now it's not unusual to hear or read about kids mobbing a single child and causing serious physical damage. There is even electronic mobbing with results as disastrous as suicide. Something has gone very, very wrong.

ryck