This comment will be controversial, especially for North Americans and Western Europeans. I ask you to read it and think about it a moment before reacting, and comment if you disagree. I believe what I'm about to say is true, and I'm not trying to get a rise out of people - I want to fix some problems with society.
I feel for the author. I also moved around a lot as a kid. No, wasn't a military family. Just coincidences, reorganizations at work a few times in a row, changing jobs, family circumstances. Sometimes things went great and I fell into a group of good kids right away, sometimes they weren't so good. It's normal that sometimes the new kid gets shit. I understand.
A little teasing is nasty, but kids can cross the line. Something like this:
> John and Mike never stopped. They never gave me a day off. And while their bullying hit maximum levels within a few days of school starting, the self loathing grew until I actually hated myself. ... they started in on new bullying tactics like sneaking up and cramming food from the floor into my mouth, knocking my lunch tray to the ground, throwing dangerous objects at me, tripping me, shoving me, and pushing me.
That's crossing the line. Those John and Mike kids are way past any acceptable teasing/jockeying line.
What's the author advise?
> And so, I will ask you now to not hate the bullies. Experience tells me that hating them, or being angry with them, will always make it worse. Instead, put your arm around them. Love them. Tell them that they are valuable. Tell them that you expect great things from them. They will stop the bullying.
No, they won't.
This is where I'll offend polite society. I'm not doing it to get a rise out of you. I'll tell you - this is the mainstream advice you hear growing up these days. "Love the bullies, talk it out, and they'll stop."
No, that's false. That's how we got into this mess in the first place.
I remember I changed schools mid-year in seventh grade when we moved. I was born in August which is the cut-off date, so I was effectively a year younger than everyone else. I was 11 years old. The middle school I transferred to was 7th, 8th, and 9th grade. Just how that district was laid out.
A ninth grader - 14 or 15 years old, much bigger than me - pushed me into the lockers the third day at school. Hard.
He then laughed with his friends and started to walk off.
I ran after him, tackled him, and started hitting him in the face.
We both got suspended. No one caused problems with me after that. I found a nice group of friends and was respected. The older kid didn't cause me any problems after that either. He didn't really acknowledge me one way or the other, we were just strangers after that, which suited me fine.
And that's how you've got to do. This love the bullies thing - it's wrong. It ignores our animal nature.
I've got some sets of names I'd name my sons as they're born. They're unconventional names - Cosimo Marshall or Aurelius Marshall if the boy's mother was Italian, Zhuge Marshall if he was Chinese. The boy will likely get teased.
That's fine, tease back.
But son, as soon as someone puts their hands on you, they've crossed a line. Fuck them up. It's the only thing these vicious freaks understand. They're wild animals. They make violence on you, you need to show them that you're the stronger, bigger animal. When someone attacks you maliciously for no reason, you need to impose your will on them.
Even if you lose, lose swinging. They respect it. Be a tough fight.
This "talk it out" shit doesn't work... it's been the dogma for the last 30-50 years, it assumes the nobility of human nature will win out. It doesn't. It's nonsense. It just simply doesn't work.
If you're not strong enough to impose your will on someone making violence on you, then train and get stronger. If you're intelligent, it doesn't matter if the other guy is bigger than you. Take up boxing or martial arts. Brain beats brawn. Fight dirty if you have to. They shove food down your pants or whatever? As soon as he turns around, hit him in the back of the head as hard as you can. If you're much smaller, pick up a hard object and do it.
My Mom is awesome. She picked up from school when I was suspended. We sat in the principal's office and she was very serious, saying yes, my son is serious about school, he never gets into problems, I don't know what happened with the fight. After we left, she took me out to lunch and said good job.
I wished I'd learned that lesson earlier. Some people are animals. The ones that want to hurt you for no reason. Show them that you'll go to self-destructive lengths to defend yourself and avenge yourself upon them, and they'll stop. Also, protect others. I got into a shouting match protecting some McDonald's employees from a mob boss in Hong Kong. A riot cop came to break it up, I was almost in a fight with three mafia guys.
I had two guys try to mug me the other day in a dangerous area. Bad mistake, doubled one of them over with a kick the stomach and shouted at the other one, "YOU WANT TO DIE? BACK DOWN, STAY BACK." He did, he let me walk away while his criminal buddy was doubled over.
Should I have "talked" with them, "loved" them, these vicious criminals? No, they're animals. They don't understand.
Teach your kid to fight back and fight smart. Protect the weak. Be hell and misery to bad people. Pacifism only works if there's someone else that's strong around to keep things together - someone who'll stick up for you. If everyone goes pacifist except the bad people, eventually one bad person with no conscience winds up ruling.
No. It doesn't work. Teach your kids to fight back, fight smart, defend and assert themselves, and protect others in trouble. There's legitimately bad people in the world, barely above animals, and strength is the only thing they respect. Assert yourself.
Overall, I have a hard time disagreeing with you. It's worth pointing out, though, that early on, especially in elementary school, talking it out might work, especially among lightweight bullies with more talk than physical action.
This reminds me of an odd story. In middle school, there was this kid on my bus who I found amusing. I mean, something about him was just comical to me. I didn't dislike him, either. I'd point this out to him and others from time to time – I think the label I'd use was "doofy." It turns out I was being an asshole and I didn't even know it. What I viewed as innocent ribbing was hurting his feelings. From his perspective, I was a bully.
One of his teachers came with him and intercepted me on the way to a class. She confronted me on my behavior. All at once, I saw it from his perspective and felt terrible. I started sobbing in apology, knowing at once the pain of being in his position and feeling like a monster at having slid into this most loathsome role.
He accepted my apology and from then on, all was well. The teacher was, I think, entirely shocked. This was the last outcome she expected, but she handled it all with grace and we were friendly after that. I'm glad he spoke up and I'm glad his teacher was on his side. It was an important moment for me.
Once you start to get older, though, the physical elements become very real. Moreover, not everyone is well-meaning. If it's a choice between getting damaged or protecting yourself, I agree – demonstrate strength. If I had a kid, I'd rather deal with him getting suspended, attaching a price to being physically screwed with, than lose that child to suicide or death of personality thanks to unreasoning "human" beasts.
Both your post and the original overgeneralize, treating bullies as a monolithic entity with a single motivation and a single response.
Bullies are not "wild animals" bullying for "no reason", they're people with unique intellects and desires and motivations that you, or they, may not understand. They may want others to see them as tough, or to feel powerful or in control, or for laughs, or because they have something to gain, or because everyone else does it and they think it's normal.
Effective responses have to be targeted based on the motivation. I'm not saying you need to send bullies to the psychiatrist and "talk it out" to understand their motivations, mind you, just that you can't expect the right response to bully A to be the right response to bully B.
Sometimes the right response to a bully is to be a credible physical threat to him. Other times it may be to get to know him and make him feel respected, improving his self esteem, or to involve adults who will hand down more severe punishment, or to laugh it off, or to make fun of him, or for someone else to tell him "that's not cool". The right response might even be multi-tiered, trying to change his underlying motivations, increasing the cost of bullying, and decreasing the perceived benefits all at the same time.
Don't leave tools out of your arsenal by mistakenly thinking you should only "love on them" or only "fuck them up".
Good comment, thanks for the reply. To clarify, you only "fuck them up" when they make violence on you. After they put their hands on you or someone innocent, they're in the wrong and they've forfeited their moral right.
Also, something to think about -
> Bullies are not "wild animals" bullying for "no reason", they're people with unique intellects and desires and motivations that you, or they, may not understand.
I don't know what part of society you run in, but some people are wild animals. Probably not on Hacker News. Probably not in the suburbs. But some people are born without a conscience, literally - I've looked into it, I've studied criminology and crime and things like that a little bit. I'm not expert, but when you look into it, something like 3% of people don't have consciences, and some percent of those get off on hurting people... it's not a big number, but those people are really wild animals to a large extent. I know this isn't polite to say, but consider it. You may never have come across one of those people, and God willing you never will. But they do exist. Hitler type people, y'know? They only respect strength. They can't be talked or loved or negotiated with.
Not many people. By all means, try a peaceful way if it works in the situation. But once they put their hands on you or someone innocent, all bets are off, and defend yourself fully.
I had a teen in a Sunday School class I taught who didn't have a conscience. He didn't have any sense of right and wrong, or of consequences for actions. He was a major bully; two other kids in my class of seven actually changed schools to get away from him (which made Sunday mornings interesting, to say the least!) He only respected strength -- but he also needed to be loved.
Like I said, don't limit your arsenal. Not even for the "wild" ones (even if they're animals to a large extent, they're still people to some extent.) Defend yourself and the innocent fully, but don't think that means you can't also love your enemy.
Out of interest, what would you do if they never became violent and were just bullied verbally? Would you just continually tease back? How would you do this if they were on a better social footing than you?
Or perhaps every time they demonstrated their strength to you, it was just in a 'playfight' that you felt forced to 'not take seriously'.
It's fine and dandy to talk about the psychology of bullying and how there are different tools to deal with it and all that, but when you're a kid and don't know any better, I think it's a lot easier to just do what he suggested and get physical.
I've always been a small, calm and rational person, but when it came down to it, I would just bite whoever was trying to bully me. As it turns out, the jaw is one of the strongest muscles in the body and it certainly does not look cool to have your eyes tearing up while having your finger being chewed by a shrimp.
Pretty good and not particularly bullish. What's your point?
I don't think "enjoyment" of the fact that you just asserted/defended yourself does any harm. Holding a grudge is far worse, imho. I recall some guy from the ScienceBlogs commenting on his high school reunion, and you could tell he had some deep running hatred going on even after several years - to the point of enrolling his kids in martial arts classes with a "so-maybe-they-can-get-some-sweet-revenge-for-me" type of attitude.
The martial arts are not bad per se, but a parent teaching a kid that it's ok to turn to violence when they can't get along with their peers is not very responsible.
FWIW, the other day I read about a research (and this matches my personal anedoctes) that younger brothers (i.e. the ones who usually get bullied by the older brothers) tend to show more empathy towards other people than older ones.
In contrast, psychopaths almost always have a history of being a victim of child abuse by family members. So, in my mind, values coming from the authority figures in a family are really on a whole different level than simply having maturity.
>> enjoy having defended yourself
Uh. I think the term we should be using here is "relief".
Making him feel respected and improving his self-esteem? I remember how adults used to bullshit me and tell me that low-esteem was why so-and-so was probably bullying me and that I should pity him or at least try to understand.
Fuck that. I believe that there is a tiny tiny percentage of a chance that that is actually ever the cause of bullying.
Maybe I'm biased though. I was a "target" from grades 4-8 and didn't make a single friend until high school. It's a miracle that I'm as well-adjusted as I am. I knew others who weren't as lucky as I.
Sorry for the language in this comment. This is something I have very strong feelings about.
I'll have to agree with you. Bullies are not an monolithic organization with a single creed and method. And this changes a lot with age group as well. I suspect that most younger bullies are very much different from older bullies.
I don't want to repeat your post, but it really should all be repeated. You need to take away both their long term need to bully, as well as their immediate urge to bully. You can do so through a variety of methods. For example, that long term need to bully often (well, I think/hope it's often), just goes away as kids grow up. And that immediate urge to bully. Well, there's no deterrent quite like getting your ass handed to you by the guy who you just shoved.
And related to that, there are degrees of bullying. I dislike these school campaigns that stick all these different activities together as being equally wrong under the umbrella of bullying. I've seen material that tells children that all pushing/shoving and 'teasing' and being 'rude' is wrong and 'can be' bullying. I can't see this being effective in any way. All this can do is make kids think that adults and their rules are dumb. What do you mean I can't call Kevin, my best friend from before I can remember a fat dumby butt? What do you mean I can't shove him when I know he'll just shove back?
All that can do is make one subset of children dismissing the 'rules' and 'bullying' as a 'dumb adult' thing, and another subset (and I remember playing with this subset when I was knee high), that'll yell and scream abuse at anything 'against the rules'. Now granted, I was kinda in the 'these rules are dumb' group, so my view of things is a bit biased.
Good comment. In the same vein, not everyone handles being bullied the same way. A related article (http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2009/07/very_off_topic_why_...) where the author remains angry even after a long time has passed and how he plans to help his kids deal with such bullying (similar to lionhearted's comment)
Giving someone a good, hard ass kicking has worked for me, it's gotten people to stay permanently off my back.
However! It has also initiated constantly-escalating near-wars with groups of people showing up at my home with weapons. (I was a teenager. I felt invincible. I grew up.)
Some people will back down if you fight back. Some people will just fight harder.
So, while violence IS a solution, you also have to know WHEN it is a solution, sometimes it is. Sometimes, you're playing a game with terribly high stakes and no jackpot. Sometimes, it's better to walk away.
I used to think I never lost a fight because I was spectacular. Actually, I was just spectacularly lucky. I could be dead right now.
>If you're not strong enough to impose your will on someone making violence on you, then train and get stronger. If you're intelligent, it doesn't matter if the other guy is bigger than you. Take up boxing or martial arts. Brain beats brawn.
In 9th grade having a little boxing under my belt, i was attacked by and successfully won the fight with 2 10th graders. Well, a half-day latter, the 10+ of them met me. Not everybody was beating me though - it was just too crowded :). And they weren't even too cruel - i was even able to walk several hours later. They taught me a valuable lesson - for any force there will always be a much bigger force.
But did the bullying stop? Was that the end of it? I don't think of bullying as a single or even pair of incidents. The type of bullying being discussed here is years of mental and physical torment.
Physical bumps and bruises heal, mental bruises not so quickly. You may have lost the battle but won the war by showing strength to the bullies and to yourself.
"Physical bumps and bruises heal, mental bruises not so quickly."
Unfortunately, I don't know about any study correlating bullying (or lack of it) with future success or failure in life. For example, do we know that being bullied in childhood encourage or discourage (or have no correlation with) development of one's psychological resilience?
While playing - growling, biting, jumping - wolf puppies prepare themselves to live as wolves. Humans are the most cruel animals on Earth, thus it seems natural that the play of human puppies is much more cruel than that of wolf puppies.
Very true. The biggest problem with the parent comment is that this can and does happen. I've known plenty of bullied kids who scrapped it out only to have the bully's entire clique ambush them the next day.
If you were ambushed and seriously beaten, then I would expect the school to expel the ringleader, suspend the others and get the police involved. One-on-one in school is one thing, but once they start planning ambushes they have gone over the "child" line.
I think the problem is that there aren't any perfect solutions to bad human behavior. Sure, this kind of retaliation can happen but that doesn't mean it was wrong to fight back in the prior incident where one doesn't have this foreknowledge.
"... But son, as soon as someone puts their hands on you, they've crossed a line. Fuck them up. It's the only thing these vicious freaks understand. They're wild animals. They make violence on you, you need to show them that you're the stronger, bigger animal. When someone attacks you maliciously for no reason, you need to impose your will on them. ..."
And the first girl who uses an indirect asymmetric attack? This approach will not work.
"... Teach your kid to fight back and fight smart. Protect the weak. Be hell and misery to bad people. ..."
There is a concept of proportional response and if you fail to apply it you could actually cause more damage to others and yourself. You do not want to "unleash the beast" inside. People are killed every day by someone loosing control and going too far. There are long term consequences for this type of approach. Consequences for yourself and others.
You have to decide before hand with a cool head what are your "rules of engagement?" Where do you draw the line? What is your proportional response? Is it offensive or purely defensive? Are your motives pure? Or are they to "do harm" to save face?
If you want to "fight smart" I'd advise Akido (合気道) because the core ideas are faithful to the ideals of "be good", "minimal harm" and self preservation. Akido allows you to achieve this through redirection of force and removing "ego" from the equation. You can use Akido techniques for both physical force and psychological protection.
Maybe these ideas are too subtle. But one thing I notice is the pattern of those being abused repeating the pattern of abusers. There are alternatives to break this cycle. Remember, "your actions have real consequences", short and long term. [0]
I agree with feral's reply: I think you have never actually tried to use Aikido in a real hand-to-hand combat situation, let alone with the intent to prevent harm. I'll tell you what will happen: you will get your ass kicked spectacularly, because actually applying those techniques in the wild is incredibly hard and it gets much harder after the first punch that connected with your nose.
If you are going the way of fighting, the advise is simple: keep the fight as short as possible, by eliminating the opponents ability to fight on the first possible occasion. In one situation, a square hit in the face may remove all their resolve to continue fighting. In another situation, you may need to do serious damage. Whatever the situation: don't dance around and do what is required to prevent yourself from getting hurt.
(Luckily I've never been in an actual fight, but I regularly insist my jiu-jitsu training partners behave like they would in a real fight for a bit, instead of cooperating with the exercise. That always puts my ability to actually fight in a humbling perspective. What I learn from that is what you will hear others say: keep it simple (complex techniques fail much more often), hurt them as soon as possible (pain distracts people immensely) and keep it short (the longer the fight takes, the more chance for you to make a mistake, for him to grab a weapon, for someone to join in, etc.). A hard punch on the nose is the best start of any fight.)
"... A hard punch on the nose is the best start of any fight ... "
I'd say ambush is the best way. This the secret about fighting - real fights don't happen by accident. They are in fact orchestrated. An ambush where the victim won't see it coming, numerically outnumbered and the odds stacked against them. You are in for a beasting, possibly killed.
But most of what we know as fighting is two people bumping into each other, registering fear in each others faces, letting the ego get involved and things escalate from there. This is avoidable and the type of situation I'm referring.
Just want you to know, I really appreciate your post and for mentioning Aikido. Of all the martial arts I know, I find it to be the most profound and wise in its philosophy.
There is also the interesting practice of Tonglen that I was recently introduced to. It is a meditation technique (endorsed and practiced by the Dalai Lama), that teaches you how to train your mind to effectively and healthily handle the issue of suffering:
Profound and wise, and less than optimally effective.
Its a little like the bullying problem in microcosm.
In theory, Aikido is wonderful and beautiful and the right way to solve the problem.
But, fundamentally, trying to block and redirect someones attacks away from you without doing violence to either party is a much riskier strategy than striking back. Its just much harder to do right.
In practice, if you do end up in a serious fight in which your physical well-being is at risk, you want the most effective strategies, that have the lowest risk of going wrong, and that's not Aikido.
Aikido is fantastic once you've had five or ten years of serious practice to master it, and some of it's techniques border on magic. So yeah, not likely to be good for high school aged kids.
btw, Aikido is not a nice but ineffective hippy martial art, despite its reputation and philosophy. There are lots of really nasty joint locks. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wristlock#Supinating_wristlock for one example - "If performed correctly this technique will break the opponents wrist, elbow and dislocate the shoulder."
"... In practice, if you do end up in a serious fight in which your physical well-being is at risk, you want the most effective strategies, that have the lowest risk of going wrong, and that's not Aikido. ..."
That is a weapon situation, a situation you avoid at all costs. There is only one outcome. Read my reply to @Confusion.
I reckon HN posters, much more than average, could be categorised as 'nerds who learned to fight back'.
No; seriously, I'd bet the thoughts underlying the parent post is a principal distinguishing component of the psychological makeup of the typical HN poster.
I'm going to assume that readers here are likely to have been bullied at school. More than average we were probably the nerds, the geeks; so often in school being smart is sufficient to attract bad attention.
I'd be willing to speculate further and say that the people that endured this process, and yet ended up sufficiently driven and risk-taking to get involved in startups, probably overlap those that eventually came to the conclusion that resistance was part of the answer; and that sometimes fighting back is better than passively accepting your fate.
There's a similarity in the attitudes of 'fk it, I wont let you away with that' and 'fk it, lets build this'.
Me, I was bullied for years and years. I was always the good kid, I tried to do what I thought was the right thing; turn the other cheek, feel sorry for them. It just did not help.
My dad eventually started sending me to karate classes. Time passed. I started fighting back. (Only a token resistance, scrapes and bruises, but that's mainly what is necessary) Things changed. This was a watershed in my development as a person.
There was still psychological bullying; but its considerably easier to deal with that when people aren't beating the crap out of you.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that a common characteristic of the people that read HN is probably a fighting attitude; the understanding that in some situations game theory does make sense, and that a willingness to engage in MAD behaviour has a value. I'm not trying to say this is a necessary condition, or the best answer, but just that sometimes its the least bad one.
I'm an extremely gentle person, and I'll turn the other cheek as long as I can; but I understand the benefit - to everyone involved, I'd argue - of fighting back decisively, in extremis.
If my kids are bullied, I'll teach them both conflict resolution skills, and martial arts.
I had a friend at school with anger problems. People would wind him up until he exploded and ran into them, fists flailing, shouting "Die! Die!". And then they would beat the crap out of him, because he was terrible at fighting. This was so entertaining that they would do it every time they saw him. So hitting the bullies was definitely counter-productive for him.
I think you are very much right about this. Bullies stop bullying almost always after they have been beat down or at least stood up to. No amount of reasoning will change them. As an anecdotal example: I knew a kid that was bullied in High School constantly by another kid. I and a few others told the bully many times to lay off and nobody thought it was funny. So the bully wasn't doing it to impress anyone else or anything like that - he was just a dick. Then one day the kid being picked on snapped and pushed the bully...knowing full well a fight would start. The kid also knew the bully would most likely beat his ass. Well, unbeknown to the kid pushing back (and fortunately), there was a ledge with a shallow guard rail behind the bully that the bully fell back against and over the guard rail and then fell over the ledge. The bully fell about 15 feet to the ground and got hurt pretty badly. Had the bully not been hurt...not only would he have beat the kids ass but he would have continued to bully the kid - that I have no doubt in my mind. However, the bully never bothered that kid again after he recovered from his injuries.
Had the bully not been hurt...not only would he have beat the kids ass but he would have continued to bully the kid - that I have no doubt in my mind.
I have doubt. When I was in school I was bullied by a couple of kids, and one day I just said fuck it and got into a fight, and lost. A couple of days later, more bullying, new fight, lost again. There may have been a third fight, I don't really recall, but even though I never actually won a fight, just being willing to put up a fight was apparently enough to make that particular bully leave me alone. Bullying is rarely something personal and if there is someone easier to bully most bullies will take the path of least resistance.
I have been bullied and I have also been a bullie myelf (frist the former then the latter).
Your advice is sound. Bullie "smells" the weakness - indeed they never pick on challenges, they always look for victims. So the only way out is not embracing (showing weakness) but through fight (showing strength).
You might get beaten up anyway - but if you show "will to power" they might start respecting you - since you "might exert revenge" on them someday. It's really how it works.
And my dad also taught me never to start a fight - but to make sure to finish it. It just took me long to "get it".
I will second this. I had a few people bullying me in highschool, but never resulting in any sort of violence, just namecalling/etc. One day, when I was hanging out with friends, he came over and started calling me names and generally being very confrontational. At that moment, I realised that I had to put an end to it then and there.
I punched him twice in the face, and he went down. When he got up, dazed, his friend split us up. He never even talked to me after that, and always avoided me.
If my kids ever get bullied, I'm teaching them Krav Maga.
I was bullied during the 8th and 9th grade.. I hated the bullies but I never really did anything about it... Then, when entering high school on the 10th grade, something clicked, I punched the first person to give me a stupid nickname, and after that no one annoyed me again...
So yes, I think violence in this case is useful... It doesn't really solve the problem though, it just shows to bullies that you are not weak and they should just choose a weaker target than you... They understand that, respect you for that and leave you alone...
Now for the small anecdote, I became good friend with the guy I punched and he actually had been bullied before in middle school. He had tried to be a bully in high school so as not to be at the bottom of the class hierarchy...
If you want people to back off, the first thing you have to do is show them that you are willing to take things much further than the situation warrants.
If you think someone is going to go apeshit on you for something small, you don't ever risk seeing what they'll do in response to stronger stimuli.
I had a rather indirect experience of this. I had a paper route as a kid and on one part of it lived a bully that would come out and harass me to the point where I would avoid the neighborhood (didn't go over well with people who missed their paper either). For some reason I never could bring myself to fight back, but at some point my Mom found out (I think I was asking my Dad how to fight or something and that clued her in that something must be going on). Anyway she came with me the next time and layed the smack down on that kid and I never had a problem after that.
Edit: I don't think she was actually physically violent but rather he got an earful that probably made him think there could be violence if he ever tried anything again.
If I had a son who was getting bullied, I'd tell him: "put the other guy down HARD." You have to lay down a mark that you're not to be messed with - it's like prison in a way. This lovey-dovey talk it out thing is useless in my experience.
I used to get some crap off some classmates from time to time, sometimes physical bullying. There was some stupid game where guys used to randomly kick the back of other guys legs for the fun of it. One guy did it to me, thinking he had a easy target. I shoved him back, and he started laughing, thinking that he'd kill me easily. A right hook to the jaw sorted him out pretty quick. Other people take note of things like that and don't mess with you for sure.
I completely agree with you. I think if I have a kid I will sit him down when he is young and explain to him that I do not expect him to ever suffer or martyr himself with his good intentions -- and then maybe he will know what to do.
Fuck them up. It's the only thing these vicious freaks understand
They're wild animals.
Impose your will on them.
Teach your kid to fight back and fight smart
Fight dirty if you have to.
If you're much smaller, pick up a hard object and do it.
Show them that you'll go to self-destructive lengths to defend yourself
I agree with this. This is why I've given my kids knives. Most bullies are dumb and unarmed, so it's easy to catch them off guard with a quick shiv to the kidney. Plus if you're a minor and you aren't a non-asian minority or hillbilly you'll get off scott free and your record will be expunged when you turn 18.
> Most bullies are dumb and unarmed, so it's easy to catch them off guard with a quick shiv to the kidney.
Your sarcasm is in bad taste.
Doing that kind of injury to a person is never justified. Self defense is about defense. If you need lethal force proper strike to the face or chest would be far more effective at actually stopping someone. A knife is lethal force and pulling one is never a good idea.
I feel for the author. I also moved around a lot as a kid. No, wasn't a military family. Just coincidences, reorganizations at work a few times in a row, changing jobs, family circumstances. Sometimes things went great and I fell into a group of good kids right away, sometimes they weren't so good. It's normal that sometimes the new kid gets shit. I understand.
A little teasing is nasty, but kids can cross the line. Something like this:
> John and Mike never stopped. They never gave me a day off. And while their bullying hit maximum levels within a few days of school starting, the self loathing grew until I actually hated myself. ... they started in on new bullying tactics like sneaking up and cramming food from the floor into my mouth, knocking my lunch tray to the ground, throwing dangerous objects at me, tripping me, shoving me, and pushing me.
That's crossing the line. Those John and Mike kids are way past any acceptable teasing/jockeying line.
What's the author advise?
> And so, I will ask you now to not hate the bullies. Experience tells me that hating them, or being angry with them, will always make it worse. Instead, put your arm around them. Love them. Tell them that they are valuable. Tell them that you expect great things from them. They will stop the bullying.
No, they won't.
This is where I'll offend polite society. I'm not doing it to get a rise out of you. I'll tell you - this is the mainstream advice you hear growing up these days. "Love the bullies, talk it out, and they'll stop."
No, that's false. That's how we got into this mess in the first place.
I remember I changed schools mid-year in seventh grade when we moved. I was born in August which is the cut-off date, so I was effectively a year younger than everyone else. I was 11 years old. The middle school I transferred to was 7th, 8th, and 9th grade. Just how that district was laid out.
A ninth grader - 14 or 15 years old, much bigger than me - pushed me into the lockers the third day at school. Hard.
He then laughed with his friends and started to walk off.
I ran after him, tackled him, and started hitting him in the face.
We both got suspended. No one caused problems with me after that. I found a nice group of friends and was respected. The older kid didn't cause me any problems after that either. He didn't really acknowledge me one way or the other, we were just strangers after that, which suited me fine.
And that's how you've got to do. This love the bullies thing - it's wrong. It ignores our animal nature.
I've got some sets of names I'd name my sons as they're born. They're unconventional names - Cosimo Marshall or Aurelius Marshall if the boy's mother was Italian, Zhuge Marshall if he was Chinese. The boy will likely get teased.
That's fine, tease back.
But son, as soon as someone puts their hands on you, they've crossed a line. Fuck them up. It's the only thing these vicious freaks understand. They're wild animals. They make violence on you, you need to show them that you're the stronger, bigger animal. When someone attacks you maliciously for no reason, you need to impose your will on them.
Even if you lose, lose swinging. They respect it. Be a tough fight.
This "talk it out" shit doesn't work... it's been the dogma for the last 30-50 years, it assumes the nobility of human nature will win out. It doesn't. It's nonsense. It just simply doesn't work.
If you're not strong enough to impose your will on someone making violence on you, then train and get stronger. If you're intelligent, it doesn't matter if the other guy is bigger than you. Take up boxing or martial arts. Brain beats brawn. Fight dirty if you have to. They shove food down your pants or whatever? As soon as he turns around, hit him in the back of the head as hard as you can. If you're much smaller, pick up a hard object and do it.
My Mom is awesome. She picked up from school when I was suspended. We sat in the principal's office and she was very serious, saying yes, my son is serious about school, he never gets into problems, I don't know what happened with the fight. After we left, she took me out to lunch and said good job.
I wished I'd learned that lesson earlier. Some people are animals. The ones that want to hurt you for no reason. Show them that you'll go to self-destructive lengths to defend yourself and avenge yourself upon them, and they'll stop. Also, protect others. I got into a shouting match protecting some McDonald's employees from a mob boss in Hong Kong. A riot cop came to break it up, I was almost in a fight with three mafia guys.
I had two guys try to mug me the other day in a dangerous area. Bad mistake, doubled one of them over with a kick the stomach and shouted at the other one, "YOU WANT TO DIE? BACK DOWN, STAY BACK." He did, he let me walk away while his criminal buddy was doubled over.
Should I have "talked" with them, "loved" them, these vicious criminals? No, they're animals. They don't understand.
Teach your kid to fight back and fight smart. Protect the weak. Be hell and misery to bad people. Pacifism only works if there's someone else that's strong around to keep things together - someone who'll stick up for you. If everyone goes pacifist except the bad people, eventually one bad person with no conscience winds up ruling.
No. It doesn't work. Teach your kids to fight back, fight smart, defend and assert themselves, and protect others in trouble. There's legitimately bad people in the world, barely above animals, and strength is the only thing they respect. Assert yourself.