Viciously destroy the idea that bullying is a normal part of growing up.
This is so hard for me as a parent to deal with, from both sides.
Like it brings up all of my issues, and I so want my kid to not have to deal with bullying. And I have no idea how to do that.
I’ll repeat something I’ve said before:
I was doing my Master’s thesis on bullying until the topic triggered me back to my own childhood so badly I dropped out of that degree program. Let me share something I know.
We haven’t quite found anti-bullying programs that stop bullying once it’s started, but we canreduce the harm bullying does. Just a few small changes to classroom culture, like limiting children’s opportunities to exclude each other, or spending time talking about respectful communication, has visible changes. Yeah, there’s still a hierarchy of popularity, but kids at the bottom of the ladder go from having no friends on average to having one or two. And that’s enough to make or break a childhood. (Sources: one two three four five)
But here’s the other thing.
There is one major factor that mediates the link between childhood bullying and adult mental illnesses (predominantly depression, anxiety, and eating disorders). It’s self-blame.
What really damages children isn’t precisely being bullied; it’s believing that they deserve to be bullied. If children don’t blame themselves for being victims, they are much more resilient and experience fewer long-term negative consequences. (Sources: one two three four five)
Society blames children for their victimization by bullies all the time. It says, “There is something about you that causes people to bully you.“ Common responses to bullied kids are things like: “Don’t give them a reaction.” (They’re bullying you because you get upset.) “They’re just jealous.” (They’re bullying you because you do well.) “Let’s teach you some social skills.” (They’re bullying you because you act weird.)
If we can just change that one thing, we could prevent a lot of damage. What bullied kids desperately need at the very least is a caring community that says: You are not alone. It’s not your fault. What they’re doing is not okay.
Also extra horrible: if you get counseling for being bullied a lot of the time it is “identifying what rhing about you is causing people to bully you”. In other words, even the “help” you get us often blaming the victim for being bullied and framing is as your fault, even though ime even if you stop doing the thing you get bullied for the bullies won’t acknowledge it. I got bullied over stuff from third grade until I dropped out of school in 10th.
And that’s not even accounting for the fact sometimes bullying is things that end in ism and there is absolutely nothing you can do as you’re being blamed for your own marginalization.
Bullying is emotional abuse.
There is nothing that can ever make you deserve emotional abuse.
Telling people, directly or through your actions, that they’re at fault for being abused is, again, emotional abuse.
I hate the term “bullying” for this exactly reason.
“Stop bullying” programs don’t work because they treat “bullying” like its a unique, child-specific thing you grow out of once you reach the magic age of 18 and It Gets Better ™.
It’s not. It’s just a fancy word for abuse that people coined because they didn’t want to believe their precious little baby could abuse another child and everyone went along with it because NOBODY wants to believe a six year old can intentionally traumatize another six year old to the point where they want to take their own life. Its “just bullying.” It’s not abuse. Only adults can be abusers. Kids are bullies. And if a child DOES do something evil, they’re either mentally ill or an adult drove them to it. Children can’t be bad!
Except here in the land of reality, it doesn’t work that way. Being abused causes the same amount of trauma whether your abuser is 9 or 90. I don’t care if a child has the biggest, saddest sob story in the world, they don’t get to use that as an excuse to abuse other children. Adults don’t (or shouldn’t) get away with that, so neither should children.
If people really want to “fix” bullying, they need to ditch this useless term and start calling it what it is. Abuse. And then, start actually doing something about abuse besides gaslighting the victim and saying “well maybe the abuser had good reasons uwu”.
“If you get counseling for being bullied a lot of the time it is “identifying what rhing about you is causing people to bully you”
That’s literally how it was for me
My school literally told my mother that I should be removed from school until I could learn to be less of a disruptive influence.
The disruption I was causing was being bullied. Me being targeted by bullies was somehow my fault, my problem.They had me removed from classes rather than dealing with the bullies.
Naturally my mum told them to fuck off and had me put in a different school, because my mum doesn’t play those fucking games. Neither, fortunately, did the new school I was moved to.
That blame the victim was very explicitly taught to teachers in the ‘70′s and ‘80′s as the appropriate response and pretty much did horrific damage to my generation.
By the time I was learning to teach at the tail end of the ‘90′s it had been replaced with a target the instigator and the instigator’s… I’m going to use the word minions here, though they used kinder words in teacher college. That thing were they kick the back of the kid with the learning disabilities’ chair until ze explodes for the fun of seeing the kid explode and then get in trouble for it? I’d watch for that little asshole and come down like a ton of bricks on the bully first kick. I’d separate that kid from his or her sniggering friends, because they are supporting the bully in the assholery, and the bully would not only have me watching zim like a hawk for as many years as ze had me, I went around to all the teachers in the bullies pod with a list of assholery to look out for. Because, surprise! If you punish the bully hard and keep on that instead of punishing the victims? The bullying nearly disappears in your room. Not 100% but close.
We were getting really good results in my district with a mixed approach with the things
star-anisewas talking about, but also a district wide program that targeted the audience of the bullying. The research was showing that bullies, whether in schools or that adult asshole sexually harassing adult women on public transport, etc.. read silence as approval. So we taught the kids that if they felt comfortable saying something either against what the bully was saying or in defence of the person being harmed, that it was the strongest way to help. If they didn’t feel safe doing that, slip away and get an adult. If they didn’t feel safe doing that? Leave. Because standing and watching strengthens the harasser. on our end, we all made an effort to intervene every single time, and to model how to verbally push back against it, and to use things like classroom geography to prevent isolation and break up clusters of people encouraging each other in asshole behavior.
It helped. It helped so much. I’ve had the instigator’s sniggering sycophants decide they were tired of getting in trouble and it wasn’t worth it to support the bully. I’ve seen groups of girls descend like Amazons to stand up for a kid being picked on before I could cross the room. I’ve had a boy turn to another boy and back me up when I was confronting him on homophobia. I’ve seen two girls and a boy hold a quiet but firm intervention about a certain boy’s bigotry while they were working on a poster project together. I saw the Middle School with the worst school culture in the District turn around in the course of year because of concerted whole school efforts to break up cliques and intervene whenever they saw even the start of something maybe happening.
I’ve also seen it work with street harassment where we stood up for the person being harassed. I think it needs to happen in workplaces and anywhere this sort of thing goes down. We need to have each other’s back, whether adults or children are being harassed, there need to be consequences and intervention. What ever the age of the person doing the asshole thing, people need to not stay silent witnesses, because that will always be a form of approval.
It can change. It can get better, but that only happens if a critical mass of us decide to make it better.
Also? If your school isn’t proactively protecting your kid? Sue them. It’s how we got the rural district a little north of here to go from dangerous as anything for queer kids to the most safe for LGBTQIA+ kids of every stripe and in two decades the whole culture of the town is noticeably changed an improved because the kids we taught they way have kids of their own now.
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