Becoming A Bully Magnet

I don't allow my boys to pick on their younger brothers because I believe the younger boys will do it in school.I'm a mother of 5 boys and I believe if they learn they can't bully other kids that this day and age things can change.my youngest likes to bully his older brother because he is smaller than him. I tell him how would you like it if I did that to you. If you teach your children not to bully someone else. Treat people like you want to be treated.

On my street, adults allow children to bully those children who are younger or smaller. The reason: They have to learn to defend themselves. I disagree. Teenagers have attempted to bully me. I am a senior citizen. My neighbor tried to bully me into allowing him to use my driveway for his friends to park. All bullying must be stopped. The solution is simple. When it occurs, the bully gets consequences.

anyone who disagrees this article or thinks they have the magical solution by doing activities for school. Don't talk until you're in someone else's shoes. my life is basically this article ok. I am 18 years old. Dropped out of high school almost lost my job and a relationship. Do you know how important it is to have a parent who actually cares? I do, but i found out the hard way. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get to be a social kid in a group of 10 year olds who think its better the ass of the group then the friend? probobly not. I can tell you 3 things. You dont need a doctor for this. You need a parent who cares. and a true friend who cares about what you say. Doesnt matter who the friend is. As long as they listen. Everyone in todays world seems to forget hot simple things can be if you talk to people face to face. instead of these perscription drugs or texting to your kids or just leaving notes on the table for them. All a kid need is someone who really cares. And I think every parent should step back and ask themselves if they did their best with their son or daughter,

My neighbor's child ran up behind and pushed the smaller boy down. They are 3 - 5 years old. The neighbor was in the front yard. The boys were in the back yard. The neighbor was irritated because the younger boy did not come when she called. I told her what happened. She said to me, "that's all right. He's his brother". That encourages the older boy to be a bully because there are no consequences for his actions.

MsTrysh--The one thing that kept me sane through it all, and probably the only reason I didn't go the way of so many children who tried to solve their problems with violence (Columbine, anyone?) is the fact that my parents were always there for me. My mom and dad were absolutely supportive of me and reassured me--directly and indirectly--that I was better than those that tormented me because I didn't give in to their games.

A lot of adults will tell a child to "Just ignore them", but that's an unrealistic demand. You can't ignore people who gang up to circle around you in the cafeteria and prevent you from taking a seat, or follow you through the hallways making inappropriate comments. In my experience, ignoring them only makes it worse, but you can't respond to them either, because they feed off of a reaction. Adults in the school often do nothing--"I'll keep an eye on them," means "go away and leave me alone--I don't care if you're getting picked on."

Since there's no magical way to make the bullying stop, all you can do is be the supportive parent and help your child tough out the worst of it. Remind him that people put others down because in reality, they're sad and miserable and want to make someone else feel worse than they do. Now, if physical bullying is involved, that's a whole 'nother arena altogether, and I'd recommend working directly with the teachers and principal to put an end to it.

I think it's a little ridiculous that they stopped monitoring kids at age, say, 6. Bullying continues throughout gradeschool and even into junior high and high school. Why on earth would you stop your research just as children approach the age when they can tell you for themselves what's going on?

nemo13, it comes down to sheep versus wolves. If you know there are wolves, and you have sheep, you're going to do what you can to protect your sheep. That may involve shooting the wolves, that may involve placing the sheep in a wolf-resistant environment. But you almost certainly (if you care about keeping your sheep) would not just ignore the problem and hope that someone else reforms the wolves.

Since we're not talking about wolves and sheep, but about children, you obviously can't shoot the bully, and it's not practical to find a bully-free environment for your child. So, while you may hope that the "system" (parents, educators, etc.) find a way to modify the behavior of the bully, doesn't it also make sense to teach the bullied child how to avoid being bullied?

I was bullied relentlessly as a kid, and it had a lot more to do with the fact that I was just an oddball than any kind of hard-wired behavioral habits. I dressed weird because we were poor, I talked funny because my parents were teachers, and I was small and cried easily, which made me a target for everyone. When I asked one of my bullies WHY he picked on me, he got this confused look on his face before finally saying, "Well...because everyone else does." There was no hatred from him--just a mob mentality. I had been subconsciously selected by the group to be the kid everyone abused, and if you didn't abuse me, then your own social status suffered as a result.

The painful irony of the situation is that because I was bullied so badly, it took me longer than most to develop the social skills I needed to no longer be bullied. No matter what I did--even if it was the exact same behavior as the peers that were harassing me--I was belittled and sneered at for it. Eventually, I just stopped caring what anyone thought of me at all, and while it allowed me to explore my own individuality, it also made it very hard to make friends or understand basic social etiquette. (I had graduated high school before I realized belching wasn't the best way to make friends and influence people.)

At a certain point, it was like God flipped a switch and all of a sudden I wasn't fun to harass anymore, and it was only then that I could even begin to learn how to interact with others as a social creature. My Sophomore year of high school was the best year of my life, because it was the first time that I had REAL friends (not just a gathering of all the local rejects), and the first year where I didn't have to plan my fake illnesses in advance to avoid the worst days of bullying. Once I began to interact with people on that level, I learned more in just a few years about socializing than I'd learned in my entire life up until that point.

The damage has been done, however... As the article states, persistent bullying over the course of so many years has serious psychological effects, and sometimes I wonder if the reason I have so many health problems today is because of the psychological experiences of my childhood. My self-esteem still hasn't recovered--I often feel like no one really likes me and they're just pretending as to be polite--and maybe it never will. I think the really important thing to remember, though, is that kids will harass any child who's the least bit different, and in my case, it just happened to be a perfect storm of qualities that made me such a target.

Don't confuse cause and effect. The study shows a correlation between being aggressive (let's call it "cause") early in life and being bullied (let's call it "effect") later in life. It says nothing about being bullied ("cause") leading the child to become aggressive later ('"effect"), nor does it exhaustively list all of the "causes" that lead to the "effect" of being bullied.

I put "cause" and "effect" in quotes because this study is certainly neither definitive, nor conclusive. It only notes a positive correlation between two observed phenomena. Confusing correlation with causation is a very common mistake.

after letting this article settle in my mind for a wile, it appeared to me as if the article is blaming the victims for the abuse. as if its the victims fault for the bullying because of the way they are. instead of making a pagelong article about how victims are made , they should have added onto this article or made a second article about the bullies. if it was not for the bullies attacking others there wouldnt be a need for worry about being shy, or timid. granted this article provides somem knowledge on the topic, i just think its not enough.

when i was going to school i was allways quiet, and never bothered anybody, but i was a very common target, mainly from the other guys. i did get angry at times but i never acted agresively towards anybody. ill admit i had an episode that made me wonder why it all happened, but i just moved on.

My child's aggressive behavior began after years of peer harrassment not before. J. was always quiet, extremely sensitive and prone to tears. I made the "mistake" of telling her to go to a "trusted" adult (a.k.a) a teacher who quickly responsed with "toughen up". The bully was a child of parents who were very popular in the community. It always came down to my child's word against the other. Is it surprising, then, that a child would become aggressive? J has lived 20 of 24 years in torment from the negative effects of her school experiences and our efforts to connect her with the proper resources. Once a child is given a label in the school system, it does stay with them. There are many variables that contribute to aggressive behavior. To blame aggressive behavior in children on one source creates obstacles to healing. The depths of J's woundedness prevents her from taking responsibility, today, for her wellness. She is stuck in being a victim. My hope for J is that I remember the first 4 years of her life and I know her gifts. With all that she has endured in her life, I know that there is a person of great strength, character and beauty waiting to live her life to the fullest.

A lot of kids who are bullies, do it because they have not been raised or disciplined correctly. Many also have parents who are bullies. They are ignorant.

Having been a victim of bullying from 6th grade through 12th grade I have to say that I was never an angry or aggressive kid. I was a protector and can identify the moment the bullying began. I went to a entirely white catholic public school up until 6th when we got our first muslim student (his family were refugees, he had lost part of his foot on a land mine, barely spoke english, etc). As many 12-year-olds do, my class mates made fun of him and pushed him around...I saw t hat as wrong and defended him. My act of kindness resulted in my classmates redirecting at me. I endured daily beatings, gum thrown in my hair, and harassing phone call at my home. I have always been a pacifist and believed that violence begets violence and fought back with words. Fighting back with words resulted in only more bullyng for being articulate. School administration was not interested in getting involved in the middle of "childish squabbles". These "childish squabbles" were outright assault and harassment that did not stop until I graduated from high school. I still do not condone violence, I do however intellectually understand how some children are pushed to extremes to take revenge (Columbine, etc...some of those "poor" kids who couldn't understand why the shoot happened probably just needed to reflect on the previous years of their own behavior towards the offenders). Again I do not condone violence or revenge. I believe this is a very important study so as to avoid future peer violence.

"O such a stupid study and a waste of time!!"

I don't mean to pick fun at, but wasn't this whole article and study about aggressive behavior? Looks like to me that they should continue this study well on into their adult years, because there is residing anger in a lot of dormant anger within people. Just look at high school reunions, there are people that go to them 20 years after they have already graduated that are still trying to prove that they are not a geek or a nerd. Also, some people go just to show all the "popular" people that they are better than them, even though it's been twenty years after the fact. So I don't think that this is a stupid article, just one that reinforces our knowledge.

No doubt that bullying has adverse effects on both victims and bullies. However, these studies were based on the self-reports of bullies and their mothers. I wonder if the researchers included the perspectives of the teachers and peers of those children, and if they are congruent with the mother/child perception. Have these studies have considered the possibility that toddlers who



exhibited more aggressive behavior and lower frustration tolerance may perceive themselves to be victims of bullying, when in fact they are not. Perhaps these children have personalities where t
hey are more inclined to see themselves as victims when they are frustrated, or may tend to blame others for unpleasant experiences that their own behaviors have invited. It may be that kids who are bullies also over-report instances of being picked on, etc, in order to justify their aggressive behavior or egocentric views. Perhaps mothers of bullies tend to make more excuses for their child's behavior because it is difficult to see your child as a bully. It seems the study could draw a different conclusion--that aggressive toddlers/children and their mothers are highly likely to perceive and report their bully as being "picked on."

I'm not so sure if it is a stupid study. The line of reasoning seems to work quite well. When someone shows themselves to be crazy (or aggressive), their peers start to avoid them. This can be translated into fewer friends a few years down the line: and that makes a person vulnerable. I remember getting bullied and I remember friends getting bullied. Fighting back does help to a point, but what works even better is to have a friend to watch your back. I don't see anything unreasonable with the reasoning of this article.