Becoming A Bully Magnet

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

All it takes to be a "bully magnet" is to be different enough. People despise or is afraid of people who are not like them in every respect. This is why people go through great personal strain & stress just so they can fit in with their chosen clique.

The way a child can overcome being bullied is he/she must establish a reputation of "not to be messed with" or the bully knows there will be dire and immediate consequences for bullying a particular child. I'll give you two examples on that happen to me personally and one I witnessed.

Growing up I was the smallest of all children at my elementary school and naturally this attracted all of the bigger kids to tease and intimidate me. One day , one of the bullies decided to pick a fight with me in my own front yard. Now, where I grew up getting beat up in your front yard is the gravest of all humiliations. I couldn't avoid the fight and I knew calling for my mother would cost me all of the few friends I had. So i fought the bully and I beat his a$$ real good. So good that the bully's daddy had to come and pull me off of him.

The word had gotten around about my victory and sure enough when I arrived at school the next day the biggest of all bullies wanted to fight me on the playground prior to the class bell. I didn't actually win that fight but because I drew blood from the bully (I punched him hard in the nose ) people had declared me the winner. In two fights I established myself as the little guy who will hurt his opponent. No more bully problem.

I'm not encouraging children/people to engage in violence but what I am saying is don't avoid the fight whatever form it presence itself. For schoolyard bullies a playground fight may be all that is needed. In the workforce it may mean telling your bully boss what a coward he/she is an slam your resignation on his/her desk. PEOPLE CAN ONLY EXERT POWER OVER YOU TO THE DEGREE THAT YOU WANT WHAT THEY HAVE TO GIVE. YOU STOP WANTING WHAT THEY HAVE AND THEIR POWER OVER YOU GOES AWAY.

I hope this helps someone.

What a country. A bully is only helping children with poor social skills. Just like someone who rapes another is helping on poor sexual skills. Or a thief who helps with poor economic skills. What a bunch of crap. The bully is the one who is the misfit and the teachers who allow this to go on should be fired. The people who buy into this mess are the ones who have a kid who is a bully and can point to this as the other guys fault.

I agree with AnnaKarenina. Toddlers with poor social skills--like those with Asperger's Syndrome--tend to overreact to frustration, hit rather than ask, etc. As these kids grow, their immature behavior sets them apart from their peers, who behave in a more age-appropriate manner. So this study seems perfectly accurate to me. Toddlers with poor social skills can become first graders with poor social skills, and kids with poor social skills don't fit in with peers. Classroom bullies target the "weak," and kids who don't fit in are seen as "weak."

I remember the girl in my class who was bullied, she couldn't handle conflict, so if you confronted her in anyway she threw a fit. She was shy and timid most of the time, her parents were the same, but if you pushed her buttons, she became hysterical, which is what the bullies were after. Kids can be timid AND aggressive, often the two go hand in hand because they don't know how to assert themselves and so they resort to violence or throwing fits which is very entertaining for bullies. Most kids are also very different at home than at school. I also want to say that I agree with buzz9851, one child's behaviour is not enough to discredit an entire study.

italladdsup and kfreder--you are basing your comments on your personal experience with your own child (children). These studies were done with several children over a course of several years. Just because the one case study of what you have seen doesn't agree with this study, doesn't mean that this study is wrong. Also, I don't remember the author saying that ALL children who are bullied were once the aggressors. Again, read carefully and don't be so quick to misunderstand. For the life of me, I CAN understand how these studies can be accurate--they were accurate for those cases observed. Also, as a teacher, I disagree with the statement that "This experience has taught us that schools still look at bullying as just a punch or a push,..." Not ALL schools in America are like that, nor are all teachers. It is unfair to make statements that include them all, when clearly it is false. As a teacher, I guess I'm just tired of schools and teachers getting a bad rap for student behavior...it's not our responsibility to teach behavior (usually). Students should come to school knowing how to behave correctly, with a little help from us if needed. Then we might be able to actually teach.

italladdsup and kfreder--you are basing your comments on your personal experience with your own child (children). These studies were done with several children over a course of several years. Just because the one case study of what you have seen doesn't agree with this study, doesn't mean that this study is wrong. Also, I don't remember the author saying that ALL children who are bullied were once the aggressors. Again, read carefully and don't be so quick to misunderstand. For the life of me, I CAN understand how these studies can be accurate--they were accurate for thos cases observed. Also, as a teacher, I disagree with the statement that "This experience has taught us that schools still look at bullying as just a punch or a push,..." Not ALL schools in America are like that, nor are all teachers. It is unfair to make statements that include them all, when clearly it is false. As a teacher, I guess I'm just tired of schools and teachers getting a bad rap for student behavior...it's not our responsibility to teach behavior (usually). Students should come to school knowing how to behave correctly, with a little help from us if needed.

A few academic wonks get published by floating a counterintuitive theory that's a bunch of claptrap. Anybody who's spent a day in school know that bullying happens when an aggressive kid feeds off the attention they get by tormenting a timid classmate in front of others. Seriously, why does anybody give any creedence to this junk?

There is a website called bullies2buddies.com. This is a social worker who gives great techniques how the child himself can address the bullying and it works nicely. The social worker will speak to the bullied child by phone and his fees are very reasonable. If the techniques don't work, he will refund the money. I know people who used him and it worked to stop the bullying, and it doesn't take that long. Please read the website and try the method. We owe it to our children to try for them.

While I can understand the conclusions to a point, they are looking at a very young age. To say that older bullies target the aggressive sends an incorrect and dangerous message. I agree that kids who tend to act out can end up being targeted. However, the truth is, bullies pick on kids who just don't fit in, and a lot of the abuse doesn't come from bullies but from "ordinary" kids. The solution to bullying is enforcement. If adults don't tolerate abuse, then the amount of abuse goes down drastically.

Our son has been tormented at school for years and our school's response typically has been "Your son is too sensative" or "Your son needs to be more assertive" Our son doesn't even want to report any of the harrassment anymore because it does more harm than good. Some focus was put on the bully, but the blame still flowed mostly towards our son. This experience has taught us that schools still look at bullying as just a punch or a push, when in fact most or the damaging bullying is done through peer harrassment with subtle comments in the hallways and exclusionary actions ("That's just boys being boys" they say). We have been extremely frustrated and are considering moving him to another school because of this...but where are the schools that fully understand bullying, teach prevention to the students and envorce the rules fairly???

I was bullied as well, also because I didn't have the physical strength to stand up for myself. And worse, schools let bullies get away with it. School systems should require parents of students to attend a special assembly before the first day and show them the raw, unedited security video from Columbine, remind these parents that Derek Harris and Dylan Clebold were bullied as young kids and considered social outcasts, and warn them their children will end up with their bodies blown apart and their brains on the floor if they don't teach their kids to not taunt, beat up, or make fun of other kids.

I totally disagree with this analysis. I was bullied, my son was bullied, and I know many people who were bullied. They were all either shy, sensitive or insecure. My son walked with his head down and bullies immediately targeted him, not because he was a child who was disliked, but because he was not going to fight back. Bullies need someone to pick on, not someone who is going to beat the crap out of them. The bullying stopped as soon as he gained confidence through swimming.
Very disappointing article Claudia.

Blame the victim, blame their parents but god forbid we put the blame on the child taking the action and the parents who excuse it.

Never having been bullied, I was at a loss when it started happening to my child. He had been an easy going, peaceful child from birth. There was never a need to yell or hit this kid. So why were other children being so cruel?

I soon found out that children who are kid, who are peaceful, who are thoughtful are bully magnets. My life changed the day my son's science teacher had the courage to whisper to us in the hall after yet another fruitless meeting that we should get our kid the hell out of this school and use our resources to put him in a school where the administration has a real investment in protecting children, not just responding to the squeeky wheel. The vast majority of American simply do not have the financial resources that my family does. What happens to those kids?

Oh, and why was his science teacher there? Because a bully had walked up to my son, completely unprovoked and given my kid a black eye. Even with the teacher in the meeting, even with the written statements of other witnesses, the principal still wanted to talk about "everyone taking responsibility for their part." I would never have believed that things like this happen until it happened to my family.

Enough! The one bully who did stop picking on my son was the only child whose parents had him write a letter to our family and the parents wrote their own letter apologizing. Make these kids and parents take some responsiblity. It actually works.

This "research" sounds like it is giving the "bully" permission futher providing unacoutability to such by even suggesting that the bully is actually the victim? Are you kidding me? When did the lines of research and reality blur? A bully is a bully and a victim is a victim. A bully bullies because he hates and if he "manipulates" his peers to join then that makes him a double threat bully. If he fools you then that makes him a threat to society.