this post was submitted on 05 May 2024
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"maybe" was how my mother said "no."
"Ignore them and they'll go away" in the context of bullying. Hint; it took a mental breakdown and violence to make it stop, back in the mid-90s.
Anything having to do with Christianity.
Yep, I had a bully in elementary school and my mom tried to work with the system of teachers, principal, admin, etc. for months, and nothing at all was ever done about it.
Finally when the bullying escalated to physical levels and started to impact my personality outside of school, my parents basically told me that while I might still get in trouble at school, they wouldn't be upset with me at home if I did decide to stand up to the kid. They stressed to me the fine line between standing up for yourself and becoming a bully yourself, and sent me on my way.
A few days later, my bully found me at lunch and started messing with me. Pushing over my stack of booking, taking some food off my tray...I didn't do anything until he tried to push me out of my seat then it was kind of blurry, but basically I just took a swing at him and knocked him back out of his seat and he hit his head against the wall and started crying.
I did get in some trouble at school but nothing too bad (especially once Mom was called in and she explained how if they tried to suspend me, she'd put them on blast for how they'd ignored the situation for so long), and that kid was nice as pie to me for the rest of our schooling.
In middle school, I had an incident where a kid a grade above me (he was held back, so he should've been a high schooler by this point and was HUGE) began to mess with me, unprompted, at the end of the day.
He stepped on my shoes as we walked, poked me, called me names, etc. When I turned around and called him a bitch and kept walking, he sucker punched me and ran. It was so bad I ended up in the emergency room with stitches.
Anyways, my parents were called and they threatened legal action. The school begged them not to, because they were "going to take care of it, we promise." Once we found out he was only suspended for a week, my parents got all the info they needed to press charges for assault. He ended up in juvie.
Looking back, it's a shame he ended up "in the system," but that's what he gets for being a bitch. Lol
They should have gone after the school too; that's horrible!
“Ignore them and they’ll go away” really is rubbish advice. But that’s of course not to say that the only other step is violence.
My oldest daughter didn’t have a great time in secondary school (UK, age 11-16) but through persistent discussions and alarm raising to the school, the bullies eventually got the message and left her alone. I’m happy to say she’s having a wonderful time in college now (UK, age 16-18).
Unfortunately that's a minority of cases. Most bullies in my experience, and especially those bullies that are themselves using physical violence, only respond to violence.
Don't meet violence with violence as your first option. But keep it on the table. It's a viable solution if nothing else works. Some people just don't respond to anything short of getting punched in the mouth, especially kids/teens with their brain chemistry fucked six ways to Sunday by puberty.
Something something “speak softly but carry a big stick.”
Basically, pacifism without the capacity for violence is simply inviting abuse. If you don’t have the capacity for violence, pacifism isn’t a choice; It’s being forced upon you as a tool of oppression. In order to be used effectively, it must be a choice, which requires the threat of violence if pacifism fails.
My father pulled that "just ignore it" shit, too. Somehow it wasn't the bully's fault for attacking me, it was my fault for being such an entertaining target.