Your kid getting bullied at school

[90Domer]

Yes, we did.

Your job as a parent is to protect your child. To ensure their safety and to teach them how to gain heaven and be successful in life. This whole thing started because someone said that the way to deal with a bully is to stand up to them physically. That is false. That is dangerous, and that is not what we should tell our children. YOU need to protect your child, not send them off into battle at the playground. I am still amazed by the idea that you say the schools and parents do not do anything. It is as if you are saying “I won’t even try.” But encouraging your kid to physically hit and damage another human when you wont even talk to a parent in defense of your child is not the example we should show them. And physicality plays into it. The biggest baddest kid is never the one being bullied. IF talking to the parents does not solve it, why not just start beating it into the parents. Fight them. That is what you expect your kid to do?

Come on. No one is saying that self defense is wrong, only that it is not the go to answer for a bully, or any situation at all.

Amen.

 

[90Domer]

Yes, if those are the ONLY two possibilities I think any parent would agree.

But you are being kind of dramatic here right?

Perhaps neither needs to happen. Perhaps you could, as a parent, do everything possible to make sure neither does happen.

I think parents getting psychological help for their kids as well as asking the kid’s (name removed by moderator)ut about a better eduction system would be a great. No reason to keep a kid where he is miserable. Our job is to get them to Heaven!

 

[John_Lazarus]

My initial reaction was “kneecap time”. But maybe after all that time it just wasn’t psychologically possible.

You must have graduated not too terribly long ago.

Nope. Over thirty years ago.

I went to a public high school. When I went to a Catholic college, I met guys who had been in Christian Brothers schools in big cities. Seems in every one, there was a Brother who, if you were a bully, would invite you (require you) to put on the gloves and get into the ring with him. He was always a good boxer (maybe they assigned one to every school) and he would make a total fool of the “tough guy” in front of everybody and promise a repeat match if the bully didn’t change his ways from that moment on. The “boxing brother” would call the kid’s parents as well. In those days, a lot of Christian brothers students were the children of industrial workers, and the kid would often get worse from his father when he got home.

But it seems times changed. Too bad, I would say.

A lot of the “brothers” were themselves abusers and bullies, and sexual predators to boot. Look up Mount Cashel Orphanage" and “Hughes Commission” on the net. One of the brothers I had was convicted of physical abuse of students. He left the order, moved out west, and became a lay teacher. Last I saw, he’s been suspended for inappropriate punishments meted out to students.

God forgive me, but I have no time for the Irish Christian Brothers.

 

[EasterJoy]

Nope. Over thirty years ago.

A lot of the “brothers” were themselves abusers and bullies, and sexual predators to boot. Look up Mount Cashel Orphanage" and “Hughes Commission” on the net. One of the brothers I had was convicted of physical abuse of students. He left the order, moved out west, and became a lay teacher. Last I saw, he’s been suspended for inappropriate punishments meted out to students.

God forgive me, but I have no time for the Irish Christian Brothers.

It is worse when the abuse comes from someone who ought to be your protector, especially if it is a parent, a priest or a professed religious. Consider what happens to people’s regard for the law if they are subjected to corruption or abuse of authority by the police. The more you ought to have been able to trust the person who does it, the more damaging it is, because the betrayal compounds the crime.

 

[Ridgerunner]

It is the difference between direct physical aggression that is sporadic and on-going covert and relational aggression. To be the victim of relational aggression is to be in an emotional war zone. You never know for sure that you’re not being attacked. You never know for sure who is in on the attack. It is makes it impossible to feel safe.

There is never a gathering that you are invited to. Sometimes, someone who includes you can just plan on being excluded themselves, as if socializing with you is a catching disease. Those are just a few examples.

The overall effect makes getting the snot beaten out of you an attractive alternative, because when your bullies “only” beat you up, at least you know when they aren’t hitting you. They don’t make the blood run down your face and try to claim you’re imagining things. There are places you can hide and ways you can avoid their aggression. The fear of physical pain is nothing compared to the fear that no one will ever really like you, that the front you see from them is fake, the fear that maybe no one really likes you, that everyone is just putting up with you, even the people who defend you. It takes a long time to get over that kind of bullying.

No bully is invulnerable. Where there is a will to retaliate and scare off a single person, there is a way. If one person in a bullying group becomes afraid, all become afraid. I truly do wish some high school bully had used the phone to intimidate me. That goes over the line, legally. I would have been in the sheriff’s office the next morning and the sheriff WOULD have put a “trap” on their phone, and then arrange a three-officer sitdown with the bully and his/her parents at the sheriff’s office or juvenile office.

Maybe law enforcement isn’t like that where you are, but it sure is where I am. A couple of months of house arrest and mandatory periodic reporting to the juvenile office, and a warning that their phone would be periodically monitored, would have a bracing effect on the whole group. How many teenagers would feel comfortable wondering whether law enforcement might be a party to their every phone conversation? How many want to wear a (possibly nonfunctioning) ankle bracelet everywhere they go?

How many parents want to have to spend a lot of money “lawyering up” for a bullying child?

One of the things they do here is give errant teenagers a “tour of the jail”, pointing out the accommodations, detailing the diet, letting the kid hear the sneers and catcalls of the prisoners. Sobering.

Also, I have trouble understanding the social part of this. In every school there are groups that are “on top”, so to speak, there are groups “in the middle”, there are groups “on the bottom”. There are all kinds of them. It is impossible for me to believe there can be a school in which there is no group at all with which one can socialize. One function of groups is mutual support and protection.

But I guess I can understand that, at a point, the bullying is interior. The person bullied almost becomes complicit by cooperating with the pattern of thought the bully imposes. perhaps people really do freeze up mentally.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Nope. Over thirty years ago.

A lot of the “brothers” were themselves abusers and bullies, and sexual predators to boot. Look up Mount Cashel Orphanage" and “Hughes Commission” on the net. One of the brothers I had was convicted of physical abuse of students. He left the order, moved out west, and became a lay teacher. Last I saw, he’s been suspended for inappropriate punishments meted out to students.

God forgive me, but I have no time for the Irish Christian Brothers.

I have read of such things. But never did I hear any of the former students at a CBC tell of such things. I have difficulty believing it is/was pervasive.

 

[pensmama87]

Ah! Insightful. And interesting.

Interesting how parents’ aspirations can sometimes bring about opposite results if the aspiration itself is the driver. My parents were accepting of failure, but ONLY if maximum effort had been applied without favorable result. Failure was bitter, but not so bitter that one couldn’t stand it if one knew one had maxed the effort as best one knew how. Not knowing quite how was frustrating but not, in itself, a failure.

This is really intriguing. I have often thought that focusing on the objective, and accepting nothing else, rather than focusing on the effort is toxic. Perhaps that’s one of the core “lessons” in “MacBeth”. Remembering that MacBeth is deceived by the witches into focusing his mind so intently on the “status”; the “objective” the “state of being” of the earthly goal of kingship, one can think of such deception as fundamentally inhuman; as a rejection of Providence. Regard for Providence is a spur to movement toward a goal we don’t fully understand, not to achieving a particular thing, because we cannot truly know “the thing” (God’s plan) in full. One might be forgiven for thinking of St. Paul’s utterance “I have run the race” as the fruition of his spiritual journey. “I have RUN”, not “I have WON”. He ran without knowing the end, and he accepted that. And we can think of Goethe’s dissatisfied but striving Faust who, according to his pact with the devil, would be damned if he said to a moment “Stay, you are so beautiful”. We cannot rest our minds and souls in an earthly objective. We can only run the race in this life. And that, perhaps, is why we humans are never satisfied. We cannot create a new Eden (of achievement; a stable state of fruition) for ourselves, the gate thereof being guarded by an angel with a sword of flame, and we shouldn’t think we can, or tell our children that they must. We and they can only run the race.

Wonderful! Wonderful! Thank you for giving me this “aha moment”, my friend.

Thanks for sharing it with us. Even though I’m not that scared girl anymore, this was very helpful to me today.

(I need to reread Macbeth, too!)

 

[pensmama87]

No bully is invulnerable. Where there is a will to retaliate and scare off a single person, there is a way. If one person in a bullying group becomes afraid, all become afraid. I truly do wish some high school bully had used the phone to intimidate me. That goes over the line, legally. I would have been in the sheriff’s office the next morning and the sheriff WOULD have put a “trap” on their phone, and then arrange a three-officer sitdown with the bully and his/her parents at the sheriff’s office or juvenile office.

Maybe law enforcement isn’t like that where you are, but it sure is where I am. A couple of months of house arrest and mandatory periodic reporting to the juvenile office, and a warning that their phone would be periodically monitored, would have a bracing effect on the whole group. How many teenagers would feel comfortable wondering whether law enforcement might be a party to their every phone conversation? How many want to wear a (possibly nonfunctioning) ankle bracelet everywhere they go?

How many parents want to have to spend a lot of money “lawyering up” for a bullying child?

One of the things they do here is give errant teenagers a “tour of the jail”, pointing out the accommodations, detailing the diet, letting the kid hear the sneers and catcalls of the prisoners. Sobering.

**Also, I have trouble understanding the social part of this. In every school there are groups that are “on top”, so to speak, there are groups “in the middle”, there are groups “on the bottom”. There are all kinds of them. It is impossible for me to believe there can be a school in which there is no group at all with which one can socialize. One function of groups is mutual support and protection.

But I guess I can understand that, at a point, the bullying is interior. The person bullied almost becomes complicit by cooperating with the pattern of thought the bully imposes. perhaps people really do freeze up mentally.**

Right on with that last part.

Sometimes it’s not that a good group doesn’t exist for the “perpetual victim,” but the child doesn’t know where they are or how to find them. Or they move so frequently they really don’t get the chance to become well integrated. The longest time I lived anywhere as a child was six years. I found a good social group five and a half years in. Then I graduated and my parents moved 3,000 miles away, dropping me off at college along the way. Thankfully, I had developed enough social skills by that point that college went much better, and the social groups were very different there.

Also, bullied children sometimes become bullies themselves to try and impress or at least move the target off their backs. I did this in the seventh grade and it’s one of my biggest regrets. A girl had been assigned to me at the beginning of the year to help me get along since I was a new student. She introduced me to her group of friends, and it was great because I didn’t have to spend weeks agonizing over who it would be OK to ask to sit with at lunch, how to ask them, etc. She was honestly a very sweet girl, and she’d been new herself a few years before. But about halfway through the school year, her “best friend” and the others in the group told me that if I was going to be allowed to keep being their friends, I had to tell this girl that she was no longer welcome to sit with us at lunch. And I did it. Unsurprisingly, a few years later, this same group did the same thing to me, using the same method - I brought in a new girl who then told me I wasn’t welcome. This was after I’d thought I’d “proved” myself to them. But you can’t try and prove yourself to a bully - they just like watching you grovel, until it gets boring.

 

[Captain_America]

Some aspect of all this 2012-2013 concern about bullying has to do with parents wanting to wrap a cocoon around their children to insulate them from the cold, hard world.

Some portion. . . for some people.

 

[pensmama87]

Some aspect of all this 2012-2013 concern about bullying has to do with parents wanting to wrap a cocoon around their children to insulate them from the cold, hard world.

Some portion. . . for some people.

I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean here. This post comes across as sarcastic, and I can’t understand for the life of me why it would be a bad thing for a parent to want to protect their child from targeted harassment, whether it’s physical, verbal, relational, whatever.

Now, I don’t deny that there is a huge problem with teaching accountability these days. But that would seem to be a problem with bullies’ parents, who are often bullies themselves, bullying the school into not punishing the aggressor, because little Johnny or Susie can’t have a consequence, oh my goodness! But that’s not what we’re talking about in this thread, at all.

Children should feel safe and protected. That doesn’t mean that nothing bad will ever happen to them, but they should definitely feel secure enough that when (not if) something bad does happen, they can trust parents and teachers to respond, to teach them the skills necessary to cope, and to have a safe haven to go back to. “Life’s not fair” is an important lesson for children to learn, but it’s one that should be learned gently, not dismissively.

 

[EasterJoy]

No bully is invulnerable. Where there is a will to retaliate and scare off a single person, there is a way. If one person in a bullying group becomes afraid, all become afraid. I truly do wish some high school bully had used the phone to intimidate me. That goes over the line, legally. I would have been in the sheriff’s office the next morning and the sheriff WOULD have put a “trap” on their phone, and then arrange a three-officer sitdown with the bully and his/her parents at the sheriff’s office or juvenile office.

Maybe law enforcement isn’t like that where you are, but it sure is where I am. A couple of months of house arrest and mandatory periodic reporting to the juvenile office, and a warning that their phone would be periodically monitored, would have a bracing effect on the whole group. How many teenagers would feel comfortable wondering whether law enforcement might be a party to their every phone conversation? How many want to wear a (possibly nonfunctioning) ankle bracelet everywhere they go?

How many parents want to have to spend a lot of money “lawyering up” for a bullying child?

One of the things they do here is give errant teenagers a “tour of the jail”, pointing out the accommodations, detailing the diet, letting the kid hear the sneers and catcalls of the prisoners. Sobering.

Also, I have trouble understanding the social part of this. In every school there are groups that are “on top”, so to speak, there are groups “in the middle”, there are groups “on the bottom”. There are all kinds of them. It is impossible for me to believe there can be a school in which there is no group at all with which one can socialize. One function of groups is mutual support and protection.

But I guess I can understand that, at a point, the bullying is interior. The person bullied almost becomes complicit by cooperating with the pattern of thought the bully imposes. perhaps people really do freeze up mentally.

Why are you talking about the police? Relational bullies are not breaking any laws. No one gets thrown in jail for making snarky comments (which are later dismissed as “oh, just joking!”), for turning their back on someone and closing ranks so she cannot join the group. Girls do not call the police when they get a crank call from a slumber party–and what would be the crime they’d report? Is it a crime to call someone up and say, “oh, sorry you couldn’t be here with us” when that “you” was never invited, will never be invited, and everyone knows it? It is a sin to be a mean-spirited little jerk when you find you have the power of the queen bee surrounded by her wannabes (as one author puts it), but so far it is not a crime.

No bully is invulnerable? You think they can be scared off? Oh, no. That does not work. Trust me, with a relational bully, by far the best strategy is to stay off the bully’s radar. Honestly, I think some of them are little sociopaths, the way they are willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces. The way to frustrate a relational bully, if there is one, is to act as if you are barely in her acquaintance, as if her social world and yours are light years away. You have to act not as if you are counter-rejecting her and her company, but as if it never occurred to you that you ever had a future as social companions. The only thing that takes the wind out of their sails is if they find they don’t have leverage with you because being in their social group is something you have dismissed as a possibility without any bitterness. That can be very hard to pull off.

Yes, if a student has just one friend, that helps, but there are schools where some students don’t have a friend. Even to have someone to eat lunch with does not take away the sting of never having the slightest chance of being openly admired by anyone, let alone the sting of being utterly rejected. People, especially girls, want more than to be left alone. They want to be liked. Yes, people can survive bullying, but that doesn’t mean the treatment just rolls off of them like water off of the back of a duck. Bullying hurts, being the object of willful cruelty from someone you’d have liked as a friend hurts, and being rejected for looking or being a way that you didn’t choose and can’t change hurts. It hurts for long after the bullying stops.

Sure, there are ways to learn to reject the little head-games that the bully is trying to run on you, but that doesn’t entirely take away the harm done. If you don’t have the emotional skills to recognize what they’re doing, that is not complicity, either, not any more than a deer is complicit by venturing down to the water where the predators wait, ready to take advantage of the deer’s thirst. I know what you’re saying by using “almost” as a qualifier, but let’s be very clear: Failure to evade a predator is not complicity.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Why are you talking about the police? Relational bullies are not breaking any laws. No one gets thrown in jail for making snarky comments (which are later dismissed as “oh, just joking!”), for turning their back on someone and closing ranks so she cannot join the group. Girls do not call the police when they get a crank call from a slumber party–and what would be the crime they’d report? Is it a crime to call someone up and say, “oh, sorry you couldn’t be here with us” when that “you” was never invited, will never be invited, and everyone knows it? It is a sin to be a mean-spirited little jerk when you find you have the power of the queen bee surrounded by her wannabes (as one author puts it), but so far it is not a crime.

No bully is invulnerable? You think they can be scared off? Oh, no. That does not work. Trust me, with a relational bully, by far the best strategy is to stay off the bully’s radar. Honestly, I think some of them are little sociopaths, the way they are willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces. The way to frustrate a relational bully, if there is one, is to act as if you are barely in her acquaintance, as if her social world and yours are light years away. You have to act not as if you are counter-rejecting her and her company, but as if it never occurred to you that you ever had a future as social companions. The only thing that takes the wind out of their sails is if they find they don’t have leverage with you because being in their social group is something you have dismissed as a possibility without any bitterness. That can be very hard to pull off.

Yes, if a student has just one friend, that helps, but there are schools where some students don’t have a friend. Even to have someone to eat lunch with does not take away the sting of never having the slightest chance of being openly admired by anyone, let alone the sting of being utterly rejected. People, especially girls, want more than to be left alone. They want to be liked. Yes, people can survive bullying, but that doesn’t mean the treatment just rolls off of them like water off of the back of a duck. Bullying hurts, being the object of willful cruelty from someone you’d have liked as a friend hurts, and being rejected for looking or being a way that you didn’t choose and can’t change hurts. It hurts for long after the bullying stops.

Sure, there are ways to learn to reject the little head-games that the bully is trying to run on you, but that doesn’t entirely take away the harm done. If you don’t have the emotional skills to recognize what they’re doing, that is not complicity, either, not any more than a deer is complicit by venturing down to the water where the predators wait, ready to take advantage of the deer’s thirst. I know what you’re saying by using “almost” as a qualifier, but let’s be very clear: Failure to evade a predator is not complicity.

The police thing doesn’t work on all things, and I never claimed it did. But when a known party “crank calls” you on the phone to taunt or whatever, they have stepped over the line legally, and law enforcement has every right to get involved. A snide remark in the hall is different.

Every bully is vulnerable in some way because every human in vulnerable in some way. The trick is to find that vulnerability and use it. I didn’t say it’s easy.

Right from the first I said it may be different for girls. I expect it is. For one thing, being “openly admired by everyone” is not very high in most boys’ system of priorities.
It certainly wasn’t in mine. It may be so with girls. I have no way of knowing that from experience.

There are those who purport to have scientifically learned that women are “collegial” while men are “hierarchical” in the workplace. Possibly there is also an inherent difference in the ways boys and girls expect to be treated socially.

But no matter what, bullying cannot be escaped in life. Not in childhood or in adult life.
Adults usually put a better face on it, but there’s a lot of it. Imaginably, then, the experience of bullying in early life might be a useful learning experience. That doesn’t mean bullying is good at any age, any more than having an ear infection is. But the experience of our childhood ear infections gives us some knowledge how to deal with them as adults.

 

[John_Lazarus]

I have read of such things. But never did I hear any of the former students at a CBC tell of such things. I have difficulty believing it is/was pervasive.

It may have not been pervasive worldwide, or even nationwide. (CBC? Canadian Broadcasting Corp?) The brothers who taught at St Bon’s, St Pat’s, and Brother Rice, and ran the orphanage, were “CFC” after their names.

The Archbishop called for an inquiry – the Hughes Commission – and one of their findings implicated the Abp as probably having known about the abuse – especially as one of the testimonies came from the Abp’s nephew – himself a victim – who said he told the Abp personally.

It was a big scandal here, and I believe one of the contributing factors that allowed the provincal gov’t to dismantle the denominational school system here.

 

[Ridgerunner]

It may have not been pervasive worldwide, or even nationwide. (CBC? Canadian Broadcasting Corp?) The brothers who taught at St Bon’s, St Pat’s, and Brother Rice, and ran the orphanage, were “CFC” after their names.

The Archbishop called for an inquiry – the Hughes Commission – and one of their findings implicated the Abp as probably having known about the abuse – especially as one of the testimonies came from the Abp’s nephew – himself a victim – who said he told the Abp personally.

It was a big scandal here, and I believe one of the contributing factors that allowed the provincal gov’t to dismantle the denominational school system here.

It’s a tragedy that such things went on and, perhaps, that the Archbishop ignored them. It’s too bad as well that Ireland is dismantling the denominational school system.

But then, there is going to be a lot of dismantling of Catholic institutions in the developed world.

 

[EasterJoy]

The police thing doesn’t work on all things, and I never claimed it did. But when a known party “crank calls” you on the phone to taunt or whatever, they have stepped over the line legally, and law enforcement has every right to get involved. A snide remark in the hall is different.

Every bully is vulnerable in some way because every human in vulnerable in some way. The trick is to find that vulnerability and use it. I didn’t say it’s easy.

Right from the first I said it may be different for girls. I expect it is. For one thing, being “openly admired by everyone” is not very high in most boys’ system of priorities.
It certainly wasn’t in mine. It may be so with girls. I have no way of knowing that from experience.

There are those who purport to have scientifically learned that women are “collegial” while men are “hierarchical” in the workplace. Possibly there is also an inherent difference in the ways boys and girls expect to be treated socially.

But no matter what, bullying cannot be escaped in life. Not in childhood or in adult life.
Adults usually put a better face on it, but there’s a lot of it. Imaginably, then, the experience of bullying in early life might be a useful learning experience. That doesn’t mean bullying is good at any age, any more than having an ear infection is. But the experience of our childhood ear infections gives us some knowledge how to deal with them as adults.

What I mean to say is that discretion is often the better part of valor, when it comes to these things. I don’t believe that the differences between girls and boys in schools are entirely biological, although I think that there are real differences. Men who are in situations where direct violence is not tolerated learn the covert methods and use them every bit as skillfully as women. In the old days, these were called “court intrigues”. The problem is that very few 5th grade girls have read either “The Prince” or “The Art of War.” They are in over their heads.

I don’t think having to put up with covert bullying in early life is a learning experience. Having healthy and sane friendships in childhood is what is needed to inoculate against the methods of these semi-sociopathic cultures of covert bullying and power plays. Likewise, the child who spends childhood battling ear infections and childhood diseases is not less healthy than the child who is not. It is immunological victories that strengthen, not the defeats.

 

[EasterJoy]

…Likewise, the child who spends childhood battling ear infections and childhood diseases is not less healthy than the child who is not. It is immunological victories that strengthen, not the defeats.

I meant to say: the child who spends childhood battling ear infections and childhood diseases is not more healthy than the child who is not. Such children can easily be less healthy than vaccinated peers who did not spend a quarter of their childhood losing this battle or that to a virus.

 

[lovedance4ever]

How should this situation be properly handled? The media has been covering this quite a bit lately. I’m sure its been covered here already. Actually, as a new comer here, I am hoping that some of my questions have been original.

Back in my day when I was a kid, things were settled on the playground. I’ve been in a few fights as a kid. Wasn’t bullied after “winning” a playground tussle. I’m not saying we should encourage our kids to fight it out. Times have changed.

I would have a talk with the bully’s folks. Also would have a talk with school administrator or teacher.

Anyway, sad that this is a problem in today’s schools.

This world can be a cruel place…and it’s sad that so many kids have to suffer from bullying.

Now, speaking as someone who has been bullied, I do not know what I would have done without the support and efforts of my parents. So I think it is pertinent that you stay active in your child’s life, which means making yourself as available as possible for discussion, and talking to the parents of the bully. Monitor the situation to the best of your ability; these situations can escalate, and you want to be able to prevent that from happening. Bullying is serious and needs to be treated as such. It’s unfortunate that many parents are unaware of what goes on at school and in the neighborhood. You’re on the right track, in my opinion. And I’ll pray for you.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don’t think having to put up with covert bullying in early life is a learning experience. Having healthy and sane friendships in childhood is what is needed to inoculate against the methods of these semi-sociopathic cultures of covert bullying and power plays. Likewise, the child who spends childhood battling ear infections and childhood diseases is not less healthy than the child who is not. It is immunological victories that strengthen, not the defeats.

I never experienced covert bullying. It was always overt. So, I’m not sure what to even say about covert bullying. I certainly agree that having friendships is one of the ways of defending against bullying.

But it’s simply a fact that bullying exists in adult life, and is actually pretty pervasive. Abuse of power is everywhere. I still think that dealing with it early in life can be a learning experience.

And not to argue analogies, but having had a disease most certainly can protect a person against it later in life. Sometimes encountering one later in life is much more devastating if there was no prior exposure.

That’s not to say bullying itself is a good thing. It isn’t. But post-Original sin, I don’t think we’re going to escape it entirely, no matter what.

 

[90Domer]

My MIL was (and it is a “was” because she is still alive) the worst covert bullier I know. I say was because she became more and more toxic after her husband died–and more overt. She lost family, friends, etc. due to her mouth. She is in need of deep spiritual intervention.

 

[pensmama87]

My MIL was (and it is a “was” because she is still alive) the worst covert bullier I know. I say was because she became more and more toxic after her husband died–and more overt. She lost family, friends, etc. due to her mouth. She is in need of deep spiritual intervention.

:sad_yes:

It was very hard for me to see it when I was still being bullied, but I really feel sorry for people who continue this behavior into adulthood. It traps them into very superficial ways of relating to people and probably doesn’t offer much in the way of peace - they just have to hop around from victim to victim because people figure out what’s going on and won’t put up with it.

Understanding that made me start to get why we are to pray for our enemies.