Your kid getting bullied at school

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It’s a case by case thing with me.
For myself, it was simple and it worked for me: always fight back. I got left alone after a time. My parents knew what was happening, my father taught me some self defense things to do, that helped. But I did see occasionally see cases of other kids who were worse off and who could have used some intervention so I’m of the opinion that there is no one size fits all cases. The bullied can be helped but part of that help is to learn how to move toward some resolution depending on the degree and the type of the bullying. Otherwise what do they do when they grow up and their support structure isn’t around when they run into new bullying? The main thing I learned was to stand up for myself, something that has stood me well in life.
 
Times are different indeed. I was raised different too. Sometimes violence WAS encouraged to “stand up for yourself” I would certainly not encourage my child to hurt someone to get them to back off, but I would encourage my child to stand up for themselves. It would take a lot for me to involve the police or even the school. I think just trying to cover the problem by sending them to a different school might work. But then again, it might not. There are bully’s all over. I would probably only do that if I felt my child’s life was in danger.

I am against violence these days, but I believe I have read in the Catechism that we are allowed to defend ourselves. There are worst things that can happen that taking a butt-whipping by another kid. So, I would encourage my child try to solve problems without violence but to defend themselves if physically attacked. If it is only verbally, I would most likely just encourage my child to ignore them and get away from the bully. I was teased a lot because I was obese as a teenager and I lived. There are worst things that can happen. But, I am old school and I know things are changing 🤷
 
pensmama87 said:
: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.
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Amen. You summed this up so beautifully. And I do pray for my MIL because I don’t think she knows happiness.
 
Ridgerunner said:
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.
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I don’t disagree with you entirely. I only mean that the only time someone comes out better after having been bullied (or going through any kind of suffering) is when it is dealt with well. If you cope with it badly, it weakens you, instead.

The fortunate thing about emotional traumas is that we can have a sort of a do-over when it comes to coping with them. If we cope badly with some trauma at the time, we can go back years later and learn to think about what happened in a different way. We can use our consideration of the trauma to learn new ways of coping and new ways of conducting ourselves. We don’t have to carry the scars around forever; it is possible to have the situation transformed.

I used to teach that in religious education: that is, that the Cross proves that very bad things can happen to those God loves. The message of the Resurrection, though, is that God can take the worst thing that ever happened and transform it into the best thing that ever happened. That is what is possible for those who are willing to trust in God. The experience of being bullied is not an exception. Whether the violence of your enemies is overt or covert, Our Lord is no stranger to it.
 
While I do believe bullying is a huge problem, I think it’s become the “cause celeb” and EVERYTHING is labeled as bullying. I recently witnessed an adult talking to a kid and being very jovial and a bit teasing – NOTHING inappropriate at all – and the kid said “you’re bullying me.” It’s a bit like the sky is falling mentality where everyone’s claiming it and people are starting to ignore it when it really happens.
 
I appreciated the walk down memory lane (I actually posted a lot on this thread!) but it is four years old, so a new thread should probably be started.
 
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