Your kid getting bullied at school

[Hoosier_Daddy]

I’ll quit after this.

It was a long time ago that I dealt with bullies, and I realize schools are now as likely to punish the bullied as the bully; perhaps more so.

When I was in school, there was fighting all the time, and was considered almost normal.

I will say this about a bullying group. I only had one experience with that. It was miserable. But I somehow figured out that one of that group probably didn’t have his heart in it. I managed to befriend him in a sort of unusual circumstance, and was never bothered by anybody in the group again. It just stopped cold. I don’t know how that happened, but could guess.

bingo!

 

[Ridgerunner]

LOL
I loved the idea of whispering the pet name to him. Not only is that potentially embarrassing but it might remind him of his family, who might not approve of what he is doing. While again I am not pro violence first. I have to laugh at the idea of your son using the language “whip the daylights out of someone” What part of 1950 do you live in that people talk like that?

It is interesting all us old fogies sitting around reliving the time we pulled a ralph from a christmas story on a bully. I would like to hear from a youth about the situation in the schools today. maybe how someone solved a problem with wit and wile instead of a punch to the gut. Like your pet name story.

As an aside does anyone remember that old movie 3 o clock high?

I live in the Ozarks of Southwest Missouri. In some ways, it really is 1950 here. Socially and culturally among a very large number, I guess one could say. In other ways, not at all.

I will say I’m a bit puzzled about the “verbal bullying” thing. Seems some of the awful stories we hear are about that, not physical bullying. First of all, that really is alien to me because when I was young, there wasn’t much of it, no matter how vulnerable some were to it potentially. It was all pretty much physical. Second, and perhaps related to the first, I have difficulty understanding the impact it seems to have. “Back in the day”, verbal bullying was considered a big nothing. If you didn’t knock me down, you just drew a long stare, maybe a smirk, maybe nothing at all, and that was it. Strictly verbal bullying was risky for the bully, I guess, because it could draw a like response or worse, and nothing to do about it.

 

[Captain_America]

I live in the Ozarks of Southwest Missouri. In some ways, it really is 1950 here. Socially and culturally among a very large number, I guess one could say. In other ways, not at all.

I will say I’m a bit puzzled about the “verbal bullying” thing. Seems some of the awful stories we hear are about that, not physical bullying. First of all, that really is alien to me because when I was young, there wasn’t much of it, no matter how vulnerable some were to it potentially. It was all pretty much physical. Second, and perhaps related to the first, I have difficulty understanding the impact it seems to have. “Back in the day”, verbal bullying was considered a big nothing. If you didn’t knock me down, you just drew a long stare, maybe a smirk, maybe nothing at all, and that was it. Strictly verbal bullying was risky for the bully, I guess, because it could draw a like response or worse, and nothing to do about it.

This is really odd. I started grade school in 1968 and there was always some kind or another of bullying.

That’s all the old “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me” stuff.

To some extent, this IS true. But in contemporary philosophy, no.

The thing that one does to bullies is to confront them or have them punished, either by the school or the parents. Usually the more effective solution comes from the bullies peers rather than Force From Above (which may not always be present on the ground).

 

[pensmama87]

I live in the Ozarks of Southwest Missouri. In some ways, it really is 1950 here. Socially and culturally among a very large number, I guess one could say. In other ways, not at all.

I will say I’m a bit puzzled about the “verbal bullying” thing. Seems some of the awful stories we hear are about that, not physical bullying. First of all, that really is alien to me because when I was young, there wasn’t much of it, no matter how vulnerable some were to it potentially. It was all pretty much physical. Second, and perhaps related to the first, I have difficulty understanding the impact it seems to have. “Back in the day”, verbal bullying was considered a big nothing. If you didn’t knock me down, you just drew a long stare, maybe a smirk, maybe nothing at all, and that was it. Strictly verbal bullying was risky for the bully, I guess, because it could draw a like response or worse, and nothing to do about it.

Ridgerunner, are you male?

Verbal bullying, clique behavior, etc. is very prominent in female circles, and I really don’t think it’s new. I almost exclusively experienced this kind of bullying, which is why all this talk about beating up the bully makes no sense to me. It had nothing to do with what I experienced.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Ridgerunner, are you male?

Verbal bullying, clique behavior, etc. is very prominent in female circles, and I really don’t think it’s new. I almost exclusively experienced this kind of bullying, which is why all this talk about beating up the bully makes no sense to me. It had nothing to do with what I experienced.

Yes, I am male.

I do not pretend to know the ways in which girls bully each other, other than just tiny little catty things I have heard about from my daughters, not amounting to much of anything.

It could be a much bigger deal than that, but obviously, I was never a party to it, and don’t know.

I do, however, remember one guy in high school who decided to inappropriately touch the WRONG girl in the hallway. She was very pretty, but came from a rough family. In that school we had big, tall lockers, not those little “half lockers” they have now.

She slammed him into the lockers, and just beat him to a pulp. He possibly rethought the advisability of engaging in sexual harrassment after that.

 

[Kit15]

The vast majority of my bullies were male. (I’m female)

I got punched a few times by one boy when I was in grade school for seemingly no reason other than he got his jollies from it. We’d be playing when suddenly out of nowhere I would get socked in the gut.

Then I moved to another state and switched schools. Then boys were teasing me about my weight and athletic ineptitude. One took to calling me “Chubbo”. I spilled water on myself my first week at this school and they kept loudly asking me why I peed on my uniform…that bit never left me until we graduated. One took advantage of my innocence and coaxed me into saying awful things about my family members because I didn’t know the words they were using. It was like a memory game and I was more than willing to play since everyone was having so much fun.

I have little memory of female bullies until high school. But by then it seemed so juvenille and “straight out of TV” it was really difficult to take it seriously.

 

[EasterJoy]

Ridgerunner, are you male?

Verbal bullying, clique behavior, etc. is very prominent in female circles, and I really don’t think it’s new. I almost exclusively experienced this kind of bullying, which is why all this talk about beating up the bully makes no sense to me. It had nothing to do with what I experienced.

I found the boys’ aggression easy to read–you knew when they were after you, everybody could see it when they were out to get you, and their kind of bullying was usually punished. When it was just a matter of two people getting into a fight, when it was over, it was over.

This was different with the girls. Everything was hidden under a veneer of “nice”. The aggression was covert and relational, and the grudges could last a very long time. I’m not indicting girls in general, but trying to describe the difference between overt aggression and covert aggression.

A few things have changed since then. First of all, boys are punished severely now for what used to be brushed off as “boys being boys”. Secondly, a lot more of kids’ lives are virtual. On that account, bullying is much more relational and covert than it used to be, even among boys and even when it takes physical forms. When overt aggression is forbidden, aggression doesn’t magically go away. It goes underground.

 

[EasterJoy]

…I do, however, remember one guy in high school who decided to inappropriately touch the WRONG girl in the hallway. She was very pretty, but came from a rough family. In that school we had big, tall lockers, not those little “half lockers” they have now.

She slammed him into the lockers, and just beat him to a pulp. He possibly rethought the advisability of engaging in sexual harrassment after that.

Yes, he would seem to have chosen the wrong “victim”! I hope she didn’t literally beat him to a pulp, but even if she had, I don’t know a jury that would convict her. I’m sure his other previous victims were cheering the whole time.

I’m not usually in favor of violence, but I give her “self-defense” a thumbs-up. She probably saved many women from this fellow’s roving hands.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The vast majority of my bullies were male. (I’m female)

I got punched a few times by one boy when I was in grade school for seemingly no reason other than he got his jollies from it. We’d be playing when suddenly out of nowhere I would get socked in the gut.

In grade school, if a boy torments a particular girl, it usually means he’s infatuated with her. He just doesn’t know a better way to get her attention. Later on in life, of course, we think up slightly less stupid, but often equally ineffective ways.

 

[EasterJoy]

In grade school, if a boy torments a particular girl, it usually means he’s infatuated with her. He just doesn’t know a better way to get her attention. Later on in life, of course, we think up slightly less stupid, but often equally ineffective ways.

LOL!! That is if he lives through trying to pick on her!

There are some real bullies out there, people who are cruel for sport. I don’t mean to say otherwise. Still, many of the things that happen to us in grade school were never meant to be as unpleasant to us as they were! Most of us were at least occasionally too worried about ourselves to think much about what our classmates are actually thinking and feeling.

 

[Kit15]

In grade school, if a boy torments a particular girl, it usually means he’s infatuated with her. He just doesn’t know a better way to get her attention. Later on in life, of course, we think up slightly less stupid, but often equally ineffective ways.

I’ve heard of that. But what attention is there to get!? Our parents were friends so I was at his house a lot. I’m exclusively playing games with him most weekends!

Infatuated or not…still hurt to blazes.

 

[John_Lazarus]

I hope I can put this eloquently – or at least semi-sensibly.

I was bullied in school. It pretty much began when I started junior high in a Christian Brothers school. I was not an athlete, so I didn’t fit in. Plus I was the new kid, with reeeally thick glasses. By the end of the first month I knew pretty much every vernacular synonym for “homosexual” because I was called it. And I was beaten, struck, insulted, degraded for three long years.

Fighting back only works if you can reasonably pull it off. Up to that point, I had never fought, so I didn’t know how. Teachers (Christian Brothers) were of no help – the principal blamed me for somehow inviting the bullies to attack me by my behaviour. And as for school mates, I had no friends – only tormentors and those who ignored me. One day in Grade 9, three of these big brave macho bullies ganged up on me. I had trouble defending myself against one, let alone three.

By the time I hit high school, I was pretty much a shell of my former self. I switched schools in high school, but this was not a big town, and I still had difficulty: one tormentor who was more brutal than the previous ones. I was driven to the end of my rope.

One event sticks out in my mind: our phys ed instructor used to take one student each class and get him to put away whatever sports equipment was used. One day it was me, and I was putting away sofball bats in the locker. It was the end of the day and the hallway was deserted. I saw my tormentor approaching…there was noone else around. I remember my hands clenching tight around the handle of a softball bat, and I was saying to myself, “Just give me a reason…”

He walked by without even looking at me.

Right now, even thinking back over thirty years, it feels like two fists in my chest, crushing my heart. I have had to walk away from this post three times.

I have clinical depression and social anxiety which stem directly from my experinces in junior to high school. Some of us are not strong enough to just shrug it off.

I don’t have the answers, but this bullying has to stop, before anyone else dies: bullies, victims, or bystanders.

 

[EasterJoy]

…Right now, even thinking back over thirty years, it feels like two fists in my chest, crushing my heart. I have had to walk away from this post three times.

I have clinical depression and social anxiety which stem directly from my experinces in junior to high school. Some of us are not strong enough to just shrug it off.

I don’t have the answers, but this bullying has to stop, before anyone else dies: bullies, victims, or bystanders.

I think very few of us are strong enough to just shrug it off. It hurts, and the memory of that feeling sticks. The ones who resort to firearms or suicide are the tip of the iceberg. There are many more who carry anxiety throughout life over treatment they didn’t invite and couldn’t stop, over being singled out and having no one come to their defense or stand with them. The trauma ends, but the stress of going through it doesn’t.

You said you only had tormentors and people who ignored you. I bet that among those who “ignored” you were those who were afraid they’d become targets themselves. C.S. Lewis reports getting much the same treatment. The bullies were the social superiors, the leaders, and the teachers’ pets. The ones at the bottom just tried to survive, and many of those were the scholars (rather than the athletes), ironically enough. He hated his school and the whole rotten system, obviously.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I hope I can put this eloquently – or at least semi-sensibly.

I was bullied in school. It pretty much began when I started junior high in a Christian Brothers school. I was not an athlete, so I didn’t fit in. Plus I was the new kid, with reeeally thick glasses. By the end of the first month I knew pretty much every vernacular synonym for “homosexual” because I was called it. And I was beaten, struck, insulted, degraded for three long years.

Fighting back only works if you can reasonably pull it off. Up to that point, I had never fought, so I didn’t know how. Teachers (Christian Brothers) were of no help – the principal blamed me for somehow inviting the bullies to attack me by my behaviour. And as for school mates, I had no friends – only tormentors and those who ignored me. One day in Grade 9, three of these big brave macho bullies ganged up on me. I had trouble defending myself against one, let alone three.

By the time I hit high school, I was pretty much a shell of my former self. I switched schools in high school, but this was not a big town, and I still had difficulty: one tormentor who was more brutal than the previous ones. I was driven to the end of my rope.

One event sticks out in my mind: our phys ed instructor used to take one student each class and get him to put away whatever sports equipment was used. One day it was me, and I was putting away sofball bats in the locker. It was the end of the day and the hallway was deserted. I saw my tormentor approaching…there was noone else around. I remember my hands clenching tight around the handle of a softball bat, and I was saying to myself, “Just give me a reason…”

He walked by without even looking at me.

Right now, even thinking back over thirty years, it feels like two fists in my chest, crushing my heart. I have had to walk away from this post three times.

I have clinical depression and social anxiety which stem directly from my experinces in junior to high school. Some of us are not strong enough to just shrug it off.

I don’t have the answers, but this bullying has to stop, before anyone else dies: bullies, victims, or bystanders.

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. 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.

 

[JimG]

Yes, I am male.

I do not pretend to know the ways in which girls bully each other, other than just tiny little catty things I have heard about from my daughters, not amounting to much of anything.

It could be a much bigger deal than that, but obviously, I was never a party to it, and don’t know.

I do, however, remember one guy in high school who decided to inappropriately touch the WRONG girl in the hallway. She was very pretty, but came from a rough family. In that school we had big, tall lockers, not those little “half lockers” they have now.

She slammed him into the lockers, and just beat him to a pulp. He possibly rethought the advisability of engaging in sexual harrassment after that.

This story reminds me of guy who was rather small for his age but always willing to take on anyone who bullied him. He told me once, 'you don’t always have to fight, you just have to be willing to. One time is usually enough."

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think very few of us are strong enough to just shrug it off. It hurts, and the memory of that feeling sticks. The ones who resort to firearms or suicide are the tip of the iceberg. There are many more who carry anxiety throughout life over treatment they didn’t invite and couldn’t stop, over being singled out and having no one come to their defense or stand with them. The trauma ends, but the stress of going through it doesn’t.

In no way do I mean disrespect for the bullied, but why would this be? You go to grade school, then to high school, which is a totally new world. Then perhaps to college, which is another totally new world. Then into the world which is REALLY a totally new world.

I attended a high school full of some of the toughest hillbillies you could imagine. There was fighting all the time. I am amused to remember that I suddenly realized after maybe two months of college that I had not only not been in a fight, I hadn’t even seen one.

I mentioned this to a new friend in that college and told him about my amazement. He was amazed that I was amazed. “Of course not” he said. He then went on to tell me how, in his Catholic high school, there was almost never fighting. I was just dumbstruck. I asked some others, and they reported much the same.

I was about as “up from the country” as anybody could ask for in an urban Jesuit college. Weirdly, I was from the most southern place of any of the students I knew, and I was only from SW Mo. My accent was amusing to them, and I must have been asked to say “I like ice” a thousand times, to general amusement. People were amused, but it wasn’t a “bullying” thing. Even my Anglo/Norman name was of interest to some of them, with all of their Polish, German, Lithuanian, Italian and Eastern European names. I remember remarking about that, and they didn’t believe me that I had never imagined a significant number of people with names like theirs. So I brought a phone book from home, and sure enough, all “Smith” and “Jones” and “Shelton” and “McCracken”. People passed it around as if it was a runic artifact or something, just discovered in a hidden compartment in the gunwale of a long-buried Viking ship.

Major culture shocks, and I did take some ribbing, but most of it was pleasant. Being in that “new world” was not only surprising in a lot of ways, it was also pleasant at least in the way that I didn’t have to fight my way through it. I did have one fight, with a drunken kid from Milwaukee with a German last name, and for no real reason that I can recall. But we were both too drunk to do any real damage. I couldn’t credit it with being a real fight, it was so sloppy and inept.

By the time I went to grad school (another totally new world) I had learned not to wear white socks with a suit and to speak a passable imitation of a northern dialect. Well, maybe not so passable. My wife confessed, after a few months of dating, that she considered me a hick when we met, and, of course, ignorant, because, she being from the north assumed everyone with a southern accent was irredeemably ignorant. So I guess I must have let my linguistic guard down some with her. Now, I no longer try, though I think I could still speak Yankee if my life depended on it.

I like “new worlds”, and I am put to wonder about how people don’t know they’re in them, and that they’re really new, and that life is full of new worlds. But again, I’m not criticizing those who bear the permanent scars. I believe them. I just have a failure of comprehension in that regard.

Is there something new now? Something different?

 

[pensmama87]

In no way do I mean disrespect for the bullied, but why would this be? You go to grade school, then to high school, which is a totally new world. Then perhaps to college, which is another totally new world. Then into the world which is REALLY a totally new world.

I attended a high school full of some of the toughest hillbillies you could imagine. There was fighting all the time. I am amused to remember that I suddenly realized after maybe two months of college that I had not only not been in a fight, I hadn’t even seen one.

I mentioned this to a new friend in that college and told him about my amazement. He was amazed that I was amazed. “Of course not” he said. He then went on to tell me how, in his Catholic high school, there was almost never fighting. I was just dumbstruck. I asked some others, and they reported much the same.

I was about as “up from the country” as anybody could ask for in an urban Jesuit college. Weirdly, I was from the most southern place of any of the students I knew, and I was only from SW Mo. My accent was amusing to them, and I must have been asked to say “I like ice” a thousand times, to general amusement. People were amused, but it wasn’t a “bullying” thing. Even my Anglo/Norman name was of interest to some of them, with all of their Polish, German, Lithuanian, Italian and Eastern European names. I remember remarking about that, and they didn’t believe me that I had never imagined a significant number of people with names like theirs. So I brought a phone book from home, and sure enough, all “Smith” and “Jones” and “Shelton” and “McCracken”. People passed it around as if it was a runic artifact or something, just discovered in a hidden compartment in the gunwale of a long-buried Viking ship.

Major culture shocks, and I did take some ribbing, but most of it was pleasant. Being in that “new world” was not only surprising in a lot of ways, it was also pleasant at least in the way that I didn’t have to fight my way through it. I did have one fight, with a drunken kid from Milwaukee with a German last name, and for no real reason that I can recall. But we were both too drunk to do any real damage. I couldn’t credit it with being a real fight, it was so sloppy and inept.

By the time I went to grad school (another totally new world) I had learned not to wear white socks with a suit and to speak a passable imitation of a northern dialect. Well, maybe not so passable. My wife confessed, after a few months of dating, that she considered me a hick when we met, and, of course, ignorant, because, she being from the north assumed everyone with a southern accent was irredeemably ignorant. So I guess I must have let my linguistic guard down some with her. Now, I no longer try, though I think I could still speak Yankee if my life depended on it.

I like “new worlds”, and I am put to wonder about how people don’t know they’re in them, and that they’re really new, and that life is full of new worlds. But again, I’m not criticizing those who bear the permanent scars. I believe them. I just have a failure of comprehension in that regard.

Is there something new now? Something different?

I think for me it really came down to never learning how to cope with it. I developed codependent traits to deal with bullying, and it made me an easy target for new bullies once I was in a new environment (it’s like blood in water for sharks). The most help I ever had from my parents was, “you’re oversensitive. Get over it. Just ignore it.” I didn’t have a supportive home environment so I got to a place where I really believed there had to be something wrong with me, to the core, for this to keep happening, and for it to bother me as much as it did.

I also grew up in a home where achievement was everything and failure was unacceptable. The idea that a person has dignity just because they are a child of God is foreign to my parents, especially my father. Love was metered out based on achievement.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think for me it really came down to never learning how to cope with it. I developed codependent traits to deal with bullying, and it made me an easy target for new bullies once I was in a new environment (it’s like blood in water for sharks). The most help I ever had from my parents was, “you’re oversensitive. Get over it. Just ignore it.” I didn’t have a supportive home environment so I got to a place where I really believed there had to be something wrong with me, to the core, for this to keep happening, and for it to bother me as much as it did.

I also grew up in a home where achievement was everything and failure was unacceptable. The idea that a person has dignity just because they are a child of God is foreign to my parents, especially my father. Love was metered out based on achievement.

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.

 

[90Domer]

I think switching schools is a viable option, but I think other avenues should be explored first and if they all do not work out, then yes, switching schools is probably best. Same would apply for jobs, try to resolve the issue, if it isn’t possible, then find a new job.

I guess what it comes down to is that all kids are different and handle/react to situations differently. It is important to know what they are comfortable with and figure out an approach that works best for them to make sure they have a healthy and happy childhood.

We switched schools when the admin did nothing. We even had our son’s doc in on the conversations. When he started with chronic headaches, holding in his rage, it was all over. This school was useless!

 

[EasterJoy]

In no way do I mean disrespect for the bullied, but why would this be? You go to grade school, then to high school, which is a totally new world. Then perhaps to college, which is another totally new world. Then into the world which is REALLY a totally new world.

I attended a high school full of some of the toughest hillbillies you could imagine. There was fighting all the time. I am amused to remember that I suddenly realized after maybe two months of college that I had not only not been in a fight, I hadn’t even seen one.

I mentioned this to a new friend in that college and told him about my amazement. He was amazed that I was amazed. “Of course not” he said. He then went on to tell me how, in his Catholic high school, there was almost never fighting. I was just dumbstruck. I asked some others, and they reported much the same.

I was about as “up from the country” as anybody could ask for in an urban Jesuit college. Weirdly, I was from the most southern place of any of the students I knew, and I was only from SW Mo. My accent was amusing to them, and I must have been asked to say “I like ice” a thousand times, to general amusement. People were amused, but it wasn’t a “bullying” thing. Even my Anglo/Norman name was of interest to some of them, with all of their Polish, German, Lithuanian, Italian and Eastern European names. I remember remarking about that, and they didn’t believe me that I had never imagined a significant number of people with names like theirs. So I brought a phone book from home, and sure enough, all “Smith” and “Jones” and “Shelton” and “McCracken”. People passed it around as if it was a runic artifact or something, just discovered in a hidden compartment in the gunwale of a long-buried Viking ship.

Major culture shocks, and I did take some ribbing, but most of it was pleasant. Being in that “new world” was not only surprising in a lot of ways, it was also pleasant at least in the way that I didn’t have to fight my way through it. I did have one fight, with a drunken kid from Milwaukee with a German last name, and for no real reason that I can recall. But we were both too drunk to do any real damage. I couldn’t credit it with being a real fight, it was so sloppy and inept.

By the time I went to grad school (another totally new world) I had learned not to wear white socks with a suit and to speak a passable imitation of a northern dialect. Well, maybe not so passable. My wife confessed, after a few months of dating, that she considered me a hick when we met, and, of course, ignorant, because, she being from the north assumed everyone with a southern accent was irredeemably ignorant. So I guess I must have let my linguistic guard down some with her. Now, I no longer try, though I think I could still speak Yankee if my life depended on it.

I like “new worlds”, and I am put to wonder about how people don’t know they’re in them, and that they’re really new, and that life is full of new worlds. But again, I’m not criticizing those who bear the permanent scars. I believe them. I just have a failure of comprehension in that regard.

Is there something new now? Something different?

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.

I like to call relational aggression “the gift that keeps on giving,” because it inspires paranoia and self-doubt that keep going long after the abusers have stopped doing a thing to you. There is gaslighting (where they are attacking you behind your back and then claim that you are imagining things–named after the movie “Gaslight”.) There is the pointed marginalization, both subtle and not at all subtle. For instance, they call you from a slumber party you weren’t invited to, make a rude comment, and then hang up to the sound of hysterical laughing in the background. You didn’t even know there was a party, but they thought of you long enough to make the effort to be certain you knew you were excluded. 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.