Bullying - the rights/wrong and your views.

[Jude]

[SPLIT OUT FROM OTHER TOPIC - JT]

JR you can be such a wet towel at times....


The hills are alive with the sound of music.... tra la la la ........

Wet towels can be such FUN at times !!

Hmmm I've hear what they do with wet towels at the ends - have been caught by a flicked tea towel when my son whas showing me what they did to him..... I hope you aren't a bully JR..... I would be very sad...

[J.R.]

JR you can be such a wet towel at times....


The hills are alive with the sound of music.... tra la la la ........

Wet towels can be such FUN at times !!

Hmmm I've hear what they do with wet towels at the ends - have been caught by a flicked tea towel when my son whas showing me what they did to him..... I hope you aren't a bully JR..... I would be very sad...

BULLY ???

MOI ???

N-E-V-E-R.

I got beaten at school for giving a bully a double dose of his own medicine.

[Jude]

You see John, that's where it all falls apart - the bully blullies, so you try to teach the bully something by bullying them - so all they have learnt is that they need to bully harder - what you should have done was take him to a master, have him confess, appologise to those he had bullied, had his tuck locker key removed and he generally not allowed to join in any house games until he had learnt his lesson. Plus the reasons as to why he bullied in the first place - most bullies are such as they are because the environment they grew up in - CH takes on a huge number of troubled children who have problems at home - if all they see at home is Dad beating Mum or vice versa and shouting and screaming and hitting, then that is the only thing they can learn...

Take that child and put it into a different environment but don't re-educate that child, then as soon as that child feels pressure in ANY form, they resort to their only known device - BULLYING.

That is why it is SO HARD TO STAMP IT OUT!

[BTaylor]

Have to say I disagree Jude. A hefty thump tended to be much more effective. They certainly thought twice before bullying again.

[J.R.]

I await DavebytheSea's comments with baited breath !

[englishangel]

I await DavebytheSea's comments with baited breath !

what did you bait it with John?

Seriously, Violence begets violence cf.Iraq

[AKAP]

I'm not sure the world falls so easily into groups of bullies and bullied.
Children (and some adults) are very good at knowing when they have been bullied but do not always recognise when they are the one doing the bullying.

[Jude]

Man's inhummanity to man

violence begets violence -

an eye for an eye -

what you see is what you get -

Everyone has the capability to be a bully, you switch off your morals, your soul and your heart and you thump - wham - that hurt them not you. That told them didn't it.... what about those who are watching? Do you want them to feel the nothingness of being violent? Look into a bullied childs eyes and see the vacancy - it's there because everything that was there has been stripped away.

All they have known
and all they have seen
is the violence that makes up
a terrible dream

to stop the cycle of war, violence, distrust, bullying, we should all first examine ourselves according to our own moral code - our personal one - not the one that sociaety paints us with..

do you want to be a bully - what do you get out of it? Enjoy seeing pain? Why bully in the first place? It' s a learnt instrument - put a speed freak behind the wheels of a car - and what you have is worse than an accident waiting to happen - it's murder on the loose..

Stop. Think. Listen. Help.

[Jude]

Wow - that was a bit deep - I'm going for a shower - this cold in my head must be mushing up my brain, not to mention I currently sound like a very cracked gramaphone and have a wheeze of old leather bellows....

I did like my poem though - for those of you in the Pink Floydd era - think of Dark side of the Moon, and Reprieve - my poem fits rather well - I will go and create poetry in the shower and sing - that should sort out the voice completely!!

[DavebytheSea]

I await DavebytheSea's comments with baited breath !

Hmmm. A lot of sensitive thought is here and I am not sure I have anything useful to add. I agree whole-heartedly with Jude (though she moves in an intellectual, psychological and emotional stratosphere that may be a little beyond my ken) and Mary "Violence begets violence" and also with AKAP who, dare I say it, for an ex-policeman always speaks with tremendous understanding and sensitivity. (I am right in thinking you are an ex-policeman, aren't I?)

I am pondering a little about where our sympathy should lie; of course, we all rush to the defence of the victim, but what hurt makes the bully behave as he does? Does it matter that he does not even know that he too is the victim of his upbringing and environment? Is it important that we should seek to address his needs as well as those of his victim?

..... and where does all this leave the likes of international bullies - the nations that seek to impose their will on others by the use of force? A Korean neighbour of mine in Flushing relishes the nuclear aspirations of her northern neighbour as, even though she is opposed to communism, she believes it is even more important to add a counterbalance in the area to the international terrorism of President Bush. I am not saying she is right, perhaps merely that I should not be too ready to express an opinion either way. All I know is that violence, whether by an individual or a state rarely produces a satisfactory result.

And Jude, I really liked your poem! Can you not place a copy on the limerick thread - it more than merits inclusion.

[Jude]

Have to say I disagree Jude. A hefty thump tended to be much more effective. They certainly thought twice before bullying again.

That may be what you thought at the time - but have you ever stopped to think about the repurcussions of your actions? Only that the bullies stayed away from you, and those protected by you.

My father was a bully. He was also a teacher. He had what was called the "golder Slipper" at what started out as "Worthing Boys", but moved onto Worthing 6th Form (yes Worthing as in the station as in West Sussex, as in Being Earnest)

His golden slipper was a large smelly trainer which he used on just about everyone I have ever met. And when he came home, because I was from his previous marriage, and he and his new wife didn't want me but felt social pressure to adopt me (I was in foster care until I was 6 - in Newcastle upon Tyne - i was a georgie, he & she were Cornish, & we lived in Angmering..) he got very wound up, frustration alot of the time, and he had been a bully as a child (but also been bullied by his elder sister) and oh boy could he hit, and go on hitting, he went beyond the err - stop, and the more he hit me the longer he seemed to go on, determined I wouldn't sit down for a week.. and he would use anything that came to hand - piece of wood with nails in, pipe, wooden spoon, shoes, branch off a tree.. you name it.

When I became a parent I knew i had to discipline my children so that hey knew right from wrong, and yes from No, so I would give them 3 chances - and on the 3rd I would smack. Once when Chris was being a total pain I lost it, and started smacking and smacking, then it hit me - i was turning into my father... I have never felt so awful, ashamed, terrified, and i ran and locked myself in the bathroom crying.

I hope that I have stopped the bullying cycle in this family - but I very nearly didn't - I could have so easily turned into my father - and this knowledge has shown me just how easy it is to "snap". I have been there. I know that feeling.

I brought up my two on my own (their father went before Sarah now 18 was 1) I taught instead to walk away, use language skills, and to try to find out why someone is a bully. They still get hit on now and again - even at 21 and 18, but I have never seen either of them lift a hand in anger.

It's a damn hard lesson, you have to enforce it time and time again, and as a parent I never used their rooms as punishment bases - the kitchen or the stairs or a hall. Their bedrooms were/are their sanctuary, and if I felt I was losing the battle, I would walk away until I was calm again.

When I pulled Chris out of CH - 14th Feb 1997, I was feeling 2 emotions - maternal instinct to Kill the people who had made him feel suicidal, 2 angry as to why he was being bullied. He couldn't go to school until September, so he stayed at home here in Gloucestershire .During the Easter holiday I was working in Basingstoke - Chris decided to show Sarah (9) how good deoderant was as a flammable aeorsol.... she was in her bedroom, when he sprayed her bedroom door then set fire to it..... He knew he had doone major wrong when the smoke alarms went off and the door was damaged, so he phoned me at work. I have to say it was the longest 90 miles I have ever driven, but it enabled me to get most of the anger out of my system by the time I had got home.

I made him polish the door, pay for the polish, and write an essay on why what he had done was dangerous.... I could have killed him I was so angry that he had nearly killed his sister and himself.

That was instinct - maternal.

Beatings however, are bullying

[BTaylor]

I'm not talking beatings here Jude, I'm talking sticking up for yourself.

Maybe you and I have a different idea of what bullying is. Mine comes from personal experience and I'm only commenting on personal circumstances. I'm sure it's different for each and every one of us.

[Jude]

I'm not talking beatings here Jude, I'm talking sticking up for yourself.

Maybe you and I have a different idea of what bullying is. Mine comes from personal experience and I'm only commenting on personal circumstances. I'm sure it's different for each and every one of us.

But where does sticking up for yourself stop and beating someone up begin?
first it starts with nasty words, then a flip, or a pinch, then a slap, then a whack, and the next thing is you are on the floor beating the crap out of eachother - it's worse than boxing - at least they have rules!

Of course bullying is different for each of us - just like the taste of an orange is different for each and every one of us, it's working out a common line as to where defence of yourself starts and finishes and where bullying starts and ends...

mine too comes from deep personal circumstances - I used your quote as it is a typical phrase used to justify beating someone up. Not taking it out on you per se - just as a phrase that is often used.

Another is "well I was beaten as a child, and it's done me no harm" - no it does you no harm if you don't think about it, or feel it - then it comes back to haunt you, torment you and eventually it overwhelms you.

[Katharine]

Some very profound thoughts in this thread. I am very lucky, I don't have any personal experience of this, just a feeling of exclusion but nothing more than that. However, I do think it is necessary to help both parties to cope with life - I shall call it life to encompass feelings, emotions and all else. How this help comes is the very real problem. The bullied must find a place of sanctuary where he/she will be believed and understood however haltingly the story comes out. The bullied must have the confidence that it is worth telling the story, that things WILL change afterwards. The bully must then be seen to - and I don't mean physically, as I agree so wholeheartedly that violence begets violence.

[Jude]

Some very profound thoughts in this thread. I am very lucky, I don't have any personal experience of this, just a feeling of exclusion but nothing more than that. However, I do think it is necessary to help both parties to cope with life - I shall call it life to encompass feelings, emotions and all else. How this help comes is the very real problem. The bullied must find a place of sanctuary where he/she will be believed and understood however haltingly the story comes out. The bullied must have the confidence that it is worth telling the story, that things WILL change afterwards. The bully must then be seen to - and I don't mean physically, as I agree so wholeheartedly that violence begets violence.

Katharine
I am having psychothereapy to help me over my father's torture of me - even as an adult he talked to my children as adults and me as a 6 year old - so it continues! I have had nothing to do with him for 3 years now - but he still haunts me.