I'm SO sick of bullies! Are you?!

[KristyHall]

Quote:
Bullying is a horrible thing, and what you went through is terrible.

Growing up in rural Alabama as a non Christian mix blood I was bullied terribly myself and I am fortunate enough to have gone down a better path where I focused my rage into more constructive efforts as a teen. Some people have gone down a self destructive path or a path where they lash out at others, like in school shootings. It's a terrible thing and I am so glad to see people cracking down on bullying more and more.

 

[Year of the Rooster]

Recently at our high school we had a presentation called Rachel's Challenge. I don't know if any of you have heard of it, but it is about Rachel Joy Scott, who was the first student killed during the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado. The two boys who carried out the shooting were said to have been bullied many times and wanted to get back at the students in the school. There are many books about Rachel and her story. As of now, the student body at my school wants to do something to help raise money and discourage bullying.

 

[babylady4]

CindyL, I went through the SAME issues in JR. High AND HS; but instead of it being just one group of girls it was just about my entire class, the class below me, and upperclassmen as well. It makes life VERY difficult to have almost an entire student body ganging up on a few kids......

All of you who say 'ignore them', forget it! It does NOT work! I also find it rather pompus that somebody would say it is just how the pecking order is and the strong will bully the weak...... RIGHT. Some of us did not fight back becase we were told NOT to, and some of their tormentors were karate students...... how are you supposed to defend yourself against somebody who could karate chop you?????? The only thing that stopped the bullies was that I started dating one of the most muscular guys in the school.... and then ended up marrying him!

I have always told my kids to NEVER treat anybody in any way they would not like to be treated themselves...... and if they are bullied you give them fair warning they are messing with fire and then if they keep it up let them have it. So far so good! I have had to intervene at times and get the school involved to deal with kids who have been giving my kids grief, but that has been it.


TrystInn; you can come on over for Lox and bagles anytime!

The media grabbed on to the possibility that the Columbine events were due to bullying: this has been proven to not bo the case at all. I am glad that something good came out of that tragedy though.

 

[HHandbasket]

I was the smallest person in my household. I was the middle child, but I was very tiny compared to my siblings. For a lot of reasons I won't go into here, I suffered a tremendous amount of bullying and physical abuse at the hands of my older sister and younger brother. When I went to school, I apparently put off that "Bully Me, Please!" air -- Got bullied by every tough kid in school and made fun of by the goody-goody kids who came from "good Christian" families in our community (biggest floozy in high school was a girl named Charity, the Nazarene pastor's daughter).

Bullying is nothing new. I spent most of my youth praying every night that "the big quake" would come to California once and for all and that the ground would just open up and swallow either me or all the people who tormented me (parents, siblings, schoolmates, etc.). I remember wanting to go to sleep and not wake up in the morning and face another day of being bullied... felt that way for more years than I can think of. I never had more than 1, maybe 2 friends at a time, and that never lasted. It would end as soon as THEY were made fun of for hanging out with a dork like me. So I don't know that I was suicidal or homicidal, but I did spend most of the time between the ages of 10 and 20 hoping that either I would die or that most of the people around me would. I got beat up, made fun of, had my clothes stolen, my books stolen, dirty notes put in my locker, boys made fun of me, called me ugly names (all the way up through senior year). I'm 48, and it's still hard to talk about. I still want to vomit and feel the twinge in my stomach every time I hear about it happening to another kid or every time I hear someone who couldn't POSSIBLY know what it feels like to be bullied to tell those of us who are bullied to "just get over it".

The things that happen to us in our youth shape who we become.

Most of the people who do the bullying are not necessarily the rough kids, either. One of the kids that bullied me the most was a local pastor's daughter who went to my school. One of the boys who made horrible fun of me TO MY FACE throughout my sophomore and junior years (there was a group of them) was from a prominent, well-to-do family in our small town. The real bullies are usually, sad to say it, the rich kids and the preachers' kids (i.e., the ones who think they are untouchable because they can hide behind mummy and daddie).

 

[ChickenWisperer]

Quote:
We had it when I was in middleschool. It changed one person that I know of to an extent; but the rest were indignant. She came to find me after the program, crying. She apologized profusely, for everything she had ever put me through, and hugged me. At first, I thought it was one of those things; they say sorry but don't mean it. She is still friendly to this day. Not saying she is a great person now; still jaded and filled with hate - but she's changing for the better and I hope she continues to grow. Some people can be reached by things like that and others cant.

It was really touching, though!

 

[GammaPoppyLilyFlutter]

I hate bullying!

At a school I once went to there was a teacher who would verbally bully the students. He told one girl from France that she should be deported!

And the worst part is, he had (has) tenure

 

[FruitChicken]

Quote:
That's pretty ironic. I was raised in Brooklyn, NY as a Christian and had Orthodox Jews shove me off the sidewalk, call me names, and push us non-Jews out of the neighborhood. They'd put up Anti-Arab stuff in the neighborhood and a woman who lived near me tried to rip it down...5 men beat the crap out of her. It works both ways, you know. You shouldn't be saying that it's just "Christian America" that you can't expect any better from. There are plenty of people out there who don't act like that. Don't even get me started....

 

[Dunkopf]

It's amazing what a big issue bullying became after Columbine. I was always fat in school and got bullied and called names on a regular basis. I never had a desire to shoot up the school. Kids are mean to each other. They're coping with a lot of things growing up. I think Klebold and Harris were a real exception. Columbine set a precedent. With the huge increase in gun ownership the last 30 years or so, it's not surprising that bullied kids fight back. All the sudden they don't need to be a good fighter to get revenge. The question to me is why they kill kids that had nothing to do with the bullying. It's literally 1 in 10 million kids that are bullied that would think about taking anyone's life. I really think the whole bullying crackdown is kind of overblown these days. At our school if a kid doesn't like someone all they have to do is claim that the other kid called them a name and the other kid gets a Friday detention. No witnesses required. It needs to be addressed, but as usual it's a one solution fits all attempt at solving the problem and it doesn't seem to work too well.

Bullying sucks. No doubt about it. Bullies usually get their just dues though.

 

[ChickenWisperer]

Quote:
That's what the TEACHER said. Not her opinion.

And even though there are, that doesn't make what's happened to her (I think?) go away.