Bullied Students More Likely to Bring Weapon to School

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N6CjGNCjL0

Having been bullied in public school here in lower Alabama during the heyday of desegregation in the 70's, and quitting after transferring to another district didn't help, I've never understood what makes up the psyche of those who feel comfortable even powerful by inflicting their own unhealthy agendas onto those around them.

So often these days kids kill other kids when they can't take it anymore. But I wonder why they don't just quit school like I had too, rather than being killed, killing themselves, or going to prison.

Their lack of hope, the desperation they must feel.

12 Deadliest School Shootings in U.S. History (2012)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq_wO_Ii1b0

Sandy Hook Massacre A CLOSER LOOK

www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3aYQEJXJfo

The Columbine Killers - Mass School Shooting

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF5o2IBd_sw

Virginia Tech School Shooting

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uECizhheY8

Nevada Middle School Mass Shooting, 2 Shot, 2 Dead

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b34ncm-bvg

Colorado School Shooting Arapahoe High

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImEykAEatic

As a quiet, fat, awkward kid I was targeted by bullies a few times. For a few weeks when I was 13, two or more kids whom I had no previous awareness of started following me when I walked home from school. Initially they taunted and threatened me until finally one day they decided to attack me. I kept walking as they ran up behind me hitting me in the back of the head and then running away. One of them ran around and cracked me on the forehead with a stick or rock, I kept walking. We got to the park and one of them charged and tackled me to the ground I got up and kept walking. I went to school the next day with a knot on my head and a black eye, expecting to be harassed and assaulted again. Surprisingly I never saw them again.

The moral of this story is that I didn't satisfy their desire to feel like they broke me. I also didn't abandon my nature to abstain from violence.

I detest bullying and violence. I have great empathy for those who are targeted and abused. I support and encourage people to seek help and defend themselves. That said as long as people continue to give in to impulses and retaliate, the cycle will perpetuate.

I was never bullied, but took up for many that were. Kids, especially teen-agers can be the most cruel and heartless of human beings. Just because someone was born with a disability, a defect,is overweight, or a myriad of other things, is no reason for them to be mistreated by anyone. Athenarose, hopefully, your hurts have, or are in the process of fading. As well, I am sure that there is someone out here somewhere who will help you to feel that you are loved. Even though your hair covers much of your face, there is enough of it that is visible to see that you are a beautiful lady, and I am sure that you have a beautiful heart to match. Someone is going to be real fortunate one day.

good for you, and so true. I worry about my grandson being bullied, for a few reasons he's 7 but so far it's been ok. So ssd for the kids

That was absolutely beautiful
Listen to this man

When I avoid people that bully me I don't look at it like they are the victors and I'm the broken one. I look at it the way my parents taught me. If people don't know how to behave they are best ignored. Rather than fight or argue just walk away, much like you did as a kid too. I don't have a mean bone in my body or any hatred in my heart for those who don't know how to love their fellow human beings, so I could never retaliate with violence or severely unkind words. I also believe that if we engage bullies by giving them any kind of attention at all it only inspires them to continually seek the attention in any negative way they can. So I don't understand what you mean by learning to defend ourselves, when your bullies left you alone after violating you and your space only once.

I've likewise defended the underdog on many occasions knowing how being bullied really feels. Especially when I see the same helplessness in another's eyes that says how much they need someone to take up for them when they don't know how to do it for themselves. Not everybody who's bullied has things that stand out about themselves that might give bullies reasons to jeer or strike out. Sometimes its the smart good looking people who are hated by those who feel inferior, and they just want to take them down a few pegs out of envy.

Yes, a severely aggressive man with a lifelong record of bullying women punched me in the face without justification smashing my cheekbone, breaking my nose, and deviating my septum. He rearranged my face to teach me a lesson, in his words. I've never looked the same and cover my face in most pictures I've taken since then. Even though I was a victim of domestic violence my local medical community left me to languish in this condition that requires me to wear nose strips at night so I can breathe. Poor white women in the deep south don't have many civil rights unless we fight for them and then most of the time we are simply ignored anyway.

I wasn't referring to my experience that I shared. I was referring to those who are repeatedly targeted defending themselves. In my view there is a significant difference between retaliation for the sake of revenge, and attempting to defend oneself. Attempting to block punches, taking cover, even fleeing can be defensive techniques. I probably could've outrun those who were attacking me but my instinct was to just continue at a normal pace so as not to give them what they wanted.

I also fear for my 9 yr old niece being bullied at her school by the locals after her and my sister moved back to lower Alabama on the death of their father/husband in 2012. Being born and raised in Chicago my niece's northernish accent lets the natives know right away she's an outsider. So far she's only met and tangled with one female bully who became her friend after testing her to see how she'd handle it, thank goodness her dad taught her a thing or to before he passed. 99% of the kids just keep my niece at arms length and don't associate with her because she's not "one of them". I would give my life to defend my niece against any type of threat she's not capable of dealing with alone. Because I know she's a lovely child with a beautiful soul and doesn't deserve to be mistreated simply because she wasn't born into the neighboring community. Likewise I'm sure that if your grandson were to become a victim of other's hatred or simple dislike you too would defend him to the hilt.

Thank you for your advice.

What you describe sounds like natural survival reactions of self protection while under physical attack. Bullying can also occur on intellectual and emotional levels, not just physical. Intelligent and non-physically aggressive individuals know how to bully others with just their words and attitudes, using insults, sarcasm, jests, even exclusion tactics. To these types of bullies there's no defense, only avoidance works the best.


Thank you for your kind contributions to this sensitive topic.

Yes, survival instincts compel most people to react defensively to physical assault. I also have experience with the types of non-physical bullying you listed. I too quit school, in part to get away from what for me was an indefensible toxic environment.

Thank you for starting this thread and sharing your experiences and thoughts. It's a subject that if more people took it seriously could help expedite tolerance becoming the predominant norm.

I like your descriptive take on it, an "indefensible toxic environment". Toxic is exactly how it feels. Like the very essence of an aggressor's being is absorbed into our minds and bodies and requires "complete expulsion" so we can feel better.

Unfortunately, due to affiliations with class distinctions being accepted or "tolerated" by everyone will never be the norm no matter how much we all understand each other.

I'm glad you find no offense by my discussing a topic so close to my heart.

Unfortunately it is a social statement and continues on into the workplace. I'd say anyone with half a brain and an ounce of ambition in the trades and services industries can attest to that.

But suggest free education and they'll just bully you yelling commie. Yes the same bullies are also in politics too.

The lesson is that now you know which kind of people were behind Iraq, the patriot act and those kinds of policies. Protest them or those bullies when you were a kid run the show when you're an adult.
That's the game, certain kinds of people showed you their true colours once, now you know what they're made of through and through. Recognize which ones they are as an adult, stop them with reform every time they poke their heads up in offices of administration and policy.

I mean think about it, what is the guy picketing an abortion clinic with offensive slogans doing if not acting like a child beating on defensless girls. It follows that is what that person did as a kid, and probably does at home with his wife and daughters if he has any.

Bullying is a bigger issue than self indulgence or pity, it's a social statement meaning actionable response is warranted and it is the responsibility of those which are concerned about it or by it. Personally I like heading right for the bigger picture, keeps my mind off the past whilst doing something positive about it.

Nothing more satisfying dealing with a bullish employer for example, than being both good for business and bad for his wrong atttitudes. It's sort of like a karmic win. Thought, word and deed changes the world. But let up on it, or fail to be concerted and in this example, the bullish employer becomes a nightmarish waste of years without gain, where you leave with less than you started and achieved nothing but yet another personal loss for the experience.

This assertion transferred back to the schoolyard environment basically means parents deserve the right to move their children between schools until they can either find the right demographic environment for them, or the kids can accomplish a suitable social skills development relative to the most appropriate of those available, without systemic frustration as a factor. That would basically require free education.
It wouldn't solve the fact children bully children simply because they can, but far less dramatic variation would turn actual beatings commonplace in randomly gathered, regional state public schools into sarcastic comments which are relatively low impact and can be dealth with in pure social skills development without inexorable psychoses based on childhood PTSD. Less variation means more empathy and less self justification of violence, dramatic variation seems sickly or threatening to the child mind, at extreme to a physiological degree as neurology is in fact biochemistry.

It's not segregation when it's freedom. I'm not suggesting segregate demographics in the school system (which already happens on an income basis), I'm suggesting free individual demographics (which would be about accessibility to varied demographic education environments without financial burden).