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andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2010-02-03 11:00 am
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[personal profile] andrewducker 2010-02-03 11:40 am (UTC)(link)
Hence my additional comment.

The problem is that there _are going to be bullies_. Nobody has ever managed to eradicate them. I don't, personally, think it's possible. Therefore, if we know what causes certain kids to be picked on, and they can be helped to change the situation so that they won't get bullied, we should help them to do so.

This doesn't mean that we shouldn't work on the bullies as well - but nobody was saying that.

[identity profile] marrog.livejournal.com 2010-02-03 11:43 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, sorry, no, that wasn't a dig at you; I got your meaning.

It's more complicated than that...

[identity profile] zornhau.livejournal.com 2010-02-03 12:01 pm (UTC)(link)
The study makes perfect sense to me: been there, have the emotional scars. Not fitting in means you don't get to practice social skills, or that you ignore feedback because 90% of it is toxic anyway, meaning you get picked on, meaning... and so on.

Thing is, in my experience, seemingly systematic bullying is mostly an emergent property of groups of children and adolescants, rather than organised evil.

Imagine an adolescent male who's having a bad day. His instincts drive him towards butting heads - petty intrusions, wrestling, pranks, monkey stuff - and to do so with somebody lower down the pecking order. In a normal situation, this pecking order is fluid, and the head-butting is evenly distributed: nobody feels bullied.

However, if there's an outsider around, they never move up the pecking order, and consequently receive a disproportionate amount of the head butting.

It sucks, but it's not as simple as Bullies and Evil.
andrewducker: (Default)

Re: It's more complicated than that...

[personal profile] andrewducker 2010-02-03 12:30 pm (UTC)(link)
I totally agree - with the caveat that the instant reaction to take it out on someone physically can be trained out of a person (in a positive way, I don't mean by smacking them round the head when they do it).

Re: It's more complicated than that...

[identity profile] zornhau.livejournal.com 2010-02-03 02:37 pm (UTC)(link)
But the adolescants just think they're being silly or having a laugh - after all when somebody steals *their* pack lunch box, it's just funny. (Because it only happens to them once per 12 months.)
andrewducker: (Default)

Re: It's more complicated than that...

[personal profile] andrewducker 2010-02-03 02:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Absolutely - but you can train them out of that. Empathy seems to be a learned skill for many people, and there are methods of imparting it.

Re: It's more complicated than that...

[identity profile] momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com 2010-02-03 04:12 pm (UTC)(link)
It depends. If Andy stole my packed lunch box, I'd probably think it was funny, because I already consider Andy a friend and I trust him. I would know he's just fooling around for laughs, and he would know me well enough to cut the joke off when it's gone on long enough. There are tons of social cues around teasing one another -- in fact, it's all to do with playing with the cues and the boundaries.
If I don't feel comfortable around someone who teases me, then I am not confident they don't actually intend me harm, and won't chuck my lunchbox down the toilet or something.

[identity profile] heron61.livejournal.com 2010-02-03 09:01 pm (UTC)(link)
As you mention below, teaching empathy, perhaps via something like role-reversal exercises where children who bully get to experience what bullying feels like seem like an excellent idea, and perhaps more useful than focusing on the victims' problems.

What I'd also like to know is if bullying (as I remember it to be) was largely instigated by a few particularly vile individuals (if so, then I'm reminded of the recent statistics about rape and who commits them). If so, then a mixture of some training to help most children not follow the lead of such individuals, and (more importantly) attention focused on the bullies.
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