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Bullying by peers even worse for mental health than abuse by parents
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<blockquote data-quote="SuZir" data-source="post: 655784" data-attributes="member: 14557"><p>Cases where there is one grave incident, sympathetic victim, clear cut bullies, who did it and so on are good in raising public outrage and easy to judge. That of course is not the whole, or even very typical, picture of bullying problem.</p><p></p><p>It is common that the same child is both bullied and bullies (and these kids are the worst off ones, they tend to have most problems when they grow up), there may be a primus motor of bullying, but most of the time, it is not just one or two or three kids in the class who bully. Usually everyone has their own role to play. And as said, often the victim is not overly sympathetic.</p><p></p><p>In some ways my son is a typical case. He comes after his mom and has never been on the short list to sainthood, can be provocative, annoying and obnoxious. His social skills are also lacking, he is inflexible and people consider him arrogant and cocky. He is also overly competitive, perfectionist, gets frustrated with himself easily and acts out, is reactive and passive aggressive and has always had behavioural issues. He has been all that from very early age. Kids who bullied him were far from evil. They were your regular, nice, wholesome, good kids. And while some acts they did were of course crimes, most of them were under the age of criminal responsibility during the most of it. And when it started, they all were very young and probably were out of their d3epth when dealing with a class mate, who had all these difficult behaviours. What they would had needed was to be taught and guided better.</p><p></p><p>But the teachers and other adults around them were not sadistic bastards either. We just didn't see the whole picture. It was easier to see and hear Ache screaming ugly things and lashing out than what led to that. And he didn't tell about it and straight out lied about what happened. For example all those stolen and ruined possession? I and his dad were in impression that it was his carelessness was that has caused his clothes, backpacks, books, bikes etc. to get lost or broken. And yes, he was punished at home for it.</p><p></p><p>It was just an ugly mess.</p><p></p><p>And not something you could solve by punishing the bullies. I mean, how would you do it? Punish them and they retaliate, because in their eyes Ache had long before become a subhuman, not a real person with feelings and all, but something else. The other. (This same phenomenon is, what explains genocides, neighbours, friends, even relatives turning against each other because of the ethnicity, religion or ideology. Somehow those neighbours, friends or family members turn into the other, subhuman, not people any more and the bloodshed can begun.) Kick them out of the school? How do you kick for example 15 kids from class of 20 kids out? And where do you place them? Where do you get kids to fill a class again? I mean, for example in our municipality there are three elementary schools catering to kids like mine, one middle school and one academical high school. Services of vocational high school are bought from cities around us. Do you just take my neighbourhood kids and bus them to the next village's elementary school, because they bullied my kid. And take bullies from that village to our school? And when the bullying starts again, you again bus half of the class to third school? That really doesn't work. Group dynamic issues like bullying need to be solved in the group they happen.</p><p></p><p>While my kid later got badly hurt by peers in sports, when he was young, socialisation in sport teams really worked and how they dealt with bullying was great. When kids were young, sportsmanship and team player-skills were very high on the goals taught to them and not only in principle but in every day work. All kinds of mocking or nasty comments were forbidden and adults were quick to interfere. And because my kid was competitive, perfectionist, easy to get frustrated and high strung, he was considered very prone to that kind of unacceptable behaviour, which led to the situation, where there were always an adult, coach, assistant coach or some other team official less than 10 feet from him to intervene, if he was inappropriate. Which on the other hand led to other, more savvy kids, not to say anything nasty to him, because that same coach would had heard and rebuked them. So while my kid was considered the one prone to break team rules, being under such a strict eye made the sports basically bullying free zone for several years. Things of course changed when they got older and had more freedom and less oversight. But when young, that very structured situation did give my kid a lot of opportunities to more healthy peer relationships. Sports programs Ache attended as a kid were really good in that. Much more adults per kid than at school and much clearer expectations. But to be honest, Ache was clearly very talented from the get go and that likely played a part why he got so much adult attention. He was spotted by the higher ups and his coaches were told to work with his issues as being a team player, when he was still young. If he would had been an average player, he probably wouldn't had received quite as much adult attention. But still, until they were about 12 and given more freedom and less oversight, it was very disciplined bunch and very little room for misbehaving and being mean to others.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="SuZir, post: 655784, member: 14557"] Cases where there is one grave incident, sympathetic victim, clear cut bullies, who did it and so on are good in raising public outrage and easy to judge. That of course is not the whole, or even very typical, picture of bullying problem. It is common that the same child is both bullied and bullies (and these kids are the worst off ones, they tend to have most problems when they grow up), there may be a primus motor of bullying, but most of the time, it is not just one or two or three kids in the class who bully. Usually everyone has their own role to play. And as said, often the victim is not overly sympathetic. In some ways my son is a typical case. He comes after his mom and has never been on the short list to sainthood, can be provocative, annoying and obnoxious. His social skills are also lacking, he is inflexible and people consider him arrogant and cocky. He is also overly competitive, perfectionist, gets frustrated with himself easily and acts out, is reactive and passive aggressive and has always had behavioural issues. He has been all that from very early age. Kids who bullied him were far from evil. They were your regular, nice, wholesome, good kids. And while some acts they did were of course crimes, most of them were under the age of criminal responsibility during the most of it. And when it started, they all were very young and probably were out of their d3epth when dealing with a class mate, who had all these difficult behaviours. What they would had needed was to be taught and guided better. But the teachers and other adults around them were not sadistic bastards either. We just didn't see the whole picture. It was easier to see and hear Ache screaming ugly things and lashing out than what led to that. And he didn't tell about it and straight out lied about what happened. For example all those stolen and ruined possession? I and his dad were in impression that it was his carelessness was that has caused his clothes, backpacks, books, bikes etc. to get lost or broken. And yes, he was punished at home for it. It was just an ugly mess. And not something you could solve by punishing the bullies. I mean, how would you do it? Punish them and they retaliate, because in their eyes Ache had long before become a subhuman, not a real person with feelings and all, but something else. The other. (This same phenomenon is, what explains genocides, neighbours, friends, even relatives turning against each other because of the ethnicity, religion or ideology. Somehow those neighbours, friends or family members turn into the other, subhuman, not people any more and the bloodshed can begun.) Kick them out of the school? How do you kick for example 15 kids from class of 20 kids out? And where do you place them? Where do you get kids to fill a class again? I mean, for example in our municipality there are three elementary schools catering to kids like mine, one middle school and one academical high school. Services of vocational high school are bought from cities around us. Do you just take my neighbourhood kids and bus them to the next village's elementary school, because they bullied my kid. And take bullies from that village to our school? And when the bullying starts again, you again bus half of the class to third school? That really doesn't work. Group dynamic issues like bullying need to be solved in the group they happen. While my kid later got badly hurt by peers in sports, when he was young, socialisation in sport teams really worked and how they dealt with bullying was great. When kids were young, sportsmanship and team player-skills were very high on the goals taught to them and not only in principle but in every day work. All kinds of mocking or nasty comments were forbidden and adults were quick to interfere. And because my kid was competitive, perfectionist, easy to get frustrated and high strung, he was considered very prone to that kind of unacceptable behaviour, which led to the situation, where there were always an adult, coach, assistant coach or some other team official less than 10 feet from him to intervene, if he was inappropriate. Which on the other hand led to other, more savvy kids, not to say anything nasty to him, because that same coach would had heard and rebuked them. So while my kid was considered the one prone to break team rules, being under such a strict eye made the sports basically bullying free zone for several years. Things of course changed when they got older and had more freedom and less oversight. But when young, that very structured situation did give my kid a lot of opportunities to more healthy peer relationships. Sports programs Ache attended as a kid were really good in that. Much more adults per kid than at school and much clearer expectations. But to be honest, Ache was clearly very talented from the get go and that likely played a part why he got so much adult attention. He was spotted by the higher ups and his coaches were told to work with his issues as being a team player, when he was still young. If he would had been an average player, he probably wouldn't had received quite as much adult attention. But still, until they were about 12 and given more freedom and less oversight, it was very disciplined bunch and very little room for misbehaving and being mean to others. [/QUOTE]
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