Hacker News Reader

I was also bullied a lot. Especially between first and eight grade. I was much bigger than everyone else but I would never fight back. I always felt bad about potentially hurting someone else so I would just take it.

The kids couldn’t actually physically damage me since I was so much bigger. They did cause a lot of psychological harm. I had a very negative predisposition towards anyone that I met. I just assumed everyone would be hostile towards me and would want to make fun of me. I still struggle with this mindset and I am in my thirties. I will usually be very shut off from people I do not know.

There were a couple of times that I did stand up for myself. Each time the bullying completely stopped.

I thought I was being the better person by not fighting back but that was not true. I was being harmless. That harmlessness invited more violence.

I think the key term here is learned helplessness. Children and to a lesser extent adults push boundaries. Establishing strong boundaries is a key part of developing a sense of control over one's life.

>> Bullies aren't beat enough at home

This I have to disagree with. Some of them I believe have a terrible home life and are handing down the abuse to whomever is a weak target.

You may be right in other cases though, and that had never occurred to me. Lack of respect and self control may stem from neglect or lack of parenting rather than abuse.

The problem is that they need to be beat for the right reasons.

The violence rate of east Asians who were spanked at home hard by their parents is likely astronomically lower than Americans who weren't spanked.

It's not about being spanked, it's about why you were spanked. Be just.

>Muh bullyocaust

Sweetie, that's a cope. Bullying is a choice. It's this kind of pro-crime, pro-rape thinking that lets all the bad things happen to people. It's always a choice. Plenty of people happen to go through much worse things without hurting other people. Like for example, the victims of the bullies. So it's clear that there's no inherent reason for the bullies to do it, they just want to.

I think you go a bit far, but I agree somewhat.

I was picked on a fair bit in school. The nature of "zero-tolerance" meant that fights were quick. I recall one day just being shoved into a a door threshold unexpectedly. I had had it at that point from this person, so I took my heaviest book out of my bag and slammed him in the head with it as he was already walking away triumphantly. Looking back, he could have been seriously injured. Many people witnesses and laughed at him.

He never bothered me again.

But how can you know someone will leave you alone or just escalate things?

> But how can you know someone will leave you alone or just escalate things?

You don't but in the animal kingdom most animals haven't evolved to be able to overcome their predator, they've just evolved to make it difficult enough for their predator to decided to look elsewhere for food. Make sure they know if they pick on you their going to have trouble and they'll go somewhere else.

> School systems are DESIGNED to protect bullies and subjugate the bullied. In America, they are prisons.

Most US public schools and low-rate private schools are like this. If your children are in an ultra-competitive public or private school however, the bullies are tossed out, the schools confident in the 100% ironclad certainty there is another family literally grateful for the opportunity to place their child in the new opening within 24 hours. The student body goes through cycles of forgetting this until a new bully is expelled, then the bullying simmers down to much more subtle forms.

In the ultra-competitive private boarding schools, the kind of over the top physical bullying you hear about in public schools is nearly non-existent because they will expel on far lower thresholds for bullying.

But yes, if your children are in US public school or you are a child in a US public school, generally speaking fighting back regardless of the zero tolerance consequences tends to stop the bullying better than going through toothless school policies. Bullies tend to prefer soft targets over porcupines. If you are being bullied and choose to fight back though, then go in at a location with adults to intervene quickly nearby expecting to get hurt and lose (in the sense the bully has the physical upper hand), but never defeated (in the sense you and the bully have to be separated before you stop). If it is a group doing the bullying, go for the leader.

The US public school systems' bullying problem won't stop until the bullies' parents know that they have a no-recourse, no-litigation-overturning consequence to bullying that sees their precious no-fault snowflake expelled to "lower class" schooling if they run out their options.

I pretty much concur. The worst part of being bullied for me was that I was punished for defending myself by the adults around me. I got charged with assault in middle school after winning a fight with a kid who chased me to the bus stop with a metal pallet strap whipping me, as soon as we were off school grounds I turned on him and beat him down with a textbook.

We both were arrested and charged, and I was told to my face by a judge that “there is no such thing as self-defense in schools.” Which is not only a bald-faced lie, it’s unconstitutional. You have a right to be secure in your person, and a right to self-defense, well established by the Supreme Court in case law and described in the Declaration of Independence.

I also didn’t get bullied again at that school after that incident. Self-defense is not just a right, it’s an imperative.

> keeps the bullied compliant and the bullies in charge

I've seen some of this in our local schools: meetings held with the head teacher to "hear both sides" when one side is a bully asserting their right to bully the other side.

> kids in an actual martial art

I had this idea, based on my experience as a kid, but never actually got around to enrolling them. They're in college now and so I guess it wasn't necessary.

> I've seen some of this in our local schools: meetings held with the head teacher to "hear both sides" when one side is a bully asserting their right to bully the other side.

This is endemic in modern culture. The need to treat two opposing opinions as equally valid and balance them against each other as if there's some sane middle-ground to be found. There's no middle-ground between slavery and non-slavery. Or between the earth is flat and science.

Yes 100%, there's a reason for this. Distinguishing right from wrong is an absolute act, and we have been conditioned to associate that with religious zealotry or raving lunacy. By hearing both sides, people are shying away from taking responsibility. Also, by holding up an ethos (e.g. bullying is categorically wrong) to others, we hold up a mirror to ourselves. Hypocrisy is instantly revealed then. (Note for example that the religious right has no problem being hypocrites ).

> They're in college now and so I guess it wasn't necessary.

Just saying man if you are looking for a Christmas present for them get them a membership to train at a BJJ gym, if you have a daughter it will keep her safe, if you have a son it will give him the opportunity to interact and build relationships with people he doesn't know, and may not normally associate with. BJJ is all about technique over physicality and carries a low risk of injury.

For both of them it will give them the confidence that if they end up in a bad situation they know they have the skills to respond calmly. In addition if the gym is any good they'll have them do some rolling so they'll be able to learn to stay calm under pressure, which is a very transferable skill.

Just a suggestion.

> In America there is a concept of "zero tolerance" that keeps the bullied compliant and the bullies in charge. It was not until I started to get very violent that the bullying stopped.

Exactly my experience as well. Fighting back is the only thing that ever made the bullying stop. I fought back once in the locker room against a boy two years and two feet older and taller than me, basically lost the fight immediately, but because I fought and wouldn't submit, everybody else stopped the fight and after that day I was never bullied in school again.

The reason I never fought back sooner is because I was scared of the rules even more than the bullies. The "Zero tolerance" rules made clear that if I fought back I would be just as bad as the bullies, and in just as much trouble (except I'd actually be in more trouble, because my parents would be livid at me for getting suspended while the bullies' parents wouldn't give a shit.) "Zero tolerance" means zero due process. It's the school administrators essentially siding with bullies by default because it makes the paperwork easier. Absolutely immoral. It should be their responsibility to figure out who actually started the fight and punish the perpetrator but not the victim.

In the end I didn't get in trouble after all, because locker room fights were beyond the eyes of adults and nobody ratted anybody out. I resent the teachers and the administration the most, for making me afraid to stick up for myself. The kids who bullied me were psychos or broken people, and I find it easy to forgive them. But the administration did harm to me by being lazy bureaucrats.

Absolutely agree. The law I ran afoul of was called the “Safe Schools Act” and predictably did nothing of the sort. Zero-tolerance is zero-accountability and zero-sense. It does nothing to address or resolve problems, just makes the lives of petty bureaucrats easier.

Fully agree. I unfortunately never had the balls to fight back, but every time I think back about it, I wish I'd just fucking punched someone. Even now, 20 years after the fact.

I was bullied quite a bit in school, now my boys are starting school and I have them enrolled in BJJ, and the first time my kids comes home upset because someone was picking on him I'll tell him to put that kid in guard and don't let go until the teachers physical remove him.

What age did you start them with BJJ? I've been considering for my 4 year old but not sure if that's too early. It seems too early to tell him to punch the bully in the face (what I did as a kid) but I like the idea of equipping him with the ability to subdue a bully until an adult can take control.

So the gym I train at (they grabbed me after I saw my kids doing it) has a rule that they need to be at least 3 and potty trained, so our youngest started a little bit ago and is more working on the skill of listening and paying attention than some of the techniques but my 5 yo is learning some good stuff and is soon going to move from the young children's class to the youth class where the emphasis moves from holding still and paying attention to actual BJJ.

So I'd say 4 is a good age to start, if you need to find a good gym I'd recommend going over to old.reddit.com/r/bjj and asking for advice on there, you'll probably get some good advice.

Also it makes wrestling with the kids way more fun when they try and practice their BJJ at the same time.

Great thanks for the feedback and resources! This led me down a path to discover we have a dojo in our neighborhood I was unaware of and they have an age 3-5 class. Just in time for winter break too! Thanks again- I would have just assumed he was too young for BJJ but this is pretty exciting actually. I probably won't do it myself but he can practice on me at home :)

A famous American college basketball coach once said "A basketball fight generally lasts two punches. Make sure you throw both of them."

While this will stop the bullying there is a serious risk of this affecting your ability to get into a competitive high school or college. My cousin defended a friend from a bully in middle school and the bully's parents called the cops on him. The charges were eventually dropped but the record stayed around and almost kept him out of the highschool he wanted to go to.

More violence, got it.

So what's the ceiling on that? What if they escalate back? What if I can't win physically?

Is head-injury risking brain damage to my opponent going too far? Do I bring weapons? Bats? Knives? This sounds like a losing escalation path really, guns are pretty readily available and a half-dozen rounds to the chest sounds like it would be a nice permanent solution to most bullying problems.

Is that going too far?

The number of people in this entire comment section who don't see "escalate the violence" as having some very obvious negative outcomes is incredible. It's all "boys will be boys" style rhetorical crap, where they pretend that there's a magic set of limiting rules and that somehow teenagers throwing punches isn't in fact gambling on serious injury and death.

Oh and the best part: the victim doesn't want to be there. The victim wants the problem to stop. The victim, is the one who in violent escalation gets held to account for going "too far" in response.

The "real world" doesn't work this way, it's not even remotely similar. In the real world in most US states if someone assaults you in public you actually can legally draw a weapon and kill them in response, but at the very least the authorities will descend and the assaulter's life as though know it - if caught - is quite thoroughly over. School's are the only place where everyone knows the identity of the perpetrators and theirs witnesses galore and the authority says "nah, the victim should handle it - but you know, not too much".

Attaching glowing review and positive outcome to a violent action in childhood is dangerous (though it did serve you, yes). The reason is obvious: it can lead to being drawn to situations likely to lead to the same result and praise.

Based on your virulent tone I suspect you still harbor strong resentment against your childhood bullies. I somewhat get that, I was bullied too and I still hate those kids.

As an adult however I realize that my bullies were actually abused children who had a rough time at home and took it out on me at school.

> When they break a bullies nose/arm/etc and get suspended you should not only encourage them to continue you should celebrate the victory.

Sorry, but this is completely sociopathic insanity. Celebrating one child maiming another? What is this, the hunger games?

> Bullies aren't beat enough at home, so it's your job to bring the beatings to them.

Do you think it's ever ok for an adult to beat a child? You have it all wrong, it's the kids who are beat who become bullies.

> If you are not capable of violence you are not peaceful, you are harmless.

Capable of violence is one thing, systemically encouraging it as part of normal upbringing is however strictly antisocial.