Bullies can be stopped, but it takes a village
slate.com
slate.com
They list four possible responses to your child being bullied, including standing up to the bully, ignoring and avoiding the bully, involving the parents of the bully, or involving the teacher/school. They state that these are all likely to be ineffective.
That said, their problem with kids standing up to bullies isn't that it's ineffective, though they paint it that way, but rather that your kid probably won't do so if you tell them to, because if they had the guts to do so, they wouldn't be targets of bullying in the first place.
Their preferred "solution" is to have a conversation with the child and brainstorm ideas and strategies, which essentially come down to: a) avoiding the bully, b) involving the teachers and school. So essentially a mix of two of the strategies they discounted at the beginning of the article.
No evidence or data is presented to back up any of the points. The author even invokes mockery of readers with evidence (albeit anecdotal) that standing up to bullies works.
Feels like we're teaching these kids victimhood and to look to someone else to get them out of a rough spot, instead of having enough confidence and self-respect to stand up for themselves.
The last paragraph links to a sidebar full of sites with more information and research.
You're right that there's not a lot of data in the article that backs up his point, but you'll be wrong if you follow that logic to the conclusion you seem to want to take it to.
1. None of that data is presented.
2. He leverages mockery to preemptively discredit people with real-world experience that disagrees with his position, despite offering no evidence, experience, or data of his own. Come on, linking to a standard response that someone who disagrees with him can use to come up with their own formulaic response? Clear anti-intellectual mockery, and hardly the mark of a rigorous scholar.
3. His logical process as presented in this article makes absolutely no sense, particularly with regard to why telling your kid to stand up for themselves is a bad idea.
To repeat an analogy I used in another comment: this is like saying that you shouldn't advise someone whose website just got hacked to secure their app, because they got hacked because they didn't follow proper security protocol, and are therefore unlikely to follow your advice.
To accept the article as a well-written and well-argued piece on the proper response to bullying, just because the author is a leading scholar in his field is just a bizarre kind of reverse ad hominem.
Edit: reworded a few things
Did you even read the article? The authors link to six websites that each describe research on the subject of bullying. In addition, he specifically cites comprehensive review books and papers.
You, on the other hand, cite nothing but anecdote and "analogy".
A simple PubMed search on the term "bullying" gives pages of results on the topic, and I daresay they mostly are consistent with the advice given by the authors of this paper, and not yours.
2. The average reader is unlikely to conduct a PubMed search for research and scholarly works related to the subject of bullying.
3. I was specifically referring to the lack of evidence to back up the position that standing up to bullies is rarely effective, not everything in the article. You're right that this wasn't clear. My mistake.
You seem to have missed completely that I'm not primarily disagreeing with his position (though I do), but rather with the shallow presentation of that position.
EDIT: removed a mistaken reference to the Guardian
I don't understand where you think this argument is going to take you. Whatever critiques you may have of the way Kazdin has boiled down the huge volumes of research on this topic for a Slate article, he's not a reporter. He's the president of the American Psychological Association, a professor at Yale, and the director of the Yale Parenting Center; he's also written a well-regarded book on the subject.
You may have a valid argument about what he's saying about bullying, but you are totally clouding it by attacking his credibility. He has much more credibility on this subject than you do.
This is inconsistent with my personal experience. I would like to know how the author drew this conclusion. Granted I might be a special case. For my size (small) I have always been quite strong/athletic. For my general demeanor (sweet/calm) I have always had the capacity for fearless action and rage even when provoked. And despite being generally peaceful and nonviolent I had martial-arts training from a very young age. I also knew I'd never get into trouble with my parents for "finising" a fight. (Though starting one would be a different matter.) (I've never started a physical fight in my entire life.)
In my experience a bully would start by pushing or shoving or punching the shoulder. Nothing particularly vicious. But a vicious response (bloody or broken nose, black eye) solved the problem quite fast.
These tactics worked well in the urban scruff in and around Boston where I grew up in the 80s and 90s. Fights were always one-on-one matters (relative to a gang attack, multiple-on-one). I don't know if this works in a gang-type situation.
The author pre-discounts my data-point. Which I think is a bogus tactic. I'd like to see his data. I admit mine is anecdotal. I bet his is too.
One hallmark of a bully is a sophisticated ability to pick victims who won't put up a fight. When you urge your child to stand up to a bully, you're asking him to do something that the bully already figured out he was unlikely to do. That's why the bully picked him in the first place. Bullies tend to choose victims who are socially withdrawn, seem anxious or fearful, are nervous in new situations, or have some physical characteristic that might make them more vulnerable.
What makes me angry is that the author is essentially arguing that the kid should continue to be vulnerable and passive, rather than stand up for themselves.
If bullies tend to pick on people who are unlikely to fight back, you should fight back so they'll move on to an easier target.
Analogy: this is like saying that you shouldn't advise someone whose website just got hacked to secure their app, because they got hacked because they didn't follow proper security protocol, and are therefore unlikely to follow your advice.
Sigh, just Google his name: www.yale.edu/psychology/FacInfo/Kazdin.html
Edit: I am also stupid. :-) Just check the end of the article.
"Alan E. Kazdin, who was president of the American Psychological Association in 2008, is John M. Musser professor of psychology and child psychiatry at Yale University and director of Yale's Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic. Carlo Rotella is director of American studies at Boston College."
(I have no idea, but as someone noted above -- there is no one writing here that has better credentials in any subject than the author has in this.)
Edit: I might add that I voted you up, for the humor. In the first comment you "bet" that the author just has anecdotal evidence -- and then you don't retract when you see he has decades of research in the subject!
Standing up against a bully works - but only when it is a fair show of balance of power. Let it be sophisticated or vulgar. If this doesn't happen very soon after supposed bullying starts, it is probably not going to happen. And if the resistance works, where is the bullying here?
It can be observed that even in this flow of comments it is not seen that a shy kid is entitled to life without bullying. By not cutting off the bullying, you're raising the shy kid into accepting that yeah, he truely is a victim, and nothing can be done. It's a jungle, live with it. "Civilization" is just a word, "justice" is a joke, and "human rights" just an invention of a twisted mind. The only way left to put things back in balance for a tormented kid is by getting a gun and showing everybody the exact reason why everybody should have some kind of elementary respect to each other.
People, kids, do have different temperaments. The mind is not tabula rasa. You can't tell a shy kid "stand up and show them" and expect it to happen or have any effect.
It is completely useless to offer solutions which apply only to those who don't really have problems.
The typical situation is a group of people led by a smaller sub-group acting against an individual in pretty obvious ways. The victim is sidelined and ridiculed openly so everybody knows. Teachers always know.
The authors describe the bully as some kind of genius who always selects the right victims and always chooses occasions wisely. That's complete nonsense.
People who become victims are completely random. Take any closed situation where people can't leave at will, like schools, military camps, prisons, the workplace, and anyone can be made a victim. No need for the bullies to choose wisely.
There's just no way anyone can defend himself against a socially dominant group who decides to bully them. The only right way to react is to leave instantly. Victims can be harmed for life if left in a situation like that. That's what I learned from someone very close to me who was a victim of bullying and researched the whole thing extensively later.
If you have kids who are being bullied, just take them away from the bullies immediately!
This is patently untrue: it's always some particular subgroup that's bullied. School bullies usually target smaller kids, "nerdy" kids, or unpopular kids with poor social skills. Prison bullies usually target small, young, white prisoners who are not members of prison gangs.
However, the point I was trying to make has nothing to do with the share of nerds among the victims. The point is that it's unnecessary to select particularly weak people because anyone targeted by a determined group of bullies becomes weak and most of the time there's no way to turn the situation around.
It's a mistake to think that anyone could be strong enough to do that, nerd or not.
People who become victims are completely random.
They're not. People who are gang members don't get bullied in prison because the other members of their gang will retaliate. Popular kids don't get bullied in school because their friends will retaliate. And while smaller kids may be weaker targets than bigger kids, nerds or white prisoners are usually bullied because the bullies don't like them.
Yes you did. Nerdy, unpopular with poor social skills, that's what I would call weak in exactly the social sense that's relevant here.
If you bothered to research this matter you would be surprised how much what you are saying is a cliche.
I'll concede, though, that the victims are probably not completely random in a formal statistical sense.
[Edit:] Sorry, our posts crossed. I didn't mean to change mine while you were replying
True, but if that was your point why didn't you just say it in the first place? In any social context that has bullies, the bullies predominantly belong to some social subgroups, and predominately victimize other social subgroups. Don't make it sound like you're disputing that fact when you're saying something much more mundane and agreeable.
"that's what I would call weak in exactly the social sense that's relevant here"
Sorry, I thought you meant weak in the sense of "less able to put up a fight".
They may have friends, but not, for instance, at that new workplace or at that new school. In many cases it's not the victims' character that makes them vulnerable.
When confronted the bullies will present a long list of reasons why the victim deserves to be a victim. Of course violent attacks are kept semi private if you can call it that considering those "happy slapping" pics that are being posted on the internet and sent to people's phones en-masse.
The analogous adult case is when a crime syndicate or a terrorist organization assassinates one of its enemies in broad daylight in the middle of a crowded street, and the police can't find anyone to testify that they witnessed the hit. If you don't change the priorities of the bystanders, you can't change anything else.
Generally, you want to stop the bullying for one of the same reasons you want to stop rapes -- it damages the lives of many victims. But you also want to catch this, because the bully often needs help.
Edit: I don't really have an opinion on when/if the police should get involved. It probably depends on bow fscked the teacher subculture is.
You say to the thug, in no uncertain terms, "The next time you do XYZ, the consequences will be a removal from school." And, yes, have the police deal with it because they are actually equipped for such activity, unlike your typical teacher.
...and to be clear, I'm talking about instances of actual assault, and not the vast bulk of things in the category "bullying".
If making bullying a legal case is the only way left to proceed, any parent should just go ahead, and take it as far as necessary. Sometimes it's just the school administration who need a kick in their collective ass to actually do something about it. At the far end, it's the bully himself who is in need of that kick.
You are assuming that somebody wants to make things out of proportion. Is it out of proportion, for example, to call police if your kid has been beaten or robbed on the way home? You can't be seriously claiming that to protect the fragile worldview of the thugs/thieves you should sacrifice the one of the victim?
Suffice it to say that, with near universal applicability, all human societies throughout recorded history have made clear distinctions between the boundaries of acceptable social behavior (and punishments for breaching these boundaries) for children and adults.
There's also quite a large accumulated body of modern scientific measurements which suggests that children and early teenagers lack the sufficiently streamlined cerebral pathways (pre-puberty) which would allow them to make the social judgment calls and impulse control to both avoid being a bully and/or a bullied victim. In both roles, they can not balance the short-term costs against the long-term consequences.
You also make a gross assumption about the training and responsiveness of a local police force to situations involving minors in the custody of a school. Baring extreme violence, a history of criminal behavior, or property damage, in most municipalities, this is the fiduciary responsibility of the public school district. For private institutions, a specific set of liability clauses and insurance is part of the enrollment contract.
> Some readers will now be eager to share stirring success stories that prove standing up to a bully really does work
Edit: And about the GP's claim that the author's being incompetent and writing unfounded advice. Check their jobs at the end of the article. (They might be incompetent and/or wrong, but they will certainly have lots of relevant data in published papers!)
I'm sorry if it upsets you that they didn't give enough references for your taste, to evaluate your anecdotal experiences.
I have also heard that among girls, one common form of bullying these days is to pretend to be the victim's friend long enough to get some embarrassing confidential information, and then spread that information around. Modern technology makes that kind of sting a lot easier.