It’s About Making Babies!

Cathouse Teri poses an interesting question. We teach boys not to hit girls, but what about bullying females? She refers to 74 WIXY and his struggle with being a pushover, and to One Man who relates how his nephew acts out what he sees at home.

While substitute teaching in a fifth grade class (about 5 years ago), someone came in and showed a 15 minute short film, on bullies. The message was that you have a choice when you encounter a bully. You can join friends to confront a bully, or report the bully to a teacher / parent. Anything else you do will get you in trouble.

Thinking back on this now, I see a fatal flaw in the presentation. It presumes trust and worthiness in the teacher or other authority. It only takes one or two disappointing tries to report a problem, before you teach someone that reporting isn’t a useful thing to do. And neither is following the school’s advice.

Everyone should know by now that bullies are considered to be insecure, and I suppose most are.

When raising kids, one of the broad categories of things we are supposed to do is to ’socialize’ the youngster, develop ethics and character that recognizes authority, works together with others for common goals, considers a family to be an advantage and something to be desired. We want a disciplined, honest, nurturing and caring, and happy character for the little one.

But what happens when the child isn’t taught any of that? When the examples of adults in the child’s life are themselves injured emotionally - abusive, neglectful, or cowed into withdrawal?

And teaching boys not to hit girls is historical. Boys were expected to wrestle, tussle, scrap, and fight. But not girls. Girls were expected to keep the house, support her husband, raise her children. Teaching boys that girls aren’t to be hit is part and parcel of defining ‘women’s work’.

Because we supposedly live under the rule of law (tell someone that on the Texas/Mexico border!) the current social rule is to report crime, and let professional law enforcement agencies take care of the problem. We call the holdouts and ‘do it yourselfers’ vigilantes. America has spent maybe the last 100 years or so convincing everyone that you use lawyers instead of fists to respond to cheats and liars and those that hurt you and yours. Where people are rich, and have neighborhoods with well paid police protection, this works pretty well. Many people live where the change is still in doubt.

Below the age of 13 or 16, I bet you could take about any bully kid, and see that the bully expresses anger and behavior observed, regularly, at home. Punching, belittling, abuse of all kinds, neglect, or that scary one - disassociated, unbonded, disconnected. After 4th or 5th grade, though, the intimidation, bullying, and arrogant behavior is probably related to home, but is more influenced by peers and kids encountered on a regular basis. Remember the homily “One bad apple spoils the whole barrel?” We have to be aware of the character of those our kids spend time with - in and out of the classroom.

Kicking, hitting, biting, pushing into someone’s space, blatantly ignoring instructions from those in authority - these are acts of disrespect. When raising kids, each act of disrespect must be confronted. We need to teach correct behavior, help the kid understand what wasn’t acceptable, and why. (Teaching can go faster with “Because I said so”, but be much more thorough when the lesson convinces the student why the desired result is more appropriate.)

I imagine One Man is learning what other parents have learned. Kids come programmed with mimic genius, and extremely primitive instincts. The process of raising kids includes de-programming the fight-or-flight, ruthless basics most kids seem to start life with, and guide the infant and toddler to more acceptable ways of living. Kids aren’t adults. They gradually approach adult behavior, experience, and understanding, between age 13 to 25, depending on the environment, the parents, the youngster, and the amount of money in the family.

74 WIXY discusses several incidents of being a ‘nice guy’. Only what he calls a nice guy, with great sense of humor, cries out in pain. A sense of humor sounds great, doesn’t it? Someone that takes pain and makes it entertaining. Only, why spend so very much time in pain? Cliff mentions a lady that made pals while he bought her drinks and smokes, then went home with someone else every time. He doesn’t thank his lucky stars that nothing came of his pursuit of this promiscuous, disrespectful, abusive woman (Garth Brook’s “Some of God’s Greatest Gifts are Unanswered Prayers” runs through my mind). Cliff doesn’t question choosing to pursue someone of weak character. He even pointed to a church group that snubbed him at a revival, for his lower class background. In the church group, is he choosing a congregation with immense arrogance (i.e., a social ‘clique’ or disrespectful association of arrogant bullies), or is he misreading the reason for not being included? Reading Cliff’s side of the story, it seems likely he is choosing poor companions.

Instead of looking to ‘better’ himself by associating with ‘better’ people, Cliff might look at character, respect, honesty, and discipline - and choose to avoid people that don’t have any. With luck, removing much of the pain in Cliff’s life would change him from ‘good sense of humor’ - to ‘happy’.

Bullies look for people like Cliff - they make life easy. Bullies tend to keep their victims thinking they are victims, and they can make others feel like, and act like victims. But victims are isolated. Let them get together, and pay attention to character virtues, and the situation changes. Lump honest, respectful people together and bullies leave them alone - they aren’t acting like victims.

Luck Cliff. One Man, you might look into foster parent training. Foster parents deal in distressed behavior and the vagaries of child care regularly. Once through the training, you might find ways to support some of these heroes, while understanding your nephew and his environment better. Luck to you, too.

Teri, I think bullies mimic behavior in their lives. Betrayal of trust, unfair attacks/beatings, misuse of authority can also trigger abusive behavior we call ‘bullying.’ Once we confront a bully, we really should examine the home for abuse and other problems. Charity isn’t the only thing that begins at home.

Your thoughts?

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 24th, 2008 at 10:31 pm and is filed under Children, Learning, Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.