Bullying

[firecat]

This article discusses why children who are bullied sometimes don't discuss it with adults.

http://www.livescience.com/8994-bully-victims-suffer-silence.html

I did mention to my parents sometimes that other kids bullied me. Their response was "Ignore it, and they'll get bored and stop." I figured that this meant "We don't want to hear about it, because we don't know what to do to stop it." (This reason isn't on the list of reasons in the article.)

So I stopped talking to them about it and I pretended to ignore the bullying and to some extent I think this strategy prevented the bullying from escalating past name-calling, although it didn't stop it.

I also developed another strategy, which was essentially to be quiet and hide in plain sight. This got so ingrained that I find it difficult to turn off, which causes me problems at times.

Comments

[waterowl.livejournal.com]

My parents told me to fight back against bullies. I did get in a couple fights in middle school, because things escalated. I'm a terrible fighter and I was small until I hit puberty, but my basic strategy was to keep kicking back until the other girl stopped. After the fights, they stopped picking on me so much.

But I did stop telling my parents, because they didn't do anything. And I think your response above falls in that same category.

With my own kids, I'm a fierce defender and I have no problem calling talking to the teacher or even the principal and I've even talked to the child's parents.

OTOH I think sometimes my kids don't tell me things, because they don't want Mama Bear getting all riled up.

[firecat]

I get the impression that fighting back (as a kid) and getting involved (as a parent) are better strategies.