Bullies. “their not even human”

I am sorry. This blog post just shocked me. I am of the opinion the bullies are not human because none of them are human towards me. Even to this day 30 years later they obviously think I am "scum" with their republican mindset. I am on SSI because of them..because they hurt me THAT BAD. I am mentally ill. None of them have shown any remorse. I can't see them as human. How are they human?  They were not hurting persons. They were NOT. They were privileged affluent kids who tortured me because I didn't wear designer clothes and had severe learning problems and to this day..they are the kid of people who look down on anyone with not as much money as them. There is nothing human about them and I don't see how you can think so.

I am never going to see bullies as human. How can I? Humans have remorse for things. My bullies have none. I can't see anything human  in them..I truly can't. All the "pity" directed towards me for my anger and issues is just like trying to tell me to just get over it. I can't. But that isn't MY moral shortcoming...so don't go turning this one me. They aren't human. I am sorry. Why does it bother you that bullies aren't human?

LOL OMG! They aren't human! Dude! They TRULY ARE NOT HUMAN! It's true! I am 45 years old and I was in and out of mental hospitals for 20 years with many suicide attempts. I've seen them on Classmates and they have NO remorse whatsoever. DUDE THEY DEFINITELY ARE NOT HUMAN. lol shit! You were never bullied then.

As a future teacher and a follower of Jesus (at least... someone who TRIES to follow Jesus!) I completely agree with this post. It may be one of my favorites. The mean, angry bullies in this world need love and kindness just as much as the rest of us... if not more. We're supposed to love everyone... that's our job as human beings. Fighting hate with hate is useless, but love can completely erase hate. 

Beautiful post, I have to agree with you on this one. We cannot turn our backs on anyone, including the bullies...and we cannot respond to children with more hate. This will grow more of a fire in their hearts.

I have been both bullied and the bully, so I can say that to bully isn't or wasn't at least to me intentional.  It was an instinctual lashing out to those lower on the pecking order due to the pain an anguish of home and the misery of school.

 I found after 3 years of intensive being bullied that it didn't happen as much if you were making someone else miserable.  Does it make it  ok?  No.  I was mean.  I had people making me miserable and I let it trickle down another layer or two.  No one knew how bad it was, least of all my dad.  It also afforded me to stop the bulling happening to my siblings, which was very important  to me.  No one stopped me, and they knew what I was, and no one stopped those above me from hurting me.  Or making me cry.  Or hating my life.

As an adult my son has been bullied, but we're close enough he talks to me about it.   I spoke to ones mother and she was appalled that her kid was doing it, and a year later the two are inseparable friends.  

All this is to say, don't hate the bully.  Ask why.  There is a reason, and rarely is it just to watch others writhe in pain.  Sometimes there's more...

I was bullied for 7 years in every form that bullying is in. I wrote a book about my experiences and in it I talk about how important it is to show kindness in response to the bullies and NEVER get revenge.Always forgive if you don't  That would only make things worse and you aren't being any better if you are mean right back to them. Link to get a copy of my Book: https://www.createspace.com/3997505

I can't say I was "bullied" per say, but I was most definitely picked on all through school growing up. My mom taught me a valuable lesson (which works for milder cases) - take the fun out of it and laugh along with them, when a bully sees that they aren't affecting your attitude, they will back down because it isn't as fun.- I adopted a new nickname because in 6th grade this kid Shane thought it would be funny to make up a song about me. So I started writing it on my notebooks, etc. He lost momentum soon after.

The last day of highschool, the main culprit of my bullying apologized. At the moment, I thought it was another ruse to make fun of me, but a few days later I realized that what she said was true. She was heavy and apparently she was made fun of, so she picked on me to make herself feel better. These bullies are people too, and most of them have self-esteem issues and need to be in control.

Bullying is a form of attention seeking behavior - they want people to focus on them so they hurt others. I feel as though bad behavior is more often recognized than good behavior, feeding the bully's fire and unknowingly encouraging them to do it more.

Bullying. I was bullied in school. Mercilessly. I was fat. I was weird. I was the "missing link". Blair Witch, when I dyed my hair black. Baby-eater, when I had books on Wicca and Shamanism. My belongings were flushed, torn up, thrown in the garbage. I was jumped, I had rocks tossed at my head, and I was slammed into lockers. I was followed onto the bus, and teased without relief. I was pushed down the stairs. By bullies.  And you know what? It was horrible. On top of a nasty home "life", my experiences at school left much to be desired. I couldn't focus on my assignments, and I finally stopped trying. Once I stopped trying, I got to hear from many teachers ALL ABOUT how I was failing myself, how I wouldn't amount to anything. I was ruining my life.  A lot of those bullies had home lives as miserable as, or worse than, mine. A lot of those bullies treated me, someone generally smaller than them, like s*** because someone bigger than them treated THEM like s***.  A lot of those bullies are people that I am now, at the least, on speaking terms with. Kids can be wonderful creatures, and they can be the nastiest beings on the planet. I've done my own share of bullying. To fit in, in retaliation, or just for the hell of it. I didn't beat people up, but I sure did have a talent for tearing people to shreds with my words. I learned to wield sarcasm at a far younger age than I likely should have. I was /snarky/, and sometimes snarky hurts as bad as a well placed foot in your path when you're doing the mile run in gym class. We've likely ALL done our own share of bullying. "Their not even human".  Yes, they are. This dehumanization doesn't make any sense. Animals rarely show malice. There is generally a natural reason for their cruelty. Humans, on the other hand, can be cruel for the hell of it. Is there often a reason behind it? Yes, usually there is. Does that make it acceptable? No. It doesn't. But treating them like worthless offal in return is not how you break the cycle of violence and cruelty. It just entrenches them even more securely in the very kind of behavior we loathe them for.  Sometimes standing up to a bully is what needs to be done. And sometimes, maybe you should ask them how they are doing. Is anything wrong?  I did that once. Right after someone tripped me up. I asked them (admittedly in a less than pleasant tone), just what the hell was up their arse that day. I told them that I had enough of that s**8 at home without dealing with it at school, so it'd be nice if they would leave me the heck alone or spit out just what the heck was making them be such an arse. Well, she did spit it out. Her custodial uncle beat the stuffing out of her every time she had less than an A. The stress resulted in even LOWER grades, and even WORSE beatings. So she took it out on what she saw as "easy targets". If her uncle could beat on HER, as an easy target, why couldn't she do the same? The cycle of abuse. Sometimes we can't help perpetuating it. We're human. We react, often without thinking of potential consequences. Our words bypass our filters, and we continue with the hate, the snarkiness, the violence, and the shaming. Kids kill themselves because of bullies.Kids kill others because of bullies.Kids BECOME bullies, because someone bullied THEM. Not always. Some people are just vicious for the heck of it, even kids. Been there, done that, guilty as charged.  Does that make the bullies less than human? No. It doesn't. It proves their humanity. It proves that they ARE humans. Humans that hate, love, suffer in silence, and lash out. Humans who take things into their own hands, seeking the power they often don't otherwise have. I still bully people on occasion. I usually have the best of reasons, by my logic, but it still can hurt. Good reasons don't make it the right choice. People still bully me. You're fat. You're not a good enough mom. You're worthless. You're going to fail. You're going to hell, you're going to suffer, because you don't believe as I do. You should never have bred. "That poor kid." You're stupid. You're not good enough. It sucks, it hurts, and I am guilty of doing it to others, as much as I try to avoid it. You become just as guilty as the bullies when you dehumanize them.  You become a bully. And dehumanizing children? Shame on you.

"@ done with the hurt" - I wanted to edit the comment (I mis-spelled a word - yeah, lame, I know…), but it wont let me "paste" in the reply section for some reason, so I am just posting it as a post, but this is a reply to your comment - I have to say that your remark, How can such inhumanity be human?, has at its heart this great fallacy - that Human Beings are inherently good, and that left to their own devices, we will be good to other people even when there is no intrinsic benefit for being unselfish. I am never surprised by the inhuman...actually, by the very human ways that we treat each other. "Good" has to be taught, and most of us suck at teaching it. Read Lord of the Flies (again, if you read it in school). Watch the news (yes, I know if it bleeds it leads), We are a species that does things (for the most part) that give us a benefit, and we very often shy away from doing things that offer no intrinsic benefit to our self. ESPECIALLY as children. The much loved senior girl? It behooved her to "behave" a certain way when people of important status were watching. She was probably motivated by academic standing, possibly rewarded for good grades, for being involved in class, for being a smart girl. This girl was excluding your daughter because it gave her a perceived benefit - power? Control? Group standing? Difficult to say exactly, but there was a reason for it. 

Academics doesn't teach us how to be good. It CAN teach us how to be nice, but as one of my favorite lines from "Into the Woods" says, nice is different than good. Nice can hide "not good". You can be narcissistic and still be a nice person. It is difficult to be a good person and be a narcissist. As a culture, we are raising, by not really raising them, narcissistic kids.

Generally, children are born blank. They are ciphers, literal vacuums that start sucking in every possibility, all at once and continuously. They are ALWAYS learning, in spite of our worst efforts, and learn more from what they observe and how things (people, flowers, animals, walls) react to their inputs than by what they are told. It is amazing that we survive childhood. then again, Life is a terminal condition...

When you disabuse yourself of the notion that human beings start at good, you can come a long way to understanding that some people have learned how best to get ahead, not how best to be. It really is our mission as parents to bring up our children, to lift them up from the primal, self-based human being to a higher-level Good Person. Teaching your kids to delay gratification, saying no, with-holding praise for lack-luster effort are a start. Praising Excellence, upholding righteous action, teaching self-discipline, encouraging sacrificial giving, grooming "other" based thinking, devaluing "self" esteem for self esteems sake, and valuing self-esteem earned, guiding toward truth, lovingly disciplining incorrect action, thoughtfully pursuing noble action, other directed thought, intentionally working toward self-less-ness, and away from self-ish-ness, all these things are VERY difficult to do without being intentional about it, without having these ideas "top-of-mind". But they are so important.

It is up to us, as parents, uncles and aunts, neighbors, and townspeople, to intentionally raise our children to think of others as much as they think of themselves. How can others benefit from my actions, how are my actions affecting other people, not just how are my actions benefitting or affecting me.

It is good that your daughter has been able to take Dan's advice and reconcile with this girl. Hopefully, she has reminded the girl that there are other people in her life and that she should consider other people and their well-being when she acts. Often, people don't necessarily even realize that they are doing these things, or if they do, they are expert at "spinning" the reality, at concealing the truth about their awful behavior so well that they don't even see their behavior as awful. It is just how they have learned to be, how they have always been. THAT is the most difficult "bully" to overcome.

Good luck with your own healing. Like you said, it hurts the caring parent as much (or more) than it can hurt the child. Where do you go to recharge yourself? Do your confidantes build you up? do they give you positive thoughts and positive, right actions? It can be more important, in claiming your life back from this type of incident, to seek people who may challenge you a bit, rather than those that just say "tut-tut, its a shame, you are so right." and never add anything of value to the conversation. I do not look forward to my children's struggles, but I know that I have a group of people I can turn to who can offer me the shoulder to lean on AND the challenge of "how do you best respond (emphasis on BEST) to this bully, your daughter, the bullies parents, the administration, the teacher who has forgotten her professional standing (apparently, that teacher thinks it is ok to be "friends" with the students. I do not think that that is a good choice). How best (BEST) do you respond to all of these challenges, because each one is a separate and strength-sucking challenge, and help to raise awareness, help to turn a bully around, help to open the eyes of the administration, hope to help the teacher get back to being a professional. Again, I think it is by subverting what SEEMS to be your best interest - your first instinct - and look to build up the "other", rather than seek solace or seek to salve your wounds yourself. You will be amazed at how working for other people will turn your own anger around. 

Perhaps you should start with that girl. Next time you see her, ask her how her day has been. Follow up with what her plans for the future might include. Find out more about her, and if you start to like her (your daughter does, right?) allow it to happen. Maybe even invite her and her family to a bar-b-que. It could be awkward, but if you can take your "self" out of the picture, and realize that our jobs as adults are to help children to become GOOD people (they become adults all by themselves), then it gets a little easier. 

We are not born good. We are not born evil. We are empty ciphers than, left to our own devices, fill ourselves up with ourselves and our self-interest. We need to learn to take interest in the good of others.

Your message is strong but here's what I don't get... and excuse me if I seem stupid for asking it.  But the girl who bullied my daughter (much more subtle than physical bullying she rallied her class to exclude my daughter and to treat my daughter as "unworthy" to participate in anything involving a group their senior year - thank goodness she had underclassmen friends) was a much-honored and loved student.  She was regarded as one of the brightest students, self sacrificing, got an award for leadership BY EXAMPLE (yes to see that placard on the wall made me choke back bile).  Now, I do have to read the part about perfection, because maybe I will find an answer there.  And, I will vulnerably admit to you that there were many times I felt as if this bully wasn't even human.  To hurt somebody THAT MUCH for...?  How can such hate be human?  Those who didn't stick up for my daughter... her FORMER BEST FRIEND.  "How can such inhumanity be human?" is how I felt.  Did you not feel that way WHILE being bullied?  NOW, since my daughter and the bully reconciled due to a retreat, I can see her as human, I can hope for her future, this bully... but the hurt of what my daughter went through for 2 years  is still there (and yes, it hurts parents too... as obviously I failed to protect her though I TRIED and was BETRAYED by a teacher I took into confidence who talked to my daughter's peers about me and my emails and yes the teacher is still employed there) and I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY she did it.  So when you are reaching people in their point of deepest pain, the feeling that bullies aren't human comes from a place from deep hurt and that feeling can change.  It did for me.  I am not proud of feeling such deep anger towards them, but when you cannot fathom how a human can cause such pain it is a defense mechanism.  The healing is a process that cannot take place WHILE the bullying continues, IMHO.  

I am often inspired to comment on your posts. I can tell you this: as a result of 3 years of bullying, I suffered for 15 years from low self-esteem. The damage that they inflict is deep and hard to undo. But in the end, they don't remember what they did to wrong you. Bullies are broken kids, somehow. Someone in their lives makes them feel small, and so they turn around and find a target that they can repeat this learned behavior. If home environments were examined, I'm sure that in 96% of bullies, that is where they would find the problem. They are human, but their actions dehumanize the targets of their actions. I finally recovered from the teasing and taunting (mostly) but there are times when I remember words or actions as clearly as if they were happening in the moment. My wish is for my daughter to never encounter bullies in her life. Keep spreading the word, Dan.

It is a terrible tragedy.  And it can't continue.  My voice about it is here http://toriabipolar.blogspot.ca/2012/04/bullied-teens.html

I think part of the problem might be that loving someone usually implies being sweet to them and not giving them consequences. As in, if we treat the bullies with love, then they will get away with what they do.

I think this is the opposite of how we love bullies. Teachers and parents need to hold all students to an extremely high standard of behavior and decency, and mete out clear and proportional punishments for bad behavior. And then tell the kids when they are grounded, or held in at recess, or suspended, that they are being punished because they are not behaving at their full potential of human decency. That the adults in their lives know that they can behave with love, kindness and compassion, and that it is disappointing that they are not doing so, which is why they are being punished. If kids hear "I know that you are a better person than the way that you are behaving right now, and I believe that you are amazing and capable of kindness and compassion" rather than "You are bad and being punished for being bad," they will take that more to heart.

My little brother (11) is bullied so incredibly much at school, his entire class calls him L____ no touch, and refuse to touch him, he has no friends and the teachers do nothing about the nicknames. he comes from a dysfunctional family where I (22 yr old sister) raise him as best as i can. we tried moving him to a different school for a few months and he made a few friends and that was great, until they tried to get him into bullying another kid and he refused, then his 'friends' started bullying him and the kid he stood up for did too but this little 11yr old took it all in stride, whilst my anger towards these insensitive children welled up and my heart broke for L i asked him if he regrets standing up for this other kid now that it means he's the one being bullied again and he looked at me with absolute disbelief and said No. he explained that he could never wish what he experiences daily on someone else, even if it meant he didn't have to endure it anymore. I've never been so proud in my life. He also mentioned he feels sorry for those bullies that they feel they have to be mean, and surely if my little brother can feel sorry for those who persecute him surely i can get past the anger and disappointment i feel for them to a point where i can love them too.

A few months ago a 13 year old killed himself because he was being bullied at school. His older sister went to the same school and attended the school dance. The kids that bullied him chanted "we're glad you're dead" among other things. At the dance. I'm ashamed to say that as soon as I read that news article I wanted to smack those kids to a bloody pulp; I wanted their parents to beat the respect of a human life into them. John Green (author and half of the vlogbrothers) talks about our need to imagine each other complexly. We as humans fail to see that other people hurt, love, care, or even experience things. We either elevate then to sainthood or dismiss them as animals without realizing they are just like us, trying to accomplish the same things. We are all just trying to get by in a world that on a good day is at least chaotic.

Children are born neither good nor evil, but complete ciphers and learn greedily from the get go how to survive. They are manipulative (because they MUST be, they cannot speak our language), they are very selfish, and they cannot but learn from their caretakers (Mom, Dad, Nanny, Day-Care provider) how to become what society accepts. Sadly, what society accepts is FAR less than true potential. Society accepts whatever works with the least effort. You have heard of the survival of the fittest, but you must know that this is inherently untrue. If survival of the fittest really actually was the way that things worked, there would be no imperfection, everything would be extremely fit for this place in time. In actuality, it is survival of the lowest-common-denominator. This is true for any system, and society is just a very complex system. In fact, the more complex the system, the more lowest-common-denominator rules. We need to teach our kids to be GOOD, not just nice. They WILL NOT figure this out on their own. They will get worse. In Physics, this is called entropy. In a closed system (lets use school for the system!!), entropy will either remain constant or it will increase. To keep kids from experiencing the entropy of the lowest-common-denominator, you MUST open the system and add what is needed - and I second Dan, here, and say that what is needed is love. Now, this is the most difficult thing, giving love. Possibly second only to saying NO to a child. But young children must hear that word, just as much as they must hear and FEEL love. Experience it. I am not as good a writer as Dan, and I tend to write from the palpitations of my heart, which when it beats as fast as it has been after reading this, tends to ramble and lose track of where it is. And I never know where to jump off...

I was genuinely horrifed to see the hateful, angry comments that some people posted. My own little sister was bullied when she was 12 years old just after she transferred into a public junior high school. She would come home every single afternoon crying, and one afternoon she asked my mom the most amazing thing I have ever heard out of a kid's mouth, "Mom, why is M*****y so sad that she needs to be mean to me? Isn't anybody nice to her?"
If a TWELVE YEAR OLD CHILD can get past the fact that she is being hated and taunted every day at school, if that CHILD can look past her own pain and feel for the pain of the child who is hurting her, why can't grown adults do the same?

I agree with what you say, but I'd like to point out that not all bullies are hurting. Plenty of bullies, bully people because they can get away with it, they're bored, it provides something to do, they can get a laugh out of it. I was permanently scarred by a girl who bullied me in elementary/middle school, and she had a great life. The exact reason she bullied me? She was bored and I made an easy target. It was fun for her. She got a kick out of it. These kinds of bullies are still human, of course, and I'd never think of dehumanizing them, but they're nowhere near the kid you described in your post, the one who was hurting as much inside as the kids they bullied. Telling this girl who bullied that she's loved won't help much because she knows that, and to her it has nothing to do with the people she's bullying. She bullied because it was fun and she was bored. How do I know this, have such intimate knowledge of what went on in her life? I was her best friend. For a while. Sounds cheesy, right? It wasn't. Not for me. Not when I can't dig up these memories without getting really upset. Yes, I know she's a person with feelings - it never crossed my mind to dehumanize her. I'd love to "get over" it, but I can't do that. I don't want to make her go through what I did (although I admit I wouldn't be too sorry if she did.) I want to sit down and make her listen, tell her just what she did to me, make her understand. Bullies shouldn't be dehumanized, but they shouldn't get off easy for what they did either (she didn't even get in trouble; her parents weren't informed and she remained a favorite among the staff and principal.) Have some basic compassion for them as human beings, maybe; but no matter whether they're bullying for the rush or whether they also have their own problems and are hurting inside, it NEVER - I repeat NEVER - excuses bullying. Ever. This was already posted, but this phrase applies: "Bullying is child abuse, but by another child". Child abusers are human, too, but they're still the scum of the earth. I'm not equating children to have the moral standards of adults (although I certainly had enough empathy at 7 not to bully as much as some people do at 17), but at 13 (that was "her" age when she bullied me) most kids should be able to realize that you don't make people hurt just because you get a kick out of it. It's wrong, selfish, and abusive, and no matter what issues the bully may have personally (although mine didn't have many, she just did it for fun), they need to understand that what they did is inexcusable, period.

I think this comment may seem a bit repetitive, but I feel like you're saying, in your post, pretty much, that "if you give a bully a hug they'll stop bullying". Or that all bullies have issues of their own and that's why they bully, and that that makes it excusable. That may not have been your point, though. But either way, bullying is never OK.

"their not even human"

Excuse me? Did you seriously just dehumanize someone who is in as much real pain as someone you love? Would you tell your child that because they're in pain and snapped at you for trying to talk to them that, "their not even human"? No, you wouldn't. So what gives you the right to hate someone so much as to utterly destroy any and all hope they have of becoming a better person.

If you want to claim to be an adult, act like it. Or, if you want to be weak and expand the problem with inhumanity, please, stay the hell away from me. I don't believe that anyone deserves to have their humanity stripped from them like that. I also do not believe anyone has the right to strip humanity away like that.

You want a classic example of someone thinking they had the right to dehumanize people? His name was Adolf Hitler and it's complacency and inhumanity like those words display that could lead us to being blissfully blind when real injustice happens. We all know what Hitler did was wrong, but the reason he did it was because in his mind, "their not even human".

It may sound extreme and harsh, but those words are no less harsh or extreme. Do we really want to be looked upon as a generation that exacerbated bullying by pushing bullies to do what they do? Do you know how many of these kids are abused at home. Beaten or raped by people that should be the ones to care for them the most? And here you are, so high and mighty telling them they deserve it. Get off your high horse and tackle the problems leading to these words in your own life. None of us are immune to pain. Please, do not believe these words.

"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity."
George Bernard Shaw

Dehumanizing anyone means you're already indifferent.

Bullies are criminals and THEY do not need love. I agree with Veteran that THEY need to be whipped and whipped harshly. I do not feel sorry for those thugs and may they rot in hell.

It is so true that the bullies are hurting. I have said it many times that those who are hurting others, are hurting themselves. My 10 year old daughter has been bullied for being too smart. Crazy right! She skipped a grade and has been told that she really is just a 4th grader (she is about to graduate 5th grade). She is in AIG classes and has won her school's Spelling Bee 3 years in a row and is tormented for this. You are right, teachers don't want to deal with it and they don't. I had to call a meeting last year to deal with some issues. One of those issues being the bully of a teacher she had. Anyway, this year my beautiful daughter has had one boy in particular who has tormented her in homeroom, on the playground, in the lunch room and on the bus. She can't get away from him. After she came home one day and, again, told me what this kid said to her that day, I told her that he was probably very angry or upset about something going on elsewhere in his life and because he is hurting, he wants to make others hurt and, unfortunately, my daughter is that person. My daughter said to me, "Mom you are right! A couple of months ago I overheard him telling another kid about how his Dad punches him around and his Mom doesn't do anything and still makes him go visit his Dad." I knew my hunch about this kid was right. Now, my daughter understands it, too. On the day she heard him say this, my daughter even tried to talk to him about it and be compassionate but, of course, he shot off his mouth and made her feel less of a person. My daughter grew in that moment when we made the connection that bullies are people who are hurting. She knows that is it NOT ok for him, or anyone, to bully her or anyone else but she also has some compassion for him. As a parent, it is hard for me to have compassion for a kid who is so mean to my child but if my child can have that compassion, so can I.

I was mercilessly bullied during middle school about my terrible overbite. I was told I was ugly, and "Even after you have braces, no one will like you because you're ugly." I stayed in the same school system until junior high, where by that time my teeth were straight and perfect.
In high school, I went to a private school. I was not super popular, but I had a lot of friends. I had more male frends than female. I did go back to the public school system I had previously attended for one year of school, my junior year. I was made fun of for having "big teeth," the same big teeth all the models in the magazines had. What made mine different? Seemed I could never win.
My 16 year old tells me stories of kids being bullied at her school, and how she sticks up for them. This makes me so pround I could burst.

What timing for a post such as this. A friend of mine just had to send her daugther to live with an aunt out of state to stop the bullying. The teachers did nothing. The school did nothing. The mother bought a rental house in another district so child could attend a different school. The school board forced her to return to the school where the gang of bullies were, and things only got worse. The school board did nothing. They did not protect this child, even with email and text proof, nothing was done. My friend had to make the excruciating decision to send her child away for her own protection and to help her find her own confidence and self worth again. Can you imagine having to give up your child and not see her for weeks or months because NO ONE would do anything to stop the bullying. It saddens my very soul to imagine having to make a choice like that simply because no student, no teacher, no principal, no school board member would do anything to stop the bullies.

Bullies as you can see wont change until THEY realize they are terrorizing their peers and causing pain. as i read about the 14 yr old, this is what i realize. NO ONE can change them but themselves, sometimes they need someone to talk to about their problems(their own age) as an adult i have not respect for the people that bullied me to get me mad, I have half a mind to contact the wife one of the guys that bullied me(who stood up for me ironically) and have her ask why did he and why did i never get an apology..... Bullies you need to change for you are messing with someone's self esteem and self image. it's NOT right. show me you CAN change and be the human being you are and i will believe in you. Having faith that someone can change is hard when they dont do it...

When a bully tells you nasty things - ignore them. (You say you can not ignore them? Then you are weak. Weak for lacking the will to overthrow your worthless emotions and stop caring what other people say.)
When a bully starts pushing you around, wait till they turn their back and then grab an steel pipe.

Bullies lack intelligence. Thererefore their decisions are dominated by emotions and instinct, mainly instinct, for if they had emotion they would have empathy and then they would not bully. The only way to teach a beast that acts on instinct is with violence. Consider wild dogs. The status of alpha male is governed by nothing more than physical strength. A bully is worth no more than this. Therefore the only way to teach them is through power.

Bullies do not speak words but with fists - do not respond with loving arms, but with weapons.

I may be speaking due to emotions that have been locked away for ages, or the fear that my son will, too, be bullied.
I was bulled in junior high school. It started in 7th grade. My "friends" started calling me fat. Not just fat. A whale. A pregnant whale. A pregnant beached whale. They'd follow me around yelling to everyone to move over because I "took up the whole hall". They'd yell "save the whales" as loud as they could when I walked by.
At that time I had turned to not eating, and cutting.
They made a list of 101 reasons I should kill myself. They printed it out, and distributed it around school.
I had gone to teachers, my mom, school counselors. They all told me to just ignore them. I did get lucky with the school counselors, though. They told them to stop. That's it "stop".

All these years, I still want them to go through what I did. I want them to feel the pain of working out for hours on end after not eating for three days. I want them to know what it's like to have soap in the shower get into the healing self inflicted wounds. I want them to know how the pain of getting their stomach pumped from taking too many pills in attempt to end it. I want them to know how it is to cry and cry and cry because everyone, including teachers, just watch it.
I, still, wish death on them. Mainly the ring leader. I go to her Facebook profile every few months hoping I see a post that she'd died in some horrible accident.

In some cases, bullies can be saved. But in other cases, like this one, they can't. She openly told the school counselor in a group session that she liked to see me cry. It was "funny", and they competed with each other to see what remarks would make the cut the deepest. Try telling me that all they needed was a hug, and my life would have been better. Those people were FRIENDS to start with. I did give them hugs, they did have someone to come to, they did have someone who told them they mattered.

I just got off the phone when the principal of my kindergartner's school. We were talking about the boy that's bullying my son. He's calling him names and now he has threatened him. My heart is broken. This principal shared more than she should have with me.
This boy's grandparents have just gotten custody of him. He heard, felt and saw things that no child should. He was taken from that into a situation that while loving, is new.
He's not nice to anyone at school, but is anyone being nice to him? Has anyone said, "hey! sit next to me! Share my snack! Come for a play date!"
I'm relieved that this is all being dealt with in a way that protects my son. I'm also relieved that it's being taken care of in a way that will help this little boy. My heart is broken for two little boys today.

P.S. I meant to post a link to "Bully Dance" and accidentally posted it my my own site instead. OOps!

Here is the proper link to watch the full 10 minute video from the NFB site. It is very well done, simple and extremely poignant.
http://www.nfb.ca/film/bully_dance

My recent post Ti-Jean Goes Lumbering

I was bullied; I was bullied at 10 separate schools across 10 separate cities and two separate provinces, over 8 years of my life.

My older cousins taught me how to fight off my bullies when I was in grade 4. They taught me how to throw a solid punch, how to land a good hard kick and how to take a few cheap shots (if necessary). From grade 4 until grade 11 I did the following damage to my bullies; 3 broken noses, 1 broken finger, countless chunks of hair ripped out, several broken toes, over 30 black eyes and swollen lips, dozens of shoves into ditches/fences/walls/lakes or whatever...it goes on and on and on.

NOT ONCE did this stop my bullying. NOT ONCE did it make me feel proud of myself, or better about my situation. It did, however, justify the bullying and cause it to become increasingly worse and more painful (both physically and emotionally). It did cause more kids to join in the bullying, or to justify the actions of their bully peers. It probably started the bullying in a few new schools, when I overreacted to a harmless comment or lashed out at a joke meant to test me out rather than to cause actual harm.

I know that it caused some peers, in some schools, to remember me as being the bully rather than the groups of children who tormented me for being a "scrub", "welfare", "loser", "ugly bitch", "four eyes", "whore" (I did not even know what it meant for years), "worthless" and so on and so on. I cannot believe that these people from my past do not remember a group of kids circling me, throwing half drunk juice boxes at my body, spitting on my face, pushing me around but they do remember me picking the biggest of the group and beating him up so badly that he was not in school for a week following. These people I went to school with for several months, remember me being such an angry and hostile little girl that they were not only too scared to ever come and talk to me, but also too scared to talk to my little brother (because I had no qualms about beating up his bullies either).

I had lost touch with my humanity, and I was treated less and less human for it.

I'm not saying that because of my retaliations I deserved the future bullying or deserved for it to become increasingly worse. I am definitely saying that fighting back was NOT the right way to deal with it.

To rub salt in the wound, I have to deal with these aggressive tendencies to this day. I have lost jobs, relationships and friends because my first reaction to emotional pain is always to lash out at my "attacker".

It has taken me over 10 years of counseling and therapy in order to learn how to control my nuclear temper. I have to fight myself every single day, to this day, in order to maintain a positive and loving home with my Husband and two beautiful daughters.

I spent ALL of my formative and most influential years teaching myself how to retaliate against pain with hate, and I will deal with the consequences of that training for the rest of my life.

By fighting my bullies, beating my bullies with hate and anger rather than with any kind of humanity I damaged a necessary part of myself. My bullies bruises and the lasting pain of their hurtful words has done a minuscule amount of damage to my heart and my psyche compared to the permanent handicap I have caused within my own empathic abilities.

Maybe bullies deserve to feel pain, but we should never teach our children to rue their attackers.

I would rather watch my child be bullied every day for their entire grade school life; than to watch them collapse in a shaking ball of tears, anger and frustration because their 4 year old just called them a "stupid jerk" and the first thing your adult child wanted to do was pick up the love of their life, this small piece of their own soul and flesh, a person they would crawl across hot coals for, die for, and smack them in the face.

What if I taught my child to fight their bullies with hate and anger, and they grew up like me...but worse? What if they did not seek help right out of high school for anger management? What if they never recognized the demon inside of themselves, the demon I planted? What if my grandchildren were the next to be bullied, by a monster of my own creation?

I would never take that chance. I would never stand by as my child was bullied, but I would NEVER ask them to fight for themselves either. I most certainly would NEVER teach my child to hate another, when I could teach them how to love themselves instead.

My recent post Ti-Jean Goes Lumbering

Humans have a need to define evil in a way that makes it a trait that is apparent in some and not in others. Keeping a definition like this takes people off the “responsibility hook” that they can contribute to the conditions that create evil, or bullying, in this case (Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect). Casting evil off as a separate entity is somewhat similar to dehumanization. Evil is different, therefore evil people are different and essentially not human.

Since the people responsible for bullying are truly just human, then dehumanizing (stripping them of human-like qualities) them is putting on a blinder to the fact that all humans are capable of bullying. Saying that they are less than human or not human at all is similar to saying that "real, good" humans are not capable of committing those acts. Furthermore, that they themselves are not capable of committing that act.

You are teaching about the love that Jesus taught about. And I think you are absolutely right. But, in our humanness, I don't know if loving the bullies is possible.

However, all things are possible with God. Those who have Jesus in their lives are the one who can, and should, love all people - even the bullies.

It's still difficult to do, though. I know because I was bullied too and even now, 20-some years later, it's a struggle not to hope ill had befallen those that hurt me. It's a part of life that is very difficult to submit to God and not take it back because it's such an integral part of who I became as an adult. But, Jesus said, we must love our enemies and pray for those who persecute (or persecuted) us. It's something I'm finally able to do to a degree (some hurts were much more brutal than others and those offenders I can't yet love or pray for - but we're working on it as God continues transforming my life), but only through the grace of God and the love of Jesus.

I wrote a less in-depth blog on bullying myself, back in November, if you're interested. http://thegozette.wordpress.com/2010/11/10/bullyi...

Pt. 2

I had the same experiences of boys taunting me. I would get boys asking me out on dates in junior high as a joke, and once when I asked a boy I liked to our high school's Turnabout dance, after he rejected me, he and his friends made up a rumor that my best friend and I were lesbian lovers.

All of this, I'm sure, increased my level of shyness and social awkwardness, and decreased my self-esteem. I remember feeling constantly depressed yet putting on a happy face, wishing that my classmates would die, and most of all, hating myself and wishing that I would die in my sleep just to end the suffering. I did have some teachers and school counselors who liked me, and a couple who consoled me, but never one who publicly stood up for me. My negative feelings carried on into my first years of college, where I had many horrible experiences with men due to my lack of self-esteem and ability to stand up for myself. I was depressed, suicidal, self-injuring and abused alcohol and prescription medications. At one point I became an insomniac and started skipping all my classes. I had no motivation to do well in school, and nobody in my family believed me that I was depressed, but instead thought I was just lazy. I dropped out of college and moved home, and it took me a long time, some counseling, and a couple other failed attempts at school and relationships to figure out what I really wanted to do and to accept myself for who I was.

It's taken some time, but I've learned to love myself and figured out that I am actually really smart and beautiful. I realize that I don't deserve any less than the best from the people around me. I am still very trusting and caring, and haven't allowed myself to become bitter. I still have my moments, but overall I am really happy. I've had great experiences that helped me explore myself more fully and grow into the person I really am- I went to school and got a degree in Fiction Writing and was able to live in Prague for three months through that program, and now I am going back to school to become a Vet Tech and I am doing really well in school and doing something I love.

I don't hold any ill-will toward my bullies- I don't associate with them, but I realize that they probably had their own internal struggles going on that caused them to lash out at the weakest victim they could find. Not that it's a good excuse, but it makes sense. I think schools should have bullying intervention programs, for both the bullied and the bullies. It's almost taboo for teachers to stand up for kids, as it has been for a long time. I think these kids need a deeper level of help dealing with their emotions rather than just being scolded, or being told that everything will be okay. All kids feel unsure of themselves and inadequate in some way, and they all express it in different ways, one of which happens to be bullying other kids who are "different." Some kind of counseling program needs to be put into place for bullies and kids who are bullied, but given the abysmal state of our schools, I fear that it won't happen.

Kudos to you for drawing attention to this issue and sharing your personal story. I hope we can help change things for future generations!

I can relate to this so very much. I read your post "Memoirs of a Bullied Kid" and saw myself in that story. I was bullied too, except for me, it started in kindergarten and went on through the end of high school. I went to Catholic school for all 13 years, but despite the morals of acceptance and love they were supposedly teaching us, not one teacher ever actively stood up for me. I was a friendly kid, a little shy, but eager to make friends and very trusting. So you can imagine how hard it was when, for some reason, all the kids I tried to make friends with either outright rejected me, or were friendly to me for a while and then inexplicably turned their backs on me and started taunting me right along with the others. The nice kids weren't mean to me, but they weren't friends with me either- they were friends with all the popular mean kids.

I don't know exactly what it was that made these kids target me. I was always creative and into drawing, writing, books, science and video games, and loved nature and animals. Maybe it was because I wasn't into fashion, makeup, hair, popular music or sports, or maybe it was because I was just an easy target. I got called ugly, gap-tooth, bubble-butt, stupid, weird, and was generally disregarded and avoided, unless someone needed help drawing something for a project. I was often the butt of cruel jokes and random taunts, and working on group projects was hell for me. Every once in a while I would give a retort to their mockery, but for the most part I just shrugged it off and internalized my feelings. I was friends with some younger kids and a few unpopular kids in my class, but the rest of my peers wanted nothing to do with me.

I remember when I was about 10, I went to a Girl Scout Lock-In at a camping lodge in Wisconsin. There were several different groups of Girl Scouts there of all different ages, all from my school. Our leaders sat us all in a big circle one evening, and told us that we were going to go around the circle and when it was each person's turn, we were supposed to say something nice about that person. When my turn came, there was dead silence for a whole minute. Then, to my horror, every single Girl Scout started laughing uproariously. Laughing. At me. I was crushed. One of my leaders stepped in and said, "Well, I think Julie has beautiful eyes." And that was it. We moved on to the next person.

There was one day, also when I was about 10, where I poured out my feelings to my mom. I remember sitting at the kitchen table and sobbing about how everyone was mean to me and all the kids in my class hated me for no good reason. She tried to comfort me, saying that of course they didn't hate me, they were just jealous of me and that's why they were being mean (parents, don't use this on your kids. It doesn't work, it isn't true, and has no consolation value whatsoever). She tried, and got frustrated when she couldn't make everything better. Her parting remark was, "Fine, maybe everyone does hate you!" as she walked into the next room. I never came to her for consolation again, and instead retreated into my own fantasy world. I drew and read and played video games on my Game Boy to escape. I let my schoolwork fall to the wayside- I have a learning disability that I never got help for, which made school hard enough, and the bullying on top of that sapped any will I had left to try. I squeaked by with decent grades and an intense hatred of school.

Dear Dan,
Thank you so much for this post. It is true, bullies need love. My poor mother was so verbally and emotionally abusive. But my mother is not evil like my Dad says. He used to hit her and treat her like she was the lowest thing on earth. She is extremely hurt. I keep trying to tell her that I love her. I keep hoping and praying to God that one day she will believe that she is loved and more importantly that she is loveable. I pray for my Dad every day because I love him. What he did and is doing is horrible but I wish he would stop because he is hurting himself so much! He has no idea how much it hurts me to see him in pain! My parents both hurt each other and their children because they did not feel loved by their parents who did not feel loved by their parents. It is a horrible, vicious cycle. My brothers spread more of the hurt that they were hurting from on me. I do not understand why people think that they can stop pain with more pain. Hearing from people like you who fight hatred and hurt with love and healing give people like me hope for the future.

We are guilty of being the aggressor here. America tends to want to stand by and watch. When Bill Nye the Science Guy fainted during a recent lecture, people took pictures, rather than get help, ask if he was okay. My husband carried me nearly half naked through a minor flood in Norfolk, Va. No one asked if we were okay. No one cared to find out about a broken ankle. They took pictures. We need to stop the cycle. We need to START caring. So many people assume somebody else called, someone else stopped to help... BE that someone else!
If we haven't been bullied, we were the bulliers. We have all send unkind words. We have all managed to hurt someone's feelings somewhere along the lines, caused tears, been too harsh. We've all had it happen to us. It is HARD to be good, kind. It is easy to be BAD. We must be the answer to our own folly. We MUST be the advocate for change.

I agree with what you have said. Though I was tortured as a child, as an adult I can realize that they were kids who had problems that to do this day I'm not aware of. Most people that do bad things have had bad things happen to them or are hurting inside. Like your previous post stated, people who love themselves do not hurt other people. I can definitely get beyond that. I have an 8 year old brother who receives so much love from us, but I would be crushed if he was a bully or was being bullied. I hope he never knows that pain.

I am sorry for all the victims out there. I am an advocate for victims and not bullies. So the only thing I can say is showing love will only work oif the bully is a christian but does not have the social skills. So showing love can turn a bully to repentace if they are a christian. If the bully is not a christian then love won't work. So I guess I am trying to say as christians yes we need to show love but we cant continue to be abused, even though some christians think we need to,so try other alternatives to the bully. We cant give up hope and we never know if the bully will become a chritstian so first try love and sometimes separation is in order. I only pray that things will work out for victims