Thoughts on bullying

But first: Lydia, Malabrigo is a 100% superwash merino sock yarn. But it's more tightly spun than some merino sock yarns I've felt, so I have high hopes for its durability. (And I looked up the colorway; it's called Candombe. Malabrigo tends to name its colors after things in South America. I looked up Candombe and it's an Afro-Brazilian music style).

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I heard on the news this morning that the Oklahoma legislature is working on an anti-bullying bill for schools. I was prepared to groan and roll my eyes, thinking, "This will be another one of those do-nothing, feel-good bills, where the legislatures get to decry bullying as Bad, but nothing will really change."

I can't find a text of the "new" legislation online. (This is apparently an add-on of "cyberbullying" to an existing 2002 bill. Which tells cynical me that it's not going to improve stuff much, since things don't seem to have changed much since 2002.)

I don't know how much a piece of legislation or even having a 'school plan' in place can do to prevent bullying. It seems to me that part of it has to be parents teaching their kids to be compassionate, recognizing that bullying happens and helping equip their kids to deal with it, (I don't think you can ever END bullying, and possibly, cracking down on it at school might make it get worse somewhere else, or make it go underground and sort of fester), and maybe, just maybe, being a little less inclined to suspend or expel the kids who DO stand up to bullies. (I'm not saying, "let the other kids beat the tar out of the bullies." But sometimes, a bit of strategic self-defense can lead to the bullies backing down).

And maybe, giving schools the authority to throw out the most serious bullies - to tell parents, "Sorry, your child is too much of a threat. Either send him/her to Bullying Rehab, or you will be finding an alternative school."

Here's a question for those of you who are parents (or grandparents): Is bullying substantially worse than it was when you were in school? Or is the main issue now that with Facebook and text messages and all the electronic devices, it's easier to spread lies, rumors, and unkind statements, and it's harder for the bullied kid to get away from it? (We didn't even have an ANSWERING MACHINE when I was a kid - and yes, I've heard of cases of mean girls in high school calling a family's answering machine and leaving a message purporting to be from a pregnancy crisis center telling the family's daughter that she is pregnant)

There are different types of bullying. I think often the physical kind - the big kid who beats up on smaller kids - gets a lot of press, but I almost think that's a less insidious form than some of the "psychological" bullying that kids do. I also think that the kid-beating-up-other-kids is the one most likely to get punished.

I rarely saw or experienced the physical kind of bullying in school. Part of it was, I think, because I was female, and back in those days (or at least, back in my district), it was very rare for a girl to beat up another girl, and it was still seen (I think) as cowardly for a boy to beat up on a girl. (Chivalry may have been on life support, but it wasn't quite dead.) And maybe, by extension, it was seen as cowardly for a boy to bully a girl.

It's also possible I was bullied less by boys than by other girls because I had a few male friends during my grade-school days, and now that I think back on it, they may have "had my back" in the whole bullying thing, and kept the boy bullies off my case. (If that's true, Mark and Brandon and Matt and Scott...where ever you are now, I thank you.)

The only real "physical" bullying I remember was having my textbooks and homework knocked out of my hands "by accident" in the hall, and my homework trampled. But that was a pretty common occurrence (in that, lots of kids had it happen) and I found that less hurtful than some forms of bullying.

I experienced a lot of what I will call "mean girl" bullying - the sort of psychological unpleasantness that (typically) girls do to other girls. (It's not EXCLUSIVELY girls, but in my experience, most of the people who bullied in this way were girls). A lot of times it involved backhanded compliments or statements that sounded neutral enough on the surface - but the tone in which they were delivered, or some sotto voce comment the person added at the end of the statement, made it clear that the person was being catty. The really insidious thing is that the girls learned how to do it to have plausible deniability - if you went to a teacher and reported that "Sharon said 'X' to me," 'X' would be able to be interpreted as something innocuous - which was how the teacher ALWAYS interpreted it. And sometimes they even said, "Oh, Sharon's just trying to be FRIENDS with you," when you knew darn well that (a) Sharon had said 'X' in the snottiest tone possible, meaning any niceness contained in the words of 'X' was negated by her tone and (b) Sharon wouldn't be your friend in a million years, and even if she wanted you as a friend, there was too much past history of meanness on her part to make that possible.

Or, there was just outright meanness, because some of the girls knew that a lot of us had given up on trying to tattle. And it was meanness about such STUPID stuff (or so it seems to me, now, as an adult). Things like how a person dressed...what brand of jeans she wore. Whether or not she needed a bra yet. How her hair was styled. Glasses. Braces. (My parents were frugal, so I had store-brand, rather than designer jeans. I "developed" early and fast. My hair was a hot mess, partly because of puberty hormones making it crazy. I had glasses - and because of the way my dad's insurance worked, I had a choice of three equally-unflattering frame styles. And I had braces.)

(The first time in my life I heard the term "trailer trash," it was applied to a friend of mine...I remembered being sad and baffled by that remark, because while my friend and her family DID live in a mobile home, they were NOT trashy people)

(Now that I think of it - the gym locker room was about the meanest place on the school grounds.)

There was some rumor-starting, but either the rumors about me never got back to me, or they didn't bother to do that to me. But that was also a common thing - passing word that so-and-so was a "slut," or that she "put out" or that there was something lacking in her personal hygiene, or something...in some cases it could really destroy a girl. (I may not have had enough "interesting" about me to be worthy of rumors...I had male friends, as I said, but not "boyfriends," so the putting-out rumors would be implausible...)

There was also name-calling. Anyone who has been called names (and I got the full gamut, from "brainiac" to "retard," which, now, as an adult, shows me just how illogical bullying is) and has heard the old "Sticks and stones..." rhyme knows that it's a lie, words DO hurt. I'm not saying the occasional insult or epithet is bullying per se, but if someone goes through their entire school career being insulted daily or nearly daily...then it rises to the level of bullying.

And then there's the whole laughing thing. If you're a self-conscious kid, and you've been laughed at in the past, it's agonizing to walk by a table in the lunchroom, have the kids there stop talking and begin snickering behind their hands - because the implication is they were talking about YOU. (I admit it, to this day, I am a bit paranoid about people "privately" laughing...)

And just a hundred little things, some that seem really minor to write them down but if you're a sensitive kid who never feels like they fit in, they are actually pretty big.

And I don't know how that kind of bullying can be stopped, really: if a person wants to be mean to another person, they will find a way to be. I know that's really pessimistic but it's been my experience. You can make kids in the classroom sit in a circle and say three nice things about everyone else in the room, but if someone has it in for another kid in the class, they will find a way to get to them...in the lunchroom, on the playground, on the school bus going home, or somewhere.

And now, I guess, online. While I think it would be far too draconian to say "No under-18s on ANY kind of e-mail or social networking or text-message plan" (and can you imagine the howls of protest?), I can see how not being able to get away from your tormentors would be a real anguish. (As teased as I was at school, I could go home at the end of the day to a family that loved me, and on the weekends I played with my friends - and went to church, and had people who loved me there and thought that I was OK, and that actually, I think, did a lot for me - having other people, not my family, who accepted me for who I was).

Anyway, I hate to say it, but maybe the best defense against the sort of low-level bullying that happens all the time to kids is to help the bullied kids deal with it. Help them develop some kind of sense-of-self that includes a recognition that the bullies are revealing more about themselves than they are about the kid being bullied. And embracing the kid and including them in as many bully-free activities (like church activities were for me) as possible. I don't know.

And maybe telling them that as they grow up, things get better. For me, high school was WORLDS better than junior high - for one thing, my parents sent me to a private school, which got me away from the established cliques of the local school system, and for another, I found several people there that I became very good friends with and was able to kind of let some of the meanness that still existed from other people roll off my back better. And as an adult...well, I still deal with the occasional bully, but I'm a lot better at coping with it now, and I'm more likely to find other people I can share the "bullying incident" with and have them go, "Oh, that's just HIM. He just does that. It's stupid and it's wrong but it wasn't directed personally at you."

(And actually, maybe, if it's possible - I don't know if it is, given the level of emotional development of a 12 year old - helping bullied kids see that it's "not them" that it's the bully, and trying to help them learn not to take it personally. That would have helped me, because I took EVERYTHING personally when I was a kid)

(The main "bullies" I deal with now are people who try to intimidate me, or who will get what I interpret as "angry" with me over minor things that I don't really have control over - the sort of kill-the-messenger situation - and I admit, I have a hard time coping with that sometimes, at least, during the fact (after the fact I can go, "Wow, there's something screwed up in that person's psyche for them to react that way.") I admit in the face of the intimidating sort of person I kind of cower and often acquiesce to things I'd rather not to. Or, this past fall, I had someone actually almost make me cry in their office, simply because of how they reacted to me when I THOUGHT I was following the rules, and it turned out I actually was not following the "secret" rules this person had but had not publicized...)

But I don't know. I've actually said to my mom, "If I were married and had a kid, and if there were any way we could financially manage it...I'd homeschool." Because the thought of dealing with one of my offspring going through the same (and perhaps worse) as I went through in school...wow.

(While no one deserves bullying, I can kind of understand now why I might have been...I was kind of a little egghead and a teacher's pet. And when I think back about how I talked and wrote, I was actually kind of a little pedant...probably sort of tiresome at times. And I was, for a lot of the years of school, emotionally immature compared to my intellectual level (Well, heck: emotionally immature compared to a lot of the other kids). And that's a bad combination: egghead plus cries-at-the-drop-of-a-hat is pretty much a big flashing sign that says IT'S FUN FOR YOU TO TEASE ME on it.)

I do think the teasing/bullying had some good, some bad effects: in the good column, I think it did make me a more compassionate person, less prone to "pile on" and tease someone, especially if the reason they were being teased was something like a speech impediment or disability or it was a boy who was somewhat effeminate...something like that. And I think it made me someone who is better at observing and interpreting human behavior than I otherwise might be.

On the bad side: I think part of the reason I'm such an extreme introvert/near-hermit is that I just kind of burned out on the idea of close friends after having some of my friendly advances rejected at an earlier age. And I'm terrified of rejection...to the point where I will put up with things that I maybe shouldn't have to. (I think that's why I'm not very assertive, nor am I any good with confrontation: there's too much of a specter of the old "Yeah? Well, I won't be your FRIEND any more!" about confrontation)

I also admit, and maybe this is good/bad: I am still kind of pleasantly surprised when I find that people like me. I know, that's sort of sad...but I spent enough years in grade school feeling like everyone hated me, and thinking it was because there was something wrong or strange or bad about my personality (again with the taking it personally) that I find it kind of hard to accept that I am generally likeable. I began in high school to realize that - that a lot of people seem to like me for ME, and it's sort of an odd new realization (it still is, kind of.) So I suppose it's good, because I don't take being liked for granted, but it's not so good because I'm not sure it's good for me walking around thinking that the default setting for my life is people not liking me...and that also would make me pessimistic about human nature.