It's unfortunate, but to the person being bullied, their immediate concern is not the next weakest person. Their immediate concern is avoiding or fending off the bully.
It's more like telling people who live in dangerous areas not to walk around looking scared and confused. Which we do...
I have to agree with the sentiment expressed elsewhere in the thread, that bullies bully for different reasons. The only time I have been bullied, avoidance and not showing a response worked, because the bully had low self-esteem and was looking for acceptance from his peers by picking on smaller kids. When he saw that he wasn't getting anywhere with that, he stopped.
This method works for the people who are able to do it (ability, personality, temperament). But it tends to reinforce the idea that those who can't take these steps somehow deserve to be bullied.
You make a good point (and it takes guts to admit being a bully): the anti-bullying strategy is to make the bully pick a different target.
You don't have to be "un-bullyable", you just have to be less bullyable than the next guy.
However, I still believe it's possible to fight back in a non-physical manner. My experience has always been that wit is sharper than fists, so I plan to teach my kids to fight back with language, not punches.
Yes, but that's the point. I never picked on someone who I felt would fight back. I don't know how I developed this intuition as a kid but it was fairly accurate. The thing is if the kid fought back then I would probably have picked someone else. It must be hard for the bullying victim but it's something that has to be done.
This link you gave is interesting. My corollary to this is as a victim, never do favors for your bullier. It only makes you look weaker in their eyes and it will only spur them on. For me, the only solution is to fight back and make yourself not look an easy target.
A bully's goal is to get a reaction out of you so to win - don't react.
That doesn't work. Bullies target weak people who they perceive as being socially isolated and less likely to retaliate. If they don't get the reaction they want, it's not unusual for verbal bullying to escalate to physical violence. There's abundant academic literature on this topic.
The catch is that the bullied is often not well positioned to tell reliably whether bullying happens or not. We can assume it's friendly banter while it's bullying. As a child the idea that someone might want to hurt me just did not compute and caused a paralysing response. Or we can assume it's bullying even though it's friendly banter. After being bullied I saw any tease or taunt as a personal attack and this cost me close friendships in uni years.
That's a bit like telling people who live in dangerous areas that the best response to a mugger is not to let them impoverish you. Bullies select people who seem physically or emotionally fragile to start with.
I've dealt with bullies in this way too. It does depend on the bully, as well if the victim is capable of completely ignoring someone like that. As a child, I wouldn't have been able to show no emotion on my face and ignore someone teasing me as I wore my heart on my sleeve.
In general that’s not a great heuristic to go by. In college, when I came across a bully who was much, much smarter than me it was terrifying. The lesson was avoid at all costs.
Interesting. He is displaying obvious bully-like behavior: implicit intimidation, tension escalation, keeping others off-guard, blatant disregard for others' personal space and comfort. It seems like he learned all of the wrong lessons from being bullied. He learned that being a bully is good.
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