7 ms·

Learning how to respond to antisocial behaviour by a peer, and being able to resolve conflict independently, are two very important skills that it's critical to

Learning how to respond to antisocial behaviour by a peer, and being able to resolve conflict independently, are two very important skills that it's critical to learn. Being seen as someone who needs adult help to resolve peer conflict is socially disastrous for young people. We do children no favours by intervening in this developmental process.

david-gpu 4y ago
> We do children no favours by intervening in this developmental process. Will you do the same when your child is being bullied? How do you think that may affect them and their relationship with you? How do you think a child feels when they realize that the adults around them do not have their back? What does it do to their sense of safety and their self-esteem? I have lived through this and have my personal take on these questions, but I'd love to learn about yours.
- thegrimmest 4y ago
  Like with most things, I think the right move for an adult is to help the child solve the problem themselves, rather than do it for them. As other posts have mentioned, learning when and how to apply violence is a critical skill. We (particularly children) do not live in a post-violence society. Children should of course not feel abandoned by those closest to them, but being overprotective can have its own negative consequences for development. It's clearly a fine line to walk, but if you're being bullied then what you need is to learn how to address/discourage that behaviour - not an intervention. Otherwise all you're doing is deferring the learning experience until next time. Past a certain window it's very hard to learn this skill, and you can be stuck with a helpless mentality for your whole life.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - mcguire 4y ago
    Homicide and suicide are the second and third leading causes of death for teens and young adults following accidents (primarily motor vehicle). (If it matters to you, males are much more likely to die and females are more likely to report bullying.)
    - thegrimmest 4y ago
      well of course - how else are the healthiest members of our population going to die?
      - Nasrudith 4y ago
        Putting aside outliers like kids wity cancer, there is what is diplomatically called "death by misadventure". Or less diplomatically winning a Darwin award.
  - oblib 4y ago
    I got pretty good at avoiding fights with bullies and dumbasses. And I never started a fight. I always made an effort to avoid fighting. But I did become a "fan" of boxing at a very early age and studied how boxers fought. How they setup opponents, threw punches, and especially how they avoided getting hit. Most kids don't do that so it's pretty easy to gain an advantage. And bullies tend to leave kids alone who they know will fight back. I grew up in some pretty rough neighborhoods so I was motivated to learn.
- oblib 4y ago
  My advice is teach your kids how to fight. I grew up with 2 brothers and lots of cousins and learned how to fight by watching boxing on TV. I fought my 2 year older brother to a draw when I was 6 years old. I dropped a 15 year old kid who was way bigger than me and bullying me by kicking him in the balls that same year and then stood over him while he was on the ground writhing and crying in pain and told him he was lucky I wasn't kicking his face in. He never came near me again. By the time I started school kids in my neighborhood knew I would fight and when I started Jr. High kids in school already knew I would fight, and I was not a big kid, I was pretty small compared to most kids my age. When I was 14 a kid I didn't know and was way bigger than me hit me in the head with a hockey stick at a city park and knocked me out cold. When I came to he was skating away from me. I skated as fast as I could, caught up to him and jumped on his back and knocked him down and I started wailing on him. I really don't remember how but I ended up sitting on his chest slugging him in the face as hard and fast as I could when I started hearing people yelling "Stop! Stop!" and realized there was a crowd of people watching me. When I was in my late teens I started taking MMA classes. That taught me how to use an opponent's force against them and when I was 21 I literally bounced a guy who'd been pestering me for years to "wrestle" off his bedroom ceiling. He was in my face pestering me again so I gave him and little shove and he came back trying to shove me as hard as he could, so it was mostly his energy, I just redirected it. He was in shock because it happened so fast. I was stunned at how well it worked. When people know you will fight back they tend to not mess with you and getting hit is not the worst thing that can happen to you. You'll heal up. Not fighting back sticks with you and hurts forever. Bullies will only keep bullying kids who don't fight back. I taught my 5 kids this and none of them were bullied in school.
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    > When people know you will fight back they tend to not mess with you and getting hit is not the worst thing that can happen to you. You'll heal up. Not fighting back sticks with you and hurts forever. 100% I once had a kid walk up to me and tell me he had to show me something out in the recess yard. We get out to a certain spot, he bends down and picks up a screwdriver and throws it at me, slammed into the side of my head. To this day I have no idea why, didn't know the kid. I chased him back into the school building, he turned a corner and the principal was standing there talking to a teacher. I remember very clearly he drew up next to the principal and had a shit eating grin on his face. I removed that grin from his face very quickly, he thought I was afraid of the consequences of beating him in front of the principal. He learned otherwise. To the principals credit, once I told him the story, saw the knot on my head, AND the screwdriver I got away with absolutely no punishment. I've never been one to start things, and in fact often times I let them go too far, but I've never actually been afraid of a fight. I used to move a lot as a kid and at some point I just got used to having to fight atleast 1 person at a new school, once people realized you wouldn't take their shit, they didn't give it.
cannaceo 4y ago
"Solve the problem yourself". Yeah, you've never had to deal with being chased by bullies and having the shit kicked out of you for no reason. Bullying is not a conflict between peers anymore than a woman getting raped is a conflict between peers. As an adult these problems are solved for you by either human resources, the police, or being able to avoid the situation. Maybe that's why you don't walk around the rough part of town alone at night. As a kid you have no control over your environment.
- thegrimmest 4y ago
  Well, bullying is many things, and I think the exact issue is that the conversation lacks nuance. As I mentioned in my first post, conflict which is evenly matched should not be regarded the same way as conflict which is not. If you are attacked by a group of people, or someone substantially larger than you, then intervention is warranted. Ideally this intervention is carried out by older peers. If you're being bullied by one of your peers, you need to learn the skills to resolve that conflict. Sometimes escalation is the best tool, sometimes avoidance is. There's no panacea, but it's something we all need to learn.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - cannaceo 4y ago
    Can you give an example of what being bullied by a peer would look like and what skills would be required to resolve that conflict?
    - thegrimmest 4y ago
      If one of your classmates takes to pushing you around, taking your stuff, embarrassing you, calling you names, etc. This is normal behaviour in apes who are trying to establish a dominance hierarchy. The bully likely sees you as a soft target who is easy to dominate. The best course is to correct that assumption - escalate conflict - fight back, fight dirty. It's the same rationale as in prison - you don't want to end up at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy. The best way to avoid that is to make friends and be more trouble than you are worth.
zmgsabst 4y ago
Do you hold this same view about adults and police? Are we denying women a chance at personal development by having police arrest rapists rather than forcing women to develop the necessary skills of interpersonal violence to defend themselves? …where is the line?
- thegrimmest 4y ago
  I'm simply pointing to a body of research that shows we have this area of development in common with our ape relations, and that the strategies juvenile apes use to resolve conflict largely apply to children too. With regards to sexual assault - we surely should teach vulnerable people the necessary skills to avoid violence. It (used to be) common sense not to drink in the company of strangers, especially if you are physically vulnerable (regardless of your sex). None of this is exclusive to punishing perpetrators, which we should of course continue doing.
  - mcguire 4y ago
    You might wish to examine the statistics on the relationships between rapists and their victims.
    - thegrimmest 4y ago
      And you might want to examine those on alcohol consumption and sexual assault.
soco 4y ago
As we all read stories about bullied kids, or even this study above, not having help to resolve peer conflict isn't especially useful to kids' development either. So, how exactly should they handle it by themselves? Gang up? Outgun the bullies? I'm sorry but I can't even imagine a good way, any good way, how a bullied nerd kid can get out of bullying by themselves.
- thegrimmest 4y ago
  My understanding is as follows: 1) If you're roughly evenly matched, you should fight 2) If you're not, your peers should intervene - "pick on someone your own size" 3) If this doesn't work, escalate to older peers 4) If that doesn't work, escalate to adults This relies on children being taught and encouraged to intervene in unfair conflict, which the research indicates they are naturally inclined to do.
  - soco 4y ago
    So basically you advocate not only educating the own kid, but also educating their peers to intervene, and also educating the older ones to police the area, and educating the adults in the end. Do you really think this is a realistic policy, over the lifetime of your school kid? In an ideal world, no idea, but in this real world Id say zero chance. However I can tell you how it works around here (Switzerland, by no means perfect either) where school personal will usually intervene - and somehow the bullied kids manage to learn their social skills as well. Yes we might be apes but even among apes the social structures are so different that the comparison is mostly meaningless.
    - thegrimmest 4y ago
      This was basically how things have worked and continue to work in (particularly rural) areas where policymaking is lacking and people are left to their own devices. "Bullied" kids seek help from their immediate peers, from their/their peers older siblings, and from adults, roughly in that order. Parents typically do not hesitate to suggest aggressive escalation as a conflict resolution strategy. This strategy is often applied successfully. I'm suggesting that the current "zero tolerance" approach practiced in North America does more harm than good by halting this process before it can resolve conflict - thus harming both the bullied and the bully.
Dudeman112 4y ago
>being able to resolve conflict, independently A shame sometimes the best way to resolve a conflict is eye gouging the aggressor before they permanently break a part of your body The thing that stuck with me the most by getting the "resolve your conflicts by yourself" treatment was that no matter how much someone is being a piece of shit, the only one you can count on is yourself Everyone else will watch as you break, and only intervene if you fight back. And punishment is only ever dished out in equal measures between aggressor and victim Noticing that was probably the start of considering people to be rotten by default, reasons are needed to assume someone isn't
- bongoman37 4y ago
mcguire 4y ago
Problem: "Existing research indicates that (a) being bullied in childhood is associated with distress and symptoms of mental health problems...; (b) the consequences of childhood bullying victimisation can persist up to midlife and, in addition to mental health, can impact physical and socioeconomic outcomes." Solution: Let 'em work it out themselves.
- thegrimmest 4y ago
  I don't see how this research controls for the zero tolerance policies which have been in place for a long time, and which lots of research suggests serve to prolong and escalate conflict.
  - mcguire 4y ago
    Source? I have a pretty low opinion of the zero tolerance policies because they seem to primarily operate to the benefit of the bullies in this case: the bullying is not readily visible as a problem to the adults and when it is, many of them think as you do, that kids will be kids and they should work out their problems themselves. However, a fight is an immediate problem and the obvious instigator is the victim of the bullying.
- WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
  > Solution: Let 'em work it out themselves. Working-it-out is an effective approach for two people who want to solve an issue - an issue that they're both fairly responsible for. But where you have one child experiencing long-term and unearned mistreatment at the hands of many peers - attempts at working-it-out are such a mismatched response that more mistreatment seems likely.
anonym29 4y ago
There seems to be a disconnect between what you think bullying is and how it actually manifests. Between adults, the behavior would be classified as unprovoked assault & battery. Someone punching you in the back of your head while you weren't looking, without a word being said between either of you, because the other person's peer group dared them to is not a failure of the victim's conflict resolution skills. To be clear, as a victim, I was subject to unprovoled physical battery like this more time than I can count between the start of middle school and my second year of high school. As a bully, in my senior year, I never engaged in any kind of physical violence, just name calling and verbally provoking someone prone to emotional outbursts.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  I think this post speaks to the problem of broadly discussing "bullying". As you point out unprovoked battery and name calling fall under the same terminology, but the appropriate responses are obviously not the same.
Teever 4y ago
They are very important skills to learn, and they're ones we as a society haven't really learned because we're still dealing with this problem.

david-gpu 4y ago

> We do children no favours by intervening in this developmental process. Will you do the same when your child is being bullied? How do you think that may affect them and their relationship with you? How do you think a child feels when they realize that the adults around them do not have their back? What does it do to their sense of safety and their self-esteem? I have lived through this and have my personal take on these questions, but I'd love to learn about yours.

thegrimmest 4y ago
Like with most things, I think the right move for an adult is to help the child solve the problem themselves, rather than do it for them. As other posts have mentioned, learning when and how to apply violence is a critical skill. We (particularly children) do not live in a post-violence society. Children should of course not feel abandoned by those closest to them, but being overprotective can have its own negative consequences for development. It's clearly a fine line to walk, but if you're being bullied then what you need is to learn how to address/discourage that behaviour - not an intervention. Otherwise all you're doing is deferring the learning experience until next time. Past a certain window it's very hard to learn this skill, and you can be stuck with a helpless mentality for your whole life.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mcguire 4y ago
  Homicide and suicide are the second and third leading causes of death for teens and young adults following accidents (primarily motor vehicle). (If it matters to you, males are much more likely to die and females are more likely to report bullying.)
  - thegrimmest 4y ago
    well of course - how else are the healthiest members of our population going to die?
    - Nasrudith 4y ago
      Putting aside outliers like kids wity cancer, there is what is diplomatically called "death by misadventure". Or less diplomatically winning a Darwin award.
- oblib 4y ago
  I got pretty good at avoiding fights with bullies and dumbasses. And I never started a fight. I always made an effort to avoid fighting. But I did become a "fan" of boxing at a very early age and studied how boxers fought. How they setup opponents, threw punches, and especially how they avoided getting hit. Most kids don't do that so it's pretty easy to gain an advantage. And bullies tend to leave kids alone who they know will fight back. I grew up in some pretty rough neighborhoods so I was motivated to learn.
oblib 4y ago
My advice is teach your kids how to fight. I grew up with 2 brothers and lots of cousins and learned how to fight by watching boxing on TV. I fought my 2 year older brother to a draw when I was 6 years old. I dropped a 15 year old kid who was way bigger than me and bullying me by kicking him in the balls that same year and then stood over him while he was on the ground writhing and crying in pain and told him he was lucky I wasn't kicking his face in. He never came near me again. By the time I started school kids in my neighborhood knew I would fight and when I started Jr. High kids in school already knew I would fight, and I was not a big kid, I was pretty small compared to most kids my age. When I was 14 a kid I didn't know and was way bigger than me hit me in the head with a hockey stick at a city park and knocked me out cold. When I came to he was skating away from me. I skated as fast as I could, caught up to him and jumped on his back and knocked him down and I started wailing on him. I really don't remember how but I ended up sitting on his chest slugging him in the face as hard and fast as I could when I started hearing people yelling "Stop! Stop!" and realized there was a crowd of people watching me. When I was in my late teens I started taking MMA classes. That taught me how to use an opponent's force against them and when I was 21 I literally bounced a guy who'd been pestering me for years to "wrestle" off his bedroom ceiling. He was in my face pestering me again so I gave him and little shove and he came back trying to shove me as hard as he could, so it was mostly his energy, I just redirected it. He was in shock because it happened so fast. I was stunned at how well it worked. When people know you will fight back they tend to not mess with you and getting hit is not the worst thing that can happen to you. You'll heal up. Not fighting back sticks with you and hurts forever. Bullies will only keep bullying kids who don't fight back. I taught my 5 kids this and none of them were bullied in school.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  > When people know you will fight back they tend to not mess with you and getting hit is not the worst thing that can happen to you. You'll heal up. Not fighting back sticks with you and hurts forever. 100% I once had a kid walk up to me and tell me he had to show me something out in the recess yard. We get out to a certain spot, he bends down and picks up a screwdriver and throws it at me, slammed into the side of my head. To this day I have no idea why, didn't know the kid. I chased him back into the school building, he turned a corner and the principal was standing there talking to a teacher. I remember very clearly he drew up next to the principal and had a shit eating grin on his face. I removed that grin from his face very quickly, he thought I was afraid of the consequences of beating him in front of the principal. He learned otherwise. To the principals credit, once I told him the story, saw the knot on my head, AND the screwdriver I got away with absolutely no punishment. I've never been one to start things, and in fact often times I let them go too far, but I've never actually been afraid of a fight. I used to move a lot as a kid and at some point I just got used to having to fight atleast 1 person at a new school, once people realized you wouldn't take their shit, they didn't give it.

cannaceo 4y ago

"Solve the problem yourself". Yeah, you've never had to deal with being chased by bullies and having the shit kicked out of you for no reason. Bullying is not a conflict between peers anymore than a woman getting raped is a conflict between peers. As an adult these problems are solved for you by either human resources, the police, or being able to avoid the situation. Maybe that's why you don't walk around the rough part of town alone at night. As a kid you have no control over your environment.

thegrimmest 4y ago
Well, bullying is many things, and I think the exact issue is that the conversation lacks nuance. As I mentioned in my first post, conflict which is evenly matched should not be regarded the same way as conflict which is not. If you are attacked by a group of people, or someone substantially larger than you, then intervention is warranted. Ideally this intervention is carried out by older peers. If you're being bullied by one of your peers, you need to learn the skills to resolve that conflict. Sometimes escalation is the best tool, sometimes avoidance is. There's no panacea, but it's something we all need to learn.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- cannaceo 4y ago
  Can you give an example of what being bullied by a peer would look like and what skills would be required to resolve that conflict?
  - thegrimmest 4y ago
    If one of your classmates takes to pushing you around, taking your stuff, embarrassing you, calling you names, etc. This is normal behaviour in apes who are trying to establish a dominance hierarchy. The bully likely sees you as a soft target who is easy to dominate. The best course is to correct that assumption - escalate conflict - fight back, fight dirty. It's the same rationale as in prison - you don't want to end up at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy. The best way to avoid that is to make friends and be more trouble than you are worth.

zmgsabst 4y ago

Do you hold this same view about adults and police? Are we denying women a chance at personal development by having police arrest rapists rather than forcing women to develop the necessary skills of interpersonal violence to defend themselves? …where is the line?

thegrimmest 4y ago
I'm simply pointing to a body of research that shows we have this area of development in common with our ape relations, and that the strategies juvenile apes use to resolve conflict largely apply to children too. With regards to sexual assault - we surely should teach vulnerable people the necessary skills to avoid violence. It (used to be) common sense not to drink in the company of strangers, especially if you are physically vulnerable (regardless of your sex). None of this is exclusive to punishing perpetrators, which we should of course continue doing.
- mcguire 4y ago
  You might wish to examine the statistics on the relationships between rapists and their victims.
  - thegrimmest 4y ago
    And you might want to examine those on alcohol consumption and sexual assault.

soco 4y ago

As we all read stories about bullied kids, or even this study above, not having help to resolve peer conflict isn't especially useful to kids' development either. So, how exactly should they handle it by themselves? Gang up? Outgun the bullies? I'm sorry but I can't even imagine a good way, any good way, how a bullied nerd kid can get out of bullying by themselves.

thegrimmest 4y ago
My understanding is as follows: 1) If you're roughly evenly matched, you should fight 2) If you're not, your peers should intervene - "pick on someone your own size" 3) If this doesn't work, escalate to older peers 4) If that doesn't work, escalate to adults This relies on children being taught and encouraged to intervene in unfair conflict, which the research indicates they are naturally inclined to do.
- soco 4y ago
  So basically you advocate not only educating the own kid, but also educating their peers to intervene, and also educating the older ones to police the area, and educating the adults in the end. Do you really think this is a realistic policy, over the lifetime of your school kid? In an ideal world, no idea, but in this real world Id say zero chance. However I can tell you how it works around here (Switzerland, by no means perfect either) where school personal will usually intervene - and somehow the bullied kids manage to learn their social skills as well. Yes we might be apes but even among apes the social structures are so different that the comparison is mostly meaningless.
  - thegrimmest 4y ago
    This was basically how things have worked and continue to work in (particularly rural) areas where policymaking is lacking and people are left to their own devices. "Bullied" kids seek help from their immediate peers, from their/their peers older siblings, and from adults, roughly in that order. Parents typically do not hesitate to suggest aggressive escalation as a conflict resolution strategy. This strategy is often applied successfully. I'm suggesting that the current "zero tolerance" approach practiced in North America does more harm than good by halting this process before it can resolve conflict - thus harming both the bullied and the bully.

Dudeman112 4y ago

>being able to resolve conflict, independently A shame sometimes the best way to resolve a conflict is eye gouging the aggressor before they permanently break a part of your body The thing that stuck with me the most by getting the "resolve your conflicts by yourself" treatment was that no matter how much someone is being a piece of shit, the only one you can count on is yourself Everyone else will watch as you break, and only intervene if you fight back. And punishment is only ever dished out in equal measures between aggressor and victim Noticing that was probably the start of considering people to be rotten by default, reasons are needed to assume someone isn't

bongoman37 4y ago

mcguire 4y ago

Problem: "Existing research indicates that (a) being bullied in childhood is associated with distress and symptoms of mental health problems...; (b) the consequences of childhood bullying victimisation can persist up to midlife and, in addition to mental health, can impact physical and socioeconomic outcomes." Solution: Let 'em work it out themselves.

thegrimmest 4y ago
I don't see how this research controls for the zero tolerance policies which have been in place for a long time, and which lots of research suggests serve to prolong and escalate conflict.
- mcguire 4y ago
  Source? I have a pretty low opinion of the zero tolerance policies because they seem to primarily operate to the benefit of the bullies in this case: the bullying is not readily visible as a problem to the adults and when it is, many of them think as you do, that kids will be kids and they should work out their problems themselves. However, a fight is an immediate problem and the obvious instigator is the victim of the bullying.
WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
> Solution: Let 'em work it out themselves. Working-it-out is an effective approach for two people who want to solve an issue - an issue that they're both fairly responsible for. But where you have one child experiencing long-term and unearned mistreatment at the hands of many peers - attempts at working-it-out are such a mismatched response that more mistreatment seems likely.

anonym29 4y ago

There seems to be a disconnect between what you think bullying is and how it actually manifests. Between adults, the behavior would be classified as unprovoked assault & battery. Someone punching you in the back of your head while you weren't looking, without a word being said between either of you, because the other person's peer group dared them to is not a failure of the victim's conflict resolution skills. To be clear, as a victim, I was subject to unprovoled physical battery like this more time than I can count between the start of middle school and my second year of high school. As a bully, in my senior year, I never engaged in any kind of physical violence, just name calling and verbally provoking someone prone to emotional outbursts.

s1artibartfast 4y ago
I think this post speaks to the problem of broadly discussing "bullying". As you point out unprovoked battery and name calling fall under the same terminology, but the appropriate responses are obviously not the same.

Teever 4y ago

They are very important skills to learn, and they're ones we as a society haven't really learned because we're still dealing with this problem.