4 ms·

There's a bunch of places/possibilities. Bad/absent parents or role models. A parent/parents who already have a narcissistic tendency imprinting how they act

There's a bunch of places/possibilities. Bad/absent parents or role models. A parent/parents who already have a narcissistic tendency imprinting how they act towards other people onto their children. A parent/parents who aren't paying attention to how their kid acts outside of the home, using excuses and blame deferral to hide the fact that they're bad parents, not exactly encouraging the behavior but ignoring that it's a problem. Some kids are just predisposed to be little arseholes, maybe it's genetic, maybe it's something developmental.

nsxwolf 4y ago
There's so many possibilities and different bully archetypes. There's a girl at my kids' school that bullies my daughter and other kids. I talked to her father and found he's as exacerbated with the situation as I am. There may be something going on at home, but I sincerely believe he's trying and at the end of his rope. There was this big dude that used to intimidate and bully me for 3 years of high school. One day in senior year I finally snapped and just punched him. His facial expression immediately changed - it was a look of "That's what I've been waiting for you to do all these years." We're friends to this day.
saeranv 4y ago
Just to give another perspective: Bullying was very, very common in my school. I bullied in Grade 2*, and over the years got bullied back. Personally, I don't think your possible causes could have applied to everyone. I just think most small children don't have fully developed empathy, and are uncritical about ethics, and so will cruelly bully someone for very little reason. This kind of in-group, out-group dynamic seems like a default for humanity. It's pretty easy to lapse into xenophobia - since that's our default. Trying to widen the circle of the "in-group" status is hard, and goes against our instincts. * ETA: Thinking back on this period, I recall our teacher trying her best to combat the bullying of one girl in particular. She would do things like sit us down as a class and explain to us why it was cruel, with the girl in her lap, and reading stories to us about bullying. None of it worked, I literally remember sitting there, nodding along, and being frankly too dumb to connect this back to my own bullying. In hindsight, the one thing that I think would have worked is if she had publically reprimanded us everytime she had caught us in the act. I think that kind of repeated, instant feedback would finally gotten through to us.
- sdwr 4y ago
  I still feel too dumb for that kind of diffuse moralizing. I understand why the teacher wouldn't want to police directly though. Really effective leaders have emotional liquidity built up for that kind of situation, and do subtle work to restore balance. There's a grey zone where bullying blends into friendly teasing. A little bit of poking gets the blood flowing, especially if you already have social velocity, but repeated exploitation is just cruel.

nsxwolf 4y ago

There's so many possibilities and different bully archetypes. There's a girl at my kids' school that bullies my daughter and other kids. I talked to her father and found he's as exacerbated with the situation as I am. There may be something going on at home, but I sincerely believe he's trying and at the end of his rope. There was this big dude that used to intimidate and bully me for 3 years of high school. One day in senior year I finally snapped and just punched him. His facial expression immediately changed - it was a look of "That's what I've been waiting for you to do all these years." We're friends to this day.

saeranv 4y ago

Just to give another perspective: Bullying was very, very common in my school. I bullied in Grade 2*, and over the years got bullied back. Personally, I don't think your possible causes could have applied to everyone. I just think most small children don't have fully developed empathy, and are uncritical about ethics, and so will cruelly bully someone for very little reason. This kind of in-group, out-group dynamic seems like a default for humanity. It's pretty easy to lapse into xenophobia - since that's our default. Trying to widen the circle of the "in-group" status is hard, and goes against our instincts. * ETA: Thinking back on this period, I recall our teacher trying her best to combat the bullying of one girl in particular. She would do things like sit us down as a class and explain to us why it was cruel, with the girl in her lap, and reading stories to us about bullying. None of it worked, I literally remember sitting there, nodding along, and being frankly too dumb to connect this back to my own bullying. In hindsight, the one thing that I think would have worked is if she had publically reprimanded us everytime she had caught us in the act. I think that kind of repeated, instant feedback would finally gotten through to us.

sdwr 4y ago
I still feel too dumb for that kind of diffuse moralizing. I understand why the teacher wouldn't want to police directly though. Really effective leaders have emotional liquidity built up for that kind of situation, and do subtle work to restore balance. There's a grey zone where bullying blends into friendly teasing. A little bit of poking gets the blood flowing, especially if you already have social velocity, but repeated exploitation is just cruel.