4 ms·

Very interesting experience. Though I have no real comparison, my question is: Was getting in shape an easier solution than cracking down on the bullies? I ask

by jbrun 17y ago

Very interesting experience. Though I have no real comparison, my question is: Was getting in shape an easier solution than cracking down on the bullies? I ask because of the original post, personal experiences and general thoughts. While bullying should not be tolerated by school administrations, does the individual not have a role to play in developing social skills and physical health to avoid being ostracized? You know, become the change you want to see. The school administration could offer a 'self-improvement' class to students - targeting bullies with education on why it is bad and offering social and physical development tips to socially inept kids (who are often the brightest). Perhaps courses such as these would help avoid disasters like school shootings, long term trauma and the jock culture that is so prevalent in the states.

mrbgty 17y ago
"...does the individual not have a role to play in developing social skills and physical health to avoid being ostracized?" imo, the individual has a role to be who they want to be. In other words, his working out, eating healthy, etc., should be because he thinks its a good idea; not because others bullied him into it one way or another.
- poppysan 17y ago
  Ideally, you are correct. But every society has their preset view of normal. To skate too far outside of that view will, inherently, cause a reaction. Right or wrong, this is the way our society works.
alex_c 17y ago
>Was getting in shape an easier solution than cracking down on the bullies? I think it solves a different problem in the first place (health, energy, self-confidence, with the possible side effect of stopping bullies, vs. just stopping bullies).
Retric 17y ago
What I think most geeks don't understand is most bullies don't hate you. It's done to show dominance and amuse themselves, but it's got little to do with the target. Granted, there are a few sociopaths out there, but mostly it's unfocused aggression that ends up focusing on people who don't or can't defend themselves. If you watch young friends you see a lot of put downs and aggression, but with the right feedback it get's defused and everyone laughs. When you lack social skills and strength you are constantly on the wrong side of that aggression and it never let's up. But, change the interaction slightly and you are now part of the gang.
- ja27 17y ago
  Yes. I was a geek growing up, but thanks to my size I was also an offensive lineman on the football team. I was perfectly happy to pound on any obnoxious bully picking on a geek during PE class since the football coaches could keep me from getting into trouble. Not once did I get one to stand up to me. They really are cowards.
9oliYQjP 17y ago
I'm in a verbose state of mind right now so bear with me. You're right in some twisted way, I owe these people for making me who I am. But let me explain. I've looked at pictures of me when I was a toddler and while I wasn't a scrawny kid, I wasn't fat. Somewhere along the line I started getting labelled the fat kid and teased. Each school photo shows me progressively heavier than the last. Somewhere along the line, I internalized the idea that I was a fat kid and lived up to it by, well, being fat. I've never confused the teasing for being fat as a cause. But it certainly didn't help me get into better shape. The teasing sucked, but it was tolerable. Instead, a couple of incidents that actually had me feeling worried for my physical well-being really sparked the change. The bullying in high school hit a low point when I was doing a science presentation in a class the teacher could not even control. Two of the guys in the gang I referred to in my first post started tagging my freaking presentation board with gang symbols. It's a hilariously stupid scenario in hindsight. Honestly, I laugh about it now. But at the time I was freaked out, and angry because this meant I couldn't use it for the science fair later. It wasn't them teasing me about my weight that prompted me to lose weight, but rather fear of physical harm from them. I had to sit beside these guys in class and I'd see them come to school with knives and pull them out and pretend to stab people with them. In hindsight, they wouldn't have been dumb enough to hurt me so long as I didn't give them a reason. But not giving them a reason to hurt me felt like such a cowardly thing. It was letting them frame the "debate" and to hell if I would let them do that. It was never about me, it was about them and their issues with their father beating them or something. So quite honestly, I was partly motivated to start losing weight out of survival instinct. I wanted to be able to defend myself if it ever got to that point, so I started pumping iron so I would be stronger than them should things ever get to that point. The thing is, I wasn't even really the primary target of these bullies. So as ridiculous as my account above is, other guys had it worse. They really did get beaten up. There's a fine line between being pushed to the brink and being broken. I wasn't France in WWII, I was Britain. I had options available and I responded accordingly. To your point however, my gym teacher also had a part in motivating me to lose weight. He would never cut me any slack. Jocks would get remedial attention in math courses they were having problems with. There is no special education for gym. In gym, when we had to say do gymnastics on hanging rings or flips on mats, I never got any slack. My teacher would make me get up there and fail, very publicly, and in a humiliating way. He gave me a C for effort. Bullying issues aside, I think my school did exactly what it needed to help me out. The gym classes included lots of talks by our gym teacher about how we would all gain weight as we got older, got office jobs, and became immobile. And some humility is good. I couldn't even hang off of the gymnastic rings let alone do what was required to get an A. If this were an Algebra course, I wouldn't have been able to count. If anything, they were a bit indifferent about my situation. It's one thing to point out to a kid that he has problems. It's another to give him options about how to solve them. I stumbled upon weight lifting as an option only because my older brother was a wrestler and I'd seen him do it. As far as the worst bullies go, that's a whole other kettle of fish. The solution to treating those sort of bullies these days is to shuffle them around the school system until they either play out the clock and graduate or drop out. My school was considered a "good school" which had the effect of encouraging principals at troubled schools of sending their worst offenders to our school to discipline them. So 99% of the students were good but had to face 1% of the school population which were probably psychopaths. I don't think schools can treat these bullies. They simply don't have the jurisdiction. For a lot of those kids, you'd have to remove them from broken homes. For your casual bullying, I'd say the best approach is to play both sides of the coin. Tell the bullies to get over themselves and tell the victims to do the same. If you're that hung up over getting bullied for being 120 lbs at 6'0" tall, maybe it is you that has an issue with your weight. At that point, the bullies are merely amplifying your discontent. You can either learn to accept it and let the comments slide off of you because they no longer hurt, or you can do something about it and gain weight. One of these days I need to learn how to be more concise :-)

by jbrun 17y ago

mrbgty 17y ago

"...does the individual not have a role to play in developing social skills and physical health to avoid being ostracized?" imo, the individual has a role to be who they want to be. In other words, his working out, eating healthy, etc., should be because he thinks its a good idea; not because others bullied him into it one way or another.

poppysan 17y ago
Ideally, you are correct. But every society has their preset view of normal. To skate too far outside of that view will, inherently, cause a reaction. Right or wrong, this is the way our society works.

alex_c 17y ago

>Was getting in shape an easier solution than cracking down on the bullies? I think it solves a different problem in the first place (health, energy, self-confidence, with the possible side effect of stopping bullies, vs. just stopping bullies).

Retric 17y ago

What I think most geeks don't understand is most bullies don't hate you. It's done to show dominance and amuse themselves, but it's got little to do with the target. Granted, there are a few sociopaths out there, but mostly it's unfocused aggression that ends up focusing on people who don't or can't defend themselves. If you watch young friends you see a lot of put downs and aggression, but with the right feedback it get's defused and everyone laughs. When you lack social skills and strength you are constantly on the wrong side of that aggression and it never let's up. But, change the interaction slightly and you are now part of the gang.

ja27 17y ago
Yes. I was a geek growing up, but thanks to my size I was also an offensive lineman on the football team. I was perfectly happy to pound on any obnoxious bully picking on a geek during PE class since the football coaches could keep me from getting into trouble. Not once did I get one to stand up to me. They really are cowards.

9oliYQjP 17y ago

I'm in a verbose state of mind right now so bear with me. You're right in some twisted way, I owe these people for making me who I am. But let me explain. I've looked at pictures of me when I was a toddler and while I wasn't a scrawny kid, I wasn't fat. Somewhere along the line I started getting labelled the fat kid and teased. Each school photo shows me progressively heavier than the last. Somewhere along the line, I internalized the idea that I was a fat kid and lived up to it by, well, being fat. I've never confused the teasing for being fat as a cause. But it certainly didn't help me get into better shape. The teasing sucked, but it was tolerable. Instead, a couple of incidents that actually had me feeling worried for my physical well-being really sparked the change. The bullying in high school hit a low point when I was doing a science presentation in a class the teacher could not even control. Two of the guys in the gang I referred to in my first post started tagging my freaking presentation board with gang symbols. It's a hilariously stupid scenario in hindsight. Honestly, I laugh about it now. But at the time I was freaked out, and angry because this meant I couldn't use it for the science fair later. It wasn't them teasing me about my weight that prompted me to lose weight, but rather fear of physical harm from them. I had to sit beside these guys in class and I'd see them come to school with knives and pull them out and pretend to stab people with them. In hindsight, they wouldn't have been dumb enough to hurt me so long as I didn't give them a reason. But not giving them a reason to hurt me felt like such a cowardly thing. It was letting them frame the "debate" and to hell if I would let them do that. It was never about me, it was about them and their issues with their father beating them or something. So quite honestly, I was partly motivated to start losing weight out of survival instinct. I wanted to be able to defend myself if it ever got to that point, so I started pumping iron so I would be stronger than them should things ever get to that point. The thing is, I wasn't even really the primary target of these bullies. So as ridiculous as my account above is, other guys had it worse. They really did get beaten up. There's a fine line between being pushed to the brink and being broken. I wasn't France in WWII, I was Britain. I had options available and I responded accordingly. To your point however, my gym teacher also had a part in motivating me to lose weight. He would never cut me any slack. Jocks would get remedial attention in math courses they were having problems with. There is no special education for gym. In gym, when we had to say do gymnastics on hanging rings or flips on mats, I never got any slack. My teacher would make me get up there and fail, very publicly, and in a humiliating way. He gave me a C for effort. Bullying issues aside, I think my school did exactly what it needed to help me out. The gym classes included lots of talks by our gym teacher about how we would all gain weight as we got older, got office jobs, and became immobile. And some humility is good. I couldn't even hang off of the gymnastic rings let alone do what was required to get an A. If this were an Algebra course, I wouldn't have been able to count. If anything, they were a bit indifferent about my situation. It's one thing to point out to a kid that he has problems. It's another to give him options about how to solve them. I stumbled upon weight lifting as an option only because my older brother was a wrestler and I'd seen him do it. As far as the worst bullies go, that's a whole other kettle of fish. The solution to treating those sort of bullies these days is to shuffle them around the school system until they either play out the clock and graduate or drop out. My school was considered a "good school" which had the effect of encouraging principals at troubled schools of sending their worst offenders to our school to discipline them. So 99% of the students were good but had to face 1% of the school population which were probably psychopaths. I don't think schools can treat these bullies. They simply don't have the jurisdiction. For a lot of those kids, you'd have to remove them from broken homes. For your casual bullying, I'd say the best approach is to play both sides of the coin. Tell the bullies to get over themselves and tell the victims to do the same. If you're that hung up over getting bullied for being 120 lbs at 6'0" tall, maybe it is you that has an issue with your weight. At that point, the bullies are merely amplifying your discontent. You can either learn to accept it and let the comments slide off of you because they no longer hurt, or you can do something about it and gain weight. One of these days I need to learn how to be more concise :-)