This is the exact advice I gave my son when he started middle school. I've also seen this advice given to convicts going to prison for the 1st time ;)
Now here's the funny thing: I am not kidding or exaggerating!
Long story short, some kid looked at me wrong, I threw him against the wall and he slid down just like you see in cartoons. That was in first grade and I've never been bullied.
But seriously, don't try this at home kids.
Which were you, do you think?
I'll add that fighting back need not involve the same aggression expressed in the bullying. (Something else that may need to be / should be learned.) It is a matter of taking control of the situation -- and/or of your role in it -- rather than of becoming equally or more abusive. And there are techniques for that. In any given situation, they will not be full proof. But they may help the potential victim to regain a sense of control; a crucial aspect, I would argue, in resisting the bullying.
Unless you have a kid with absolutely no motor skills whatsoever, it's not about teaching him/her to fight, but teaching him/her when to fight.
Will someone else be a better fighter that you child? Guaranteed. But winning the fight isn't the point. The point is to convey the knowledge - both within your child and to others - that sometimes, the act of losing with respect is more valuable than actually winning, and that even if the challenge is seemingly impossible, you still need to do what is right to "defend" what is yours.
There's a lot more than that obviously, but by teaching our kids not to fight, ever, we are missing the chance to teach them immensely valuable lessons about life.
(PS: I do understand that these situations can vary, and I'm speaking from the average bully scenario. There are cases of severe mismatch that could result in major injury that of course would need different reactions by the parent.)
What I suggested, and what he has done, is when the bully was picking on his friend to immediately go to his friend and get him out of there. He calls him over from a distance, or tells him he needs his help some where else. This is pre-planned with his friend so it occurs quickly and naturally. And you know what: It worked. The bully moved on to someone he could get a reaction from.
Its hard to tell from the article but it sounds like the model to follow is this kind of approach.
The article defines "bullying" as repetitive, implying that whatever your kids are doing to try to address it, the conflict isn't resolving itself.
Why should my kids waste a moment's time trying to handle violence and physical intimidation on their own? That's teaching them to handle problems with both hands tied behind their back. I want my kids handling problems smart, and "fighting back" and standing up to bullies on their own terms is playing to lose.
There is all sorts of low-grade kids-stuff nonsense that doesn't need to be escalated. But we're not talking about that here. We're talking about kids who are so persistently targeted and oppressed by this juvenile bullshit that they're considering withdrawing from academic programs.
Fuck that shit. If my son tells me he's quitting band because he's getting pushed around over it, I am going fucking ballistic.
(For whatever it's worth, both my kids spend a good chunk of their discretionary time in martial arts. But they're doing that on its own merits, not as a tool to deal with behavior that would be overtly criminal if it occurred between adults.)
It's very valuable in playground life, though. The value is that they prevent future low-grade violence by engaging in a bit of low-grade violence themselves.
> I want my kids handling problems smart, and "fighting back" and standing up to bullies on their own terms is playing to lose.
Nonsense. It works really well, in my experience. The playground is not like an office, so your extrapolation to adult behaviour doesn't apply. Teenagers are nearly adult physically, but still unformed mentally and ethically/morally.
> Fuck that shit. If my son tells me he's quitting band because he's getting pushed around over it, I am going fucking ballistic.
How's that going to help him? If he knows that you'll react that way, he likely won't even tell you, and the bullying will continue, in secret.
Here's what I'm going to tell my daughter:
1) No one has the right to attack you. If you are attacked, and you can fight back, do it! If the odds are not in your favour, try to flee to a safe area / allies. Don't worry about suspension / expulsion, etc. I will back you up.
Try to keep the violence proportional, unless it's a do or die situation. I.e. shoving vs. shoving, punching vs. punching, don't use improvised weapons unless they do. OTOH err on the side of survival.
2) If anyone ever threatens serious violence, like rape or death threats, tell me. These are not joking matters. It doesn't mean we'll go ape-shit and over-react, but we need to know it's happening in order to figure out whether it's a real threat.
3) If you're being bullied electronically, then tell us, but never ever react to the bully. Don't feed the troll. If the person can't actually reach out and physically hurt you, don't give them anything to work with.
If you teach your kids to never respond to violence with violence, you're setting them up to be bullied, which will affect them throughout their lives. Authority figures can't always (and often won't) save you. Sometimes you need to fight first and ask questions later.
I'm happy your kids can handle themselves in a physical confrontation. My son's big for his age, and my daughter has really taken to her martial arts classes, so I have high hopes for them too. But if I found out that my kids were responding to low-grade violence by engaging in it themselves, they'd get punished.
The law doesn't punish you for defending yourself, why the hell would you expect your kids to live to a standard that nobody else is subjected to?
(1) Because regardless of whether the standard is fair, in real life, off the playground, violence is as likely as not going to break against my kids as it is to break for them. This "standing up and fighting the bully" mythology is exactly that. The outcomes are simply better if you avoid violence and use the other tools at your disposal.
(2) Because some standards are intrinsically correct, regardless of what the law allows.
Are you Buddhist by any chance? Just curious.
Like the modern "zero-tolerance" bullshit, you have equated the physical nature of the violence to a level that just isn't warranted in most cases.
Children use violence more readily than adults because they haven't yet learned more sophisticated methods of intimidation and bullying. Of course you wouldn't confront a co-worker, but you'd ostracise them, spread rumours or make sure the boss knows they fucked up that last project.
The act of responding to the threat directly and in kind teaches the victim several qualities that serve them later in life, namely confidence and the ability to act while afraid to assert themselves. People get bullied all the damn time, if for no other reason than they simply don't confront the bully.
It's not valuable in adult life.
I would suggest that it is. There will come a time where your child will be bullied, physically or not, and you will not be around or able to help them. Their ability to believe in their own self-worth and the notion that regardless of the challenges in front of them; whether they are afraid or whether the outcome is certain to cause them pain; they will not subject themselves to being unfairly treated by their peers. They are who they define themselves to be; as important and valuable than any other person.
While I don't believe that physical violence is necessary to learn this, instilling the "fight back" notion into a child is. From my non-scientific observance, parents that are unwilling to let their child fight are usually the same ones that consistently duck from facing challenges head on. There is something to be said for being afraid and acting anyway that many people just fail to grasp.
To think of the number of teens and adults with all sorts of confidence issues, from depression to addiction to being unable to operate without the approval of others - even if it is against their self interest! I can't help but wonder how many of them have never been taught to respect themselves first.
(b) I recognize that kids use violence because they're too dumb not to. I have an appropriate level of tolerance for that. But that doesn't address my point: this "teach them to fight back" stuff is teaching them to act stupid, to play to lose, on a bully's terms, and to handle conflicts in ways that won't help them in adulthood.
(c) Your "sophisticated" forms of bullying stretch the definition of bullying and transform this into a semantic discussion. Beaurocratic infighting is a valuable adult skill. If there was a class in it I could sign my kids up for, I would.
(d) I probably agree more than disagree on your "self worth" argument. I'm not an advocate for "run and cry" either. But if you're subjected to an unwarranted physical assault as an adult, you're a sucker if your only response is physical self defense. You're also doing the rest of your community a disservice.
(b) Kids are not dumb. They use violence because it's a viable form of intimidation, particularly for males. Adults use violence too. Violence is alive and well in most blue collar male dominated jobs. The act of not being an easy target is specifically addressed by fighting back. You can't project an image of "If you screw with me, I'll make life difficult for you" as an adult if you aren't taught this as a child. This has a huge value every damn day you are not mugged, picked for a car-jacking, or otherwise selected by those people looking for easy targets.
(c) Physical violence is a subset of bullying in pretty much every standard definition. The reason for this is that males tend to solve their issues through force, while females tend to use other methods. If you separate only the male response as something worth addressing, I think you are missing the underlying nature of bullying.
(d) If you punch me, even now as an adult, you're getting your ass kicked; or I'm going to at least hurt you as bad as I can. That being said I don't think I've been punched since I left the army 13 years ago (And before then, probably once or twice in high school). I'd like to think that's because most people - even those inclined to resort to violence - can instinctively tell that would be a bad idea, or at the very least, a difficult task.
As an aside a story:
In 2001, I moved to Vancouver, BC. I was about 26 at the time. As I lived next to the beach, I decided one night to go for a stroll. It must have been about 11-12PM or so. The path by the beach was dark and away from the street down a hill, and at this time of night, almost devoid of people. I liked the water though and being new to the city felt relatively safe. As I was walking, I approached two men (probably late teens early 20's on a bench). One had a bike and one was on foot. As I got closer, they both said nothing to each other. The one on the bike started to ride on the path towards me. At this point I could see they were the stereotypical young b-boy punks. The guy on the bike got closer, slowly. I looked him straight in the eye as he passed and heard him circle around behind me.
I kept on walking, same speed and gait. As I passed the guy on the bench, I looked him straight in the eye as well. You could feel the tension, but I pretended I didn't and just kept walking. The guy on the bike stopped at the bench, now behind me and that was the end of it.
I'm convinced that those two goofs were up to no good. They concluded however, that I wasn't worth their time.
Take it for what it is, but don't ever think for a second that you aren't part of the jungle of primal human behaviour that is very much alive and well.
Re (d): Look, I'm a pretty big guy, and I just don't get fucked with all that often. I also grew up with a brother one year younger than me, so I've exchanged my fair share of punches. I don't think it's good to be afraid of physical violence. Would I like my kids to be able to stare down a bully? ABSOLUTELY.
However, I'm unwilling to confine their responses to playground violence. I don't think anybody should be willing to do that, if only because so many people can't reasonably expected to play this BS game on the bully's own terms, and having your own kids play along makes it that much harder for them.
Humans are pack animals with a social order. By suggesting your child escalate confrontation out of the pack at all times, you have ensured that the bully remains their superior to them when the higher authority is not there.
There WILL come a time in life when your child has no higher authority to appeal to. If they aren't able to establish their own place in whatever pack they are in, it will be established for them, possibly in ways that are not in their own self interests.
(I don't think you're a hard-ass, for what it's worth. You're just using one of their arguments!)
My argument is, "physical self defense, delegation to authority, situational avoidance, other tactics, and the ability to choose which of these tactics to employ works better than arbitrarily restricting yourself to a single tactic, or arbitrarily ruling out a single tactic."
I wouldn't go toe to toe with a violent criminal if I had any better choice. But the bullies we face as kids in school halls do tend to yield rather easily to a bit of physical force.
Remember, we're talking about a response to aggression. In an office, no one is likely to be shoving you in the first place. If someone is, then you are certainly justified in responding physically if you cannot remove yourself from the situation.
You've seen the internet video where an office-worker rages out, hurting others, and everyone just stands around because they've been conditioned to never use violence? They finally react far too late.
IMHO, there is no "low-grade physical" assault in an office environment, because physical interaction of any kind is so frowned upon. What would be low-grade in the playground becomes "are you insane?" in an adult office setting.
Just saying.
Any solution that relies upon "implicitly trust authority" is even more flawed, because most bullies in the adult world operate under the color of authority, and while you won't get away with punching a pushy cop in the face, you do need the confidence to tell him to kindly get himself a warrant or leave you the hell alone.
Sometimes, even adults in the real world need to physically defend themselves from criminals. This holds doubly true for women.
How do I want my kids to respond to bullies? I guess it depends on the situation. But I won't condone my kids throwing punches, and if they have to walk away from somebody at school activities more than once, I want to know about it.
(Whether that attitude means my kids are going to be reluctant to tell me about what's happening at school is my problem to deal with.)
In adult life, you have the legal right to physically confront burglars and drunken assholes on the street. It takes a degree of tactical judgment and skill to know how and when to confront them, but outright pacifism is wrong for two reasons:
1. It leaves you vitally incapable of handling emergencies. If someone breaks into my house, brandishing a shotgun isn't going to solve the problem completely, but it is going to ensure my immediate safety until the police arrive.
2. All you're doing is delegating the physical violence to someone else, which means "implicitly trust authority". In the school system, the authorities don't care. In real life, the authorities are the bullies more often than not.
The rest of your argument is a straw man. Did I make a gun control argument? Did I say you should be incapable of self defense? I did not. Anticipating this exact stupid argument, I made it clear that I (a) appreciated self defense training and (b) have my kids involved in it.
Responding to a schoolyard bully with a punch to the gut is one and the same as responding to a B&E with a shotgun. If you want your kids to do one but not the other, you're sending mixed messages. You don't respond to barroom bullies with a punch to the gut--you get the bouncer's attention. But that's tactical judgment. If you're in the schoolyard, getting a teacher's attention will just as often do nothing, and if it accomplishes anything it only makes the problem worse. It's more like a prison, where the wardens will allow all kinds of abuses happen without interfering.
"Don't throw a punch, ever" is pacifist crap, not tactical judgment.