sorry for that. that sucks.
i am not saying what you experienced is the same as teasing. I am saying they both hurt in different ways. neither is ok.
why do we have to live in a society where teasing someone is ok? it shouldn’t be ok any more then racism or anything else. some people don’t even seem to think racism is bad, and frankly i’d rather live in a society where people are nice to each other all the time, regardless of how small.
have a good day.
From Wikipedia:
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) states that almost 45,000 deaths occur from suicide each year. There are about 100 attempts of suicide to every 1 successful suicide. A little over 14% of students in high school consider suicide and approximately 7% of them attempt suicide. Students that are bullied are around 2 to 9 times more likely to consider suicide than non-victims.[13] A study in Britain found that at least half of suicides among young people are related to bullying. 10 to 14 year old teen girls are most likely to commit suicide based on this study. According to ABC News, nearly 30% of students are either victims of bullies or bullies themselves and 160,000 kids stay home from school every day because they are scared of being bullied.[14]
Lets not downplay the effects of bullying, or try to narrow the context, while literally hundreds of thousands of students a year are affected by it.
It may well be a fact of life, and folks may well need to “get over it” to be a part of society as it stands today, but lets not sit here and act like the parents of children dying are conflicted over the words, posts, or fists used to “bully” a kid was really bullying or not.
The kid felt bullied. That’s really all that matters here in terms of “was he bullied?” IMHO. It’s nice to see positive action taken on that front, and would be even nicer to see such action be a lesson to others in how their actions can affect others, because that, too, is something oft-overlooked - adolescent “bullies” may not even realize they are bullying, and the importance of parents and adults in these situations to educate is 1) how you stop childhood bullying, and perhaps more importantly 2) how you stop normalizing bullying as “that’s just how the world is” in adulthood, too.
Source: My childhood on the emotional giving of, and the physical and emotional receiving of bullying in my youth.
I don’t disagree with any of that Oren. Which is why I asked the question…is this bullying?
At what point do we have the line and/or where is the grey area and how large is it?
At no point did I downplay the effects of bullying and I would appreciate it those responding to me would stop asserting that argument into my mouth.
I would probably draw the line at “did the child feel bullied”, and if so, it’s the reaction that should be proportional to the act, not the definition of the act itself, IMHO.
B.I.N.G.O.
Amen to that. And I’m a big dude who probably could have taken out some of the little punks.
As a parent of two grade-school girls, I will cut off all their fun stuff the instant I see them bully or mock someone. Minecraft? Gone. Harry Potter? Gone. iPad? Oh you best believe that’s gone (ask me again in a month and we’ll see). Phone? Stays at home and only me, mom, and 911 is allowed.
Fortunately, they seem to have grown into the kind to amazing people who say “why the hell are you making fun of me” and just walk away (they lost a few friends that way as their friends started developing into bullies).
Verbal bullying is no joke especially with the advent of social media where crazy shit can go viral on a local level. We’re past the days of ending it with fisticuffs, and that’s that. Now doctored pics and videos can stick around for years.
All the better to know the light! 
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the machine…
Er…
Respectfully, this is not a helpful take on things. Girls and boys both have had to put up with some pretty awful shit and it was excused by saying “oh it is because s/he likes you” (probably girls more than boys).
Bullshit.
Belittling, teasing and worse might be common, but it is not ok, and kids should not be taught they just need to accept it.
I would probably draw the line at “did the child feel bullied”, and if so, it’s the reaction that should be proportional to the act, not the definition of the act itself, IMHO.
I don’t think that you can make that a universal principle and it doesn’t accord with most understandings of speech acts, i.e. that the sender controls the intended meaning. Sometimes kids disagree, or are misunderstood (4th graders), or they had no idea they hurt the person’s feelings. There is no way to know from the account whether this was an isolated exchange or the latest of several.
I do think we are over-loading bully to mean any disagreement that creates an emotional reaction.
One alternative definition from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Children and adolescents
(and, indeed, adults) do not always act kindly or with respect
toward each other. Thus, it is important to differentiate between unkind, disrespectful, or otherwise inappropriate
behaviors and the phenomenon of bullying. Three necessary
elements of bullying are that the behavior involves the
intent to cause fear or harm, is repetitious, and is
perpetuated by a person who holds some form of power over
the person at whom the behavior is directed.
I like that it captures intent and repetition, it doesn’t address bullying by peer in-groups.
And for the record, I like the shirt. It reminds me of kid / artist collaborations: https://makezine.com/2018/03/19/turning-kids-drawing-3d-printed-toy/
Well, let’s draw a parallel or two here:
If someone uses a term that causes someone else to feel bullied, then yes, I feel it is on the side of the “sender” of that message to take corrective action, even if that action is simply an apology and a realization that such action can result in someone feeling bullied.
I do not personally believe this is an unreasonable burden to bear. In adult conversation, one is responsible for the words one uses. “Zero-tolerance” policies towards bullying probably do more harm than good in this instance, because children can and will make mistakes, and may not realize they are bullying. But to try and frame the conversation as “Well, this wasn’t really bullying…” I think both misses the mark and denies a teachable moment to all concerned.
Because I promise you, these children are entering a world where what they say will be in the eye of the listener and their social media army, not on what they intended to say. Which is no different than the era of tv news, or the era of newspapers, or the era of heresay, IMHO.
You have that exactly backwards. It is the senders responsibility to ensure that the message is clear enough to avoid misinterpretation.
It doesn’t matter what you intended if your words can be interpreted as cruel. If you did not intend that, it’s on you to clarify and apologize, not the person who read or heard it.
This has been a staple of communication for decades. The creator/sender does not determine meaning when it can be ambiguous, and therefore should should always strive to be as clear as possible.
Perhaps we could concentrate less on what “should” be devastating and concentrate more on what is hurtful.
So the same argument still ends up taking place. There are many different thresholds for differing people and no two people are going to come to an agreement on the terminology and definition.
Oren stayed above “he felt bullied therefor he was”. Problem therein is how often does the Toddler in Chief “feel” a certain way and we all look and say “give us a break captain thin skin” (I use that as an obvious example of stating how someone may feel is not agreeably factual to a defined state).
Getting back to this specific story and situation though. I have no issues with the kid feeling bad, I would have too. I have no issues with the adults around him lifting him up and showing him some appreciation and helping lift his self esteem and sense of personal pride, I’d have done the same thing. Where is draw a line is “these girls are bullies!!” Eh. I’m not so sure that’s the right classification, terminology, and admonishment here based on everything I read on the story.
There is also different levels of bullying and it can be a cumulative effect.
I think the biggest difference is if it is “in group” or “out group” teasing. You can say the exact same thing coming from your in group and it strengthens bond - while from your out group it tears you down.
And girls excel at bullying, but they usually never lay a hand on anyone. They are just vicious with each other and boys with teasing and taunting over trivial things. Stupid things that shouldn’t even bother a person, but it does. This becomes less of an issue as you get older and something clicks and then, “Oh, you saying negative things about me doesn’t affect me because I don’t value your opinion.” But until then, it can cause issues.
There was definitely a “mean girl” sect at the kiddos old school. She is mature for her age found it all childish, but hurtful. Her mom put her in this home school academy set up where she still attends classes 3 days a week, and she is much happier.
And final side note - saw an article about suicide levels in girls rising in the tween/early teen ages, and they think it is directly linked to the rise and exposure to social media. Being exposed before you have developed the mental defenses to shrug off online bullying can have serious effects down the line.
Yeah, but they’ll still open up 8000 acres of forest to oil fracking exploration, no problem. But hey, the kid feels better.
Then don’t call them bullies. Others may disagree and so classify them*, that doesn’t mean you have to agree.
It seems to me that you’re looking for a hard and fast definition of bullying that covers all eventualities. The problem with that is that we’re talking about humans here and so any definition is going to come with endless exceptions and caveats. Intelligence is a liminal act (our minds exist on the boundary between meanings) and so there can be no clear boundaries in any human act unless we force upon the world those divisions.
* I don’t know that anybody here has called the girls bullies, but rather labelled their behavior “bullying”.
Well. I asked a question for a healthy conversation about that line. Not looking for anyone to agree or not. I do not appreciate some of the false equivalency and assumptions made above by others…but it comes with the territory.
If the headlines is “kid is bullied” then the little girls who made him feel that way are in fact bullies. I see no grey area in that. If calling them bullies seems off, perhaps that’s because their actions were probably not quite bullying.
Whole thing was a staged viral marketing campaign.
Every bully: [Does or says something intentionally cruel to victim]
Every bully: I WAS JUST JOKING! DON"T BE A PUSSY!
An elementary school teacher felt compelled to seek help from the university to aid the child she considered bullied. Pretty good sign there was a there there.
