The not fighting back part was a mistake. This is where parents should have intervened.
When I was a kid, it was "nice girls don’t punch" and I got bullied a fair amount for a few reasons over the course of my school years. It wasn’t until I took matters into my own hands each time that the bullying ended. By the time I reached high school, I’d reached the point of recognizing and eliminating threats through various tactics (mostly nonviolent or aggressive) almost immediately.
That continues to this day. Bullying never ends, not really. You know this. You’ve written about it fairly extensively. It just gets called something else. Tribalism, for example.
When Urchling came along, I talked to her a lot more about bullying and with nuance. In large part because of the school policies of zero tolerance. I made an agreement with her that I would back her against the school if she got into trouble. She would not be punished at home for dealing with a bully. I didn’t want her starting fights but if she needed to finish one, so be it. She could profane, trip people up (not physically, lure them into exposing their behavior), punch back, back talk, whatever.
Then we practiced situations by acting them out. Ones that had happened to me and ones she had seen with older kids. We practiced throwing a punch; she’s got a wicked right cross. We practiced verbal retorts, sarcasm, put downs, dodging blows, situational awareness, spotting the people who are going to give you trouble, etc.
That may seem overly extreme to most folks, but keep in mind, we were living in a deeply entrenched evangelical area. Bullying was very common. After all, you can’t get to heaven if you haven’t stomped and crushed the hearts and souls of non evangelicals for Jesus, right? A lot of those kids are getting beaten and bullied at home too, so they act out on other kids at school. They’re warped. One of those little girls pushed Urchling backwards off the top of a slide in 1st grade. She could have been really hurt. When the teacher got involved and yelled at her "you could have killed her" she said, "Jesus won’t mind. He’ll forgive me because she’s going to hell anyway". Those kids are fucking warped and that’s all I’ll say on it.
Urchling became a sheepdog, if you know the expression. Nearly every teacher she had referred to her as "their" peacemaker. Every class she was in had the smallest number of incidents through primary school. She was a bridge between groups. On the playground she protected the smaller kids from the bigger/older ones.
It was all verbal and strategic. She’s only been in one fight. A boy sexually harassed her in the lunchroom (at 12) and she dropped him on his ass hard. She got a week of in school suspension and I took her and her friends out for ice cream and hosted a sleep over. We taught them the same maneuver and spent half the night practicing it.
One of those girls had been having problems with a boy snapping her bra strap and trying to cop a feel. She goes back to school bragging that she can do what Urchling can do. The bullying ended that day. It’s a damn miracle.
Bullying gets out of hand when counter responses are denied. It’s absolutely a skill set anyone can learn. When some parents are training their kids to be bullies and you have to send your kids into their sphere or shared environment, it’s parental negligence to not train or back counter responses to bullying.
Bullying isn’t going anywhere. There’s not much the rest of us can do about that as individuals except to learn to deal with it efficiently and then protect those you can.
The alternative is suicides, addictions, murders, gangs, and self harm like cutting, eating disorders, steroid abuse, etc.
If you’ve got school age kids, you either know what’s going on the schools or you’re turning a willful blind eye. It boggles my mind that so many parents would let their kids take their chances with the above paragraph than deal with the “everlasting shame" of detention or suspension for fighting in primary school. Or to take time out of their busy evening of watching Netflix to build up their child’s self esteem, talk to them about what’s going on their lives, and teach them how to handle themselves and navigate an increasingly complex work.
You abandon your child to the caprice of the world at their peril.
