Fight Back to Stop Bullies

Bullies are a perennial problem for children and adults alike. Every victim has been told the same thing, "ignore them." But ignoring them, while 'nice,' just doesn't work. I know something which does; it's not the nicest or the easiest solution. But it works.

We're all aware of the school shootings by victims of ongoing bullying. It's not a uniquely American problem, though. Sweden has anti-bullying (or mobbing) teams in it's schools, and Japan is re-examining it's ban on corporal punishment because of the rise in bullying. While corporal punishment might stop some of the bullying, it sends the wrong message - that if you're in charge, hitting people to make them do what you want is okay. In a sense, it promotes formal bullying. What everyone needs to learn, bullies and bullied alike, is that actions have natural consequences. It is simply unnatural for one person to hit, pinch, or mercilessly humiliate another without a result. The most logical, and natural result, is that the victim, or a defender, fights back to stop the action.

Maybe we are hoping bullying won't happen to our kids, and it might not. But, what will we do if it does happen? More importantly, what will our children do? What is the responsible thing to teach our kids? I don't propose that we teach our children that fighting is right, but that we teach them that defending themselves is not only right, but responsible. Where would we be without people who defended themselves and others against abuses of power? Is it not responsible to teach our children to be those people?

I could spend pages exploring 'the making of a bully' and 'the making of a victim,' and those are important topics for society. But why a bully bullies is absolutely unimportant to a 8 year old who knows that every day he will suffer. I know of parents who've created 1001 possible solutions to stop their child's bully, none of which is simply to teach the child to defend himself. While authorities are spinning their wheels exploring all manner of non-violent solutions, the victims suffer ongoing humiliation. And victimhood lingers; I recently chatted with a woman in her fifties who still remembers her grade school bully's name and the feelings provoked by the long past suffering. If she'd had the tools to deal with the situation, that bully would be reduced to a small sidebar in her childhood story, as are my two bully stories.

I was five, my sister two years older. We lived in a rural area in the 70's, so we made the half-mile walk to the bus stop alone. Four older boys waited there too, and soon after we started school, they started to torture us. It was not the stuff of nightmares - it was the stuff of grade-schoolers in the 70's, but it was bullying nonetheless. My parents, who I'm stunned to realize were still in their twenties, told us what all well-meaning parents tell their child, "Ignore them." How is it that bearing children makes us forget that ignoring a bully nearly never works? It didn't this time, either. After many jostles, muddy lunch-boxes, and much tripping and pinching, my 7 year old sister had had enough. One day, as the ringleader approached her, she swung her arm back and followed through in a child-style over the head roundhouse with her lunch-box that ended on the boy's head. She loudly told him to leave us alone. And he did. She was always better at sticking up for herself than I was.

My specialty has always been sticking up for those who can't stick up for themselves. People and animals alike, I've never been able to tolerate seeing strong abuse weak, clever abuse not-as-clever, rich abuse poor or any other abuse of power. It makes me see red. Bullying is, at its core, abuse of the defenseless. During my last year of grade school, I rode the bus with other gradeschoolers, aged 6 to 11, and one 13 year old boy. His name was John, and he'd been held back two years. He came from a bad home, and he was mean. While he never did anything to me (we were evenly matched in size), he seemed to really enjoy hurting the smaller kids. After many months of this (while our bus driver did nothing) John one day stepped onto the bus and hit the 8 year old who was sitting beside me. I was out of my seat and had hit him before I really knew what happened. It's the one and only time in my life when I hit anyone. My punch landed on his jaw and he fell down. I was kicked off the bus for a week. I can't remember if John was punished at all, because like many bullies, he was sly - never doing anything the adults could see. I was scared to tell my parents about what had happened, because they had taught us that fighting was wrong. I was surprised when my parents supported me and really pleased that John never once touched another kid who rode that bus.

What I learned from those two incidents is that most bullies understand only one thing - force. If a child is too small to defend herself, we must arrange for outside defenses. These cannot always be adults, for several reasons. One, bullies must understand that they simply cannot bully others, no matter who is there. Two, children must understand that they aren't without power. Three, when we add adults to the mix, the natural consequences of the bully's actions are removed. Four, adults can't always be around. Five, if the victim is unable to defend themselves, the bully must understand that other of his peers will. Lastly, if we teach children that these issues must only be resolved by an adult, they learn that they are powerless in their own lives; that's a legacy that may follow them into adulthood. It is the act of fighting back which stops a bully, not the winning of that fight. My sister didn't really hurt our bully, or even give as good as she got; but she showed that she was willing to fight back to stop him, and that was enough. This is what we must teach our children, that they have power both inside themselves and within their community.

A child who is taught to defend himself grows into an adult who defends himself. A child who is taught that he is worthy of defense grows into an adult who feels worthy of good treatment. I am not saying that we should teach children that they can solve problems with their fists, unless the problem starts with someone else's fist. When it is possible, escape is still a good answer. An inescapable situation is one of the hallmarks of bullying - it's not just a stranger at the grocery who says something nasty but whom you will never see again. Bullying isn't a one-time thing, it's in an arena that cannot be escaped - school or the home neighborhood in childhood. In adulthood, it is often the work environment.

Thankfully, once we reach adulthood, bullies are rarely the physical kind. Their bullying is more subtle than a pinch or tripping. It's usually spreading rumors or making nasty remarks with the purpose of humiliating the victim. Ignoring an adult bully works just as well as ignoring a child bully - not at all. What does work? I think of the scene in the movie Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion where the title characters confront their high school bully, who's still as nasty as ever. "Why are you always such a bitch, Christie?" Placing the blame squarely back at the bully's feet is what we must do. If we don't defend ourselves, we take the abuse inside, and it becomes about us. We wonder why that person hates us, what we've done, how we attract such negativity. If we stand up to them, and tell them that we know absolutely that their nastiness is about them, they no longer have a weapon with which to hurt us. They may still try, but we've taken away their greatest weapon - our defenselessness.