http://www.buzzfeed.com/hgrant/documentary-bully-trailer-will-break-your-heart

I have not seen this movie yet but I am hoping some of the teachers and parents in our small town will see it, especially the ones who think there is no bullying problem at our school.

A relative overheard me telling another relative with young children about the documentary and she told me there was no problem with that where we live. When I and other relatives gave her numerous examples--personal experiences, friends' experiences, she then said that it doesn't just happen here, it happens everywhere especially with kids she described as "artsy". They seem to think most "artsy" people are gay and since they believe that is sinful it is perfectly reasonable to shun them and verbally bully them. My kid is considered artsy because he does musical theater instead of sports. My relative says shunning, verbal abuse by kids and adults, shunning, etc. happens everywhere. We are just supposed to accept it. It is just the way things are.

My son is homeschooled so he doesn't have to deal with the small town attitudes every day, but it bothers me when I hear about kids being bullied or shunned. My son says the internet has desensitized him because all the trolling and that people insult each other all the time.

I was bullied as first grader in a different state and I think that is when I developed social anxiety. Is it really that bad everywhere else?

We live in a town of 750,000 with our greater county being 1.8 million, Lori. A metroplex, as it is described. My son attends a small private Episcopal school that preaches tolerance and attracts some of the "nicest" families in the area, very educated people. And yet, sport is King here also, the artsy kids get harassed and my son was bullied at school because he is little, immature and not any good at sports. He was told by two boys at recess that he didn't get to join the reindeer games because he wasn't any good.

Bullying is just part of the human condition. I do think it's worse in small towns though. When I told my son's school they most certainly did not advise acceptance of bullying.

No, it's not everywhere; or rather, it is being combated effectively in some places and not in others. All children experiment with their social power (that part seems to be human nature), but they can be guided in their growth to make good choices.

Our elementary school administration works very hard to teach kindness. We have seen instances of bullying, but they have been effectively solved through reasonable discipline. I think the children are learning that if they are unkind, the negative outcome isn't worth it to them. It's not perfect-- some children manipulate, some are taught to be unkind at home-- but overall, the atmosphere is really positive.

What has mattered most is that the principal decided to make this a focus, and got the teaching staff on board, so that everyone understands what they are watching for and what to do about it.

DeeDee

I once visited a campus where bullying was not supposed to be a problem. We asked a focus group of students to close their eyes, and then raise their hand if they had been bullied. Out of 20 or 24 kids, one raised his hand. There are schools where you hear about bullying all the time. And then...there are the schools where the bullying is very rare and buried deep, but if you are one of the rare targets, the situation is pretty heinous.

Sadly, one of the big issues with bullying is that it rarely happens where teachers can see it. Once, a parent asked the school what they were going to do about the bullying. When we called the student in, I asked, "Where is the bullying happening?" It was happening at the bus stop nearest the student's home. The principal said she'd talk to the bus driver, but I'm not sure how much that helped.

At the beginning of my teaching career nearly 10 years ago, I heard on NPR that the bullies in upper elementary school are often the most popular kids in school, that those kids bully in order to fit in, to be part of a group, to define themselves as insiders. The report said that teachers often dislike the victims of bullies, since they tend to be withdrawn and moody.

So a year and a half later, I had to wash my hands in the girls' bathroom (the sink in the teacher's bathroom wasn't working), and I found a new immigrant cowering in the corner. With the help of another student who spoke Spanish, I learned that one of our soccer stars, a good student, had passed the new girl a note (in Spanish) threatening to get her when she left school. When I learned who the bully was, I was shocked! I never would have found out about it if the sink in the teacher's bathroom had been in working order. Telling a teacher what's going on is usually the last thing a victim wants to do!

It's because bullying usually happens when teacher's aren't around, because kids usually won't tell, and because bullies tend not to pick on kids that have a social support system that one response is to encourage kids to get more involved, in the hopes that it will lead to them making friends. Personally, I think we should encourage kids to have a social support system so that they're not miserable.

There are several programs that specifically address the problem of bullying in schools. A more global approach like Tribes also seeks to create a supportive school and classroom environment in which students feel free to take risks and share an answer in class that may be wrong. A side effect of such a program is that students are more likely to tell teachers what's going on (if someone is planning to bring a gun to school, for instance).

Bullying happens everywhere. At our public school, there is little b/c the principal doesn't tolerate it. My son has never been (obviously) bullied even though he wears a hearing aid. I think that is partly b/c he is on the swim team nd has some muscles.

The guy who bullied me in elementary school ended up gunning down his parents and killing himself.

My point was that some bullying is tied into antisocial personality disorder (the psychological term for "thug") rather than a need to belong.

I was shunned in 4th, 5th and most of 6th grade. It was pretty clear to me that one way (not the only way) to be popular was to bully other kids. I finally found a friend in 6th grade, and it was like heaven on earth. Those were long years, but I learned so much about being strong, relying on myself and being compassionate, that I wouldn't trade a minute of it.

I remember that when I was pregnant with DS, I tried to talk myself into believing that it is normal for upper elementary kids to not yet have enough compassion for others to resist the 'low hanging fruit' of the short term benefits of bullying other kids, and if my future kid chose to be 'popular through meanness to others' that I would have to find a way not to despise him for it.

Then he was born, and I saw within the first few years that he had the capacity to have compassion for others, and I knew that there was no way I could be ok with him doing that set of behaviors. I didn't know what 'gifted' was, or that he was 'different' than other kids his age, he just seemed 'human' to me, in a way that my peers in upper elementary school didn't.

As it turned out, he's had his ups and downs socially,his moments of kindness and his moments of cruelty, but he was pulled to try out that social power thing on adults, not his agemates, for which I am grateful.

Grinity

That's true--as long as you use the qualifier "some". Since it is unethical and unprofessional to diagnose a middle school student as having Antisocial Personality Disorder, that insight is of little use to schools.

My point is that sometimes it can be difficult to tell the actions of a fairly typical middle school student who thinks they won't get caught from that of someone who will later be called a psychopath or sociopath by the press.

Isn't that remarkable? To me that is the miracle of synchronous development. We complain about asynchronous development all the time, but synchronous development has it's ugly side.
Grins

Almost all bullies learn the behavior as a result of repetitive direct abuse or observing it somewhere.

There are tests that can clearly pick most of these kids out.

Right now the "solution" is to detect overt behavior at school and "discipline" the kids. The underlying issue still exists. Most kids will move on and find a way to deal with the underlying problem and some will not.

The better solution is to get counseling for these kids, the bullies, and to identify the adults in their lives who are doing the behavior. Most people do not want to go there as this is another layer that will expose some pretty ugly stuff.

I think there is currently a panic about bullying, as described at

http://reason.com/archives/2012/04/04/is-there-a-bullying-epidemic
Stop Panicking Over Bullies
Despite a flurry of recent documentaries and attention, school hasn't been reduced to jungle law.
Nick Gillespie
Reason Magazine
April 4, 2012

I am concerned that "anti-bullying" efforts can become a form of bullying by administrators. I don't think "shunning" -- avoiding someone -- should be conflated with more active sorts of bullying such as name-calling and physical violence. And even regarding name-calling, if one student writes mean things about another on his Facebook page, should the school have jurisdiction? I know of cases where the school has stepped in. Do students have any 1st Amendment rights? The anti-bullying crusaders never talk about free speech or the right to free association (which includes "shunning").

Public school is about taking a chunk of same-age children and throwing them together randomly.

There's no free association there.

That's why "shunning" becomes a problem to be avoided.

Schools are a very artificial form of human ecology.

In some places, like where I live, it feels like "jungle law" is close to the reality. It starts here with most boys being held back a year for sports. My relative with a young son who will be old enough and academically more than ready for pre-K is being told she should hold him back so I felt I needed to tell her about our experience with kindergarten. My husband and I refused to hold our son back. In his musical theater class the new kids that saw him read at age 4 would ask him what grade he was in because they saw that he was able to read his Alice in Wonderland script for musical theater practice. It had to be at least 5th grade level. He was the youngest in the group at that time but he could read very well, follow directions, and he just fit in really well with the older kids. His friends were all several years older. I just could not see that it would be a good idea to hold him back.

When the doctor at his 4 year old checkup saw him read he said he should do really well in school. I didn't think there would be any problems, but there were.

The boys who had been held back were a year or a year and a half older. They were much bigger than my son who was five with a May birthday. Two of them physically threatened him whenever the teacher wasn't looking, so he stayed close to the teacher. He didn't mind, because he loved talking to her about the things he was learning about at home. He already knew how to read but he did learn some new vocabulary at that school. He learned what nerd and geek meant in kindergarten. It was only the bullies that called him those names. The other kids liked him. So even though it was only two boys who did most of the bullying and I guess that wasn't really an epidemic, those two bullies made his kindergarten year more difficult. The bullying is what he remembers most vividly from that year.

My son does not want anyone to try to prevent free speech even though it looks to us like the physical bullying often starts with the verbal bullying. He just wants to know that he has that same right to free speech to defend himself or others whether it is kids or adults who are verbally abusing someone. I have told him that he has my permission to say what he wants to say even if it is an adult or teacher or preacher and even if it is a relative. I know that the kids in our school don't really have this right and some of teachers here do verbally bully students who are different. I am glad my son doesn't have to deal with this in addition to the pain he feels from his brace. I don't think we should stay silent about what is happening here any longer. I am willing to risk being shunned.

WebMD even has an article on teacher bullying. http://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/teachers-who-bully

I think going to a school where some of the teachers are bullies and nothing is done about it would make a bullied child feel even more powerless.

I remember seeing my son's first acting teacher with tears in her eyes as she told them about being verbally bullied by one of our public school teachers who is still teaching. More than ten years later she was still affected by the bullying. Nobody talks about it. Parents of sports kids deny that it exists. When a sports kid injured my son's friend on the school bus several years ago, nothing was done about it because the bully was good in sports.

I found out from my niece that her brother was bullied at the school. He was a smart quiet kid who didn't do sports. Even though my son does not go to that school now this still really bothers me. I can't let it go.

My daughter is being shunned in her own classroom, a room in which she has no choice but to spend 7 hours a day, 5 days a week. It is directly affecting her ability to access her education.

It's bullying.

Expanding on geofizz and JonLaw, a good analogy is to the workplace. You don't have to like your co-workers, you don't have to be friends with them, you don't have to agree with their values. But you do owe them basic common courtesy. The same should be the standard in schools (or any environment where there is a societal expectation for people to be together and interact, which they cannot reasonably escape from).

Shunning should be reserved for communities where people have chosen to come together with a shared belief system. It has no place in public organizations in a pluralistic society.

I'll second that. I'll also add that shunning is a practice designed to mark the shunned as an outcast with no standing in a group. This is very different from deciding you don't want to hang around with someone and leaving it at that. Shunning is a form of aggression and it's completely unacceptable in an environment like a school.

Suppose a group of children never talk to "Jim" at lunch. That is shunning. How can you force them to talk to Jim? How do you punish them? A ban on shunning is not enforceable in the way a ban on physical violence is.

Your initial point was that shunning was part of a right to free association. I disagree. MegMeg pointed out that people in the are expected to show common courtesy and that this behavior should be expected of students in schools. I agree with her. No one has to be friends with Jim, but refusing to be polite at lunch and shunning him is wrong, too.

I was on the receiving end of this treatment when I was 16. My family moved to a part of the US that was very different from where I'd spent all my school years before that. A lot of the kids in my new school decided I was weird. Note: people at my old school didn't call me weird, and I had a lot of friends there. I was just different in the new place, and a lot of the kids had trouble with that (though I didn't understand this at the time).

My first couple weeks in the new school were hell, primarily because I couldn't find a place to eat lunch. Everyone sat in groups in the same seats every day (custom, not dictate), which made the situation even more difficult. My sole new friends (n=2) ate during a different period. No one else wanted me around, and they didn't have to say "GO AWAY" to make the point. I dreaded school and dreaded lunch even more. Mostly, I ended up sitting alone in a hallway lined with benches rather than face the rejection of everyone else. It was awful.

Finally, a kid in the senior class invited me to sit with his group of friends. Later, I realized that he knew what was going on and was going out of his way to help me fit in. I became pretty friendly with a couple people in that group of 8 or so, but we mostly just made polite conversation at lunch (as MegMeg noted). It was a huge, huge, positive development for my mental health that year. And I am speaking as a stubborn, outgoing person who is not easily affected by whether others like me or not. That I am this way---and yet felt so miserable---says a lot about the power of shunning. And it must be even harder for people who are shy and/or more sensitive than I am about things like that.

I realize that sometimes our society goes overboard about certain ideas or practices, but I don't think that bullying is one of them. It's a serious and semi-invisible problem, and allowing children and teachers to get away with it endorses it and encourages it to continue in adulthood.

The problem, IMO, is that people rely too much on hyper-reacting to instances of bullying once they get out of hand instead of setting meaningful expectations for appropriate behavior on the first day of kindergarten (and continuing thereafter). A little compassion and and a little courtesy go a long way in pre-empting the problem to begin with.

Added: our daycare provider used to handle this kind of thing exquisitely. If a kid said something like "Let's not play with Jim because he's weird" or "If you don't do X, I won't be your friend," she'd jump all over it. The offending kid would be told, "In my house, we don't treat other people like that. We respect others, and if you can't respect other people, go play alone. We want to play with you, but I can't let you play with the kids unless you can treat other people the way you want them to treat you." I wish more people would handle that sort of situation like she does.

First, let's be clear about what shunning is. It is more than just choosing not to sit with someone at lunch. It is a systematic practice of refusing to acknowledge a person at all. In the extreme, anyone else who does not participate in the shunning (i.e. who talks to the outcast) is themselves shunned. Shunning is a severe form of social control that is practiced by small religious communities. In fact, that's pretty much the only place it occurs, except for schools.

Second, nobody here has mentioned punishment. The discussion has not been about particular solutions at all; we are debating what is and is not okay. You tried to elevate the practice of shunning in schools to a civil right, and we are disputing that. (Just briefly, it is far more effective for the adults in charge to set in place a variety of practices that encourage a culture of civility, rather than punish individual instances after they happen. So your "how do you punish them?" question is kind of a straw man.)

One final point. You started out by criticizing the public concern about bullying. It seems from your followup comments that what you are actually against is students being persecuted for choosing not to sit with someone at lunch. Let me assure you that this is not happening. There is no public hysteria going on about students choosing whom to be friends with. The current focus on bullying is about physical violence and prolonged and extreme verbal abuse.

But the behavior of urging others to shun is a behavior that can, and should, be banned. Kids don't usually have the wherewithall to remember that they aren't supposed to be talking to the target kid, so they forget after a day or two, and then they get threatened with being socially isolated or just strongly reminded that it isn't ok to talk to the kid who is being targeted.

Geofizz,
I'm so sorry to hear this. It is bullying, just as sexual harassment would be in the workplace - systematic unwanted attention.

She doesn't deserve this in any way.

What have you and and she tried so far? What has the school tried?
Is the current setting a good setting outside of social environment?
How old is she?
What other choices does she have for where to go to school?

Have you tried sharing books and movies with her that touch on these themes?

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Geo, would changing schools altogether make it better or worse?

DeeDee

Thanks, Grinity. We're on it. There is no question in my mind that this is unacceptable. This is 4th grade, and the teacher hasn't observed it herself. While understanding, it's tough to fix in April if the teacher has failed to establish an atmosphere of mutual respect.

The teacher and I are now in daily contact, and the vice principal and school councilor have also been brought int.

As for educational setting, we're pretty stuck -- DD needs to go on an IEP, which should happen soon. These are new diagnoses, and the social part of the diagnoses will be part of the IEP.

Much, much worse. Much of this probably stems from her struggles to know people by face. Introducing her into a new environment will mean that she starts over learning faces. Note she just mastered the names and faces of the kids in her class in January or so. Now that it's spring, kids are coming with hair in pony tails, and she's practically starting over.

YES on including social aspects in the IEP. These can be taught as rote skills, but have to be generalized across her day. She might need a classroom teacher who understands the needs and can give her clues, as well as 1:1 training on the skills from a special ed teacher or an outside professional who can coordinate with the school staff.

To consider: would letting peers know about her challenges make it better? In our experience peers really stepped up to understanding DS when they were given frank information about his dx and how it affects him. Our classroom teacher in 3rd did a little presentation and it made a huge difference in social acceptance of DS. Kids are at their most compassionate when they can understand and identify with what's going on with a peer who seems "different."

If all the kids could be taught to come to your DD and tell her their names at the start of every conversation, then invite her to play, for instance, would that work? The special ed teacher or counselor can also build a circle of friends program (http://circleofriends.org/ or similar) with kind children who agree to be understanding... Just throwing out ideas here, don't know what will work.

DeeDee

The problem, IMO, is that people rely too much on hyper-reacting to instances of bullying once they get out of hand instead of setting meaningful expectations for appropriate behavior on the first day of kindergarten (and continuing thereafter). A little compassion and and a little courtesy go a long way in pre-empting the problem to begin with.

I completely agree. I'm often surprised at how other parents let their children treat their siblings- let alone strangers! We don't let our kids be mean to one another and for the most part, they're not. When friends make comments like, "well, you know how brothers and sisters are..." I tend to respond, "well, no, I don't." A little joking is okay, but being mean is NOT.
And there ARE simple rules that teachers can implement. For example, in ds10's school, you are not allowed to refuse if someone asks to be your partner, unless you already have a partner -in which case you say, "sorry, I am already partnering with X. If you can't find someone, we can ask 'teacher X' if three people can be in our group," or something similar. I was worried about how ds10 would do in the 5th grade math class because there are a bunch of kids who are very clique-y in there and they often partner up for things. However, I'm in there every week and I've found it's never really a problem. Since he's not a 5th grader and knows fewer kids, he often is the one asking instead of being asked, but he's never refused and he is asked about 30% of the time. That's just one example - not being able to pick seats at lunch is another, not being able to pick teams in PE class, pairing up kids in a "lunch buddies" small group... It's definitely not perfect where I live, but at least they're trying.
We were lucky. Ds11 isn't the least bit sporty (think orchestra/math club/chess) and he's fairly quiet, but he's also in the 95th%-ile for height. DH was taller than his 4th grade teacher (reached his full height of 6'3" in middle school) so even though he was equally nerdy, lol, he was never bullied. Ds10 is smaller, but he's sporty and talkative and friendly - really great emotional IQ. Thank goodness it wasn't the other way around!
The girls weren't bullied, but honestly, that has a lot to do with looks. It's sad to say that being very attractive goes a long way for girls.

Eww., @ that stupid cartoon network bully commercial where they have a middle schooler boy lean on a locker lean on a locker an intimidate another while a third runs off and yells for help.   Well of course given the set up many young boys here say they want to be the bully.  They should have cast the tattle tale as a super hero character.   I get what the writer thought they were saying, don't be an innocent bystander, go tell somebody and get help (and they weren't going to suggest getting in the middle of it) but what the imagery suggested to the young boys who were the target audience of the cartoon network channel was "hey, there's these 3 kinds of people the tough guy, the victim, and the bystander".  They ran this over and over and over to teach young kids the definition of the word "bully", never finished a story line to paint a complete picture in a young kids mind, and, to me, suggesting that boys separate the world in those three categories while they're very young.  Maybe it was Nickelodeon.  Anyway I think anti-bullying advertising should paint anti-bullying in a better light or have more substance as far as in kids telling kids it's ok to tell each other to be nice, or get help.  Those "the more you know" style commercials where celebraties say, "you know I was bullied and it wasn't very nice.  It didn't feel good.  We can stomp out bullying" are better because they try to install empathy in girls.  
What I think would be better is a series of what to do, what not to do minis that show people seeing or doing what they know is not right but unsure what to do to or wether to do anything, then "rewind" and replay the scene with the uncertain charachter knowing what to do in that situation plus a positive outcome. 

momto4, interestingly, in my daughter's instructional program (there are two programs in the school using the same curricula, but with different approach), there is no choosing groups. Kids have "clock partners" where there are names around the outside of a clock. The teacher then can say, "get with your 6 o'clock partner" and that defines your partner. Groups of 4 are made by saying "get with your 3, 6, and 9 o'clock partners."

I suspect this gets around that partner selection problem. That is, assuming that particular group doesn't exclude an individual.

Thanks for the ideas DeeDee, and probably warrants its own thread. We're still working on how DD feels about these diagnoses. They have not been easy pills to swallow for her.

On a personal note I always tell my son, "no bullying" if he tries to take anything from his sister.  So, it's a household word thanks to the commercials.  And speaking of siblings my son is  that kid who's for the most part naturally uses things correctly, fixed things way more often than he messed stuff up.  But he's bossy to his sister.  If an adult tells her to do something he goes and gets involved.  I keep telling him, "you need to let her listen to me." and "I'm the mother let me take care of my baby".  I guess this issue's off topic from bullying a little bit.  As a kid I didn't play with the other kids as much as I organized them.  I helped raise my sisters and I babysat other people's kids way too young.  
I used to think mom raised me like that to be useful because she needed the help.  Now I see my son correcting, teaching, redirecting my daughter.  I tell him, "leave her alone.  Don't make her cry." so he just got more effective at correcting and teaching her without making her cry.  They still do argue and fight some which I always do stop them.  I'm just talking about for the most part he really has taken it on himself to help her.  I'm starting to think maybe I wasn't "raised like that" to help out as much as I was unrelenting so the adults just threw in stuff like, "don't make them cry".  If that's so then maybe some of the bully behavior would stop if the bullies were given useful responsibilities.  

That sounds like a good groundwork. Hopefully the efforts will pay off soon!

I'm sorry it's so hard. The more you can get her to truly own it before she's a teen, the better, IMO.

DS's team uses the slogan, "it's not my fault, it's my challenge."

DeeDee

The movie opened in our area yesterday. There was a review of the movie in the city paper. Some of the comments were what I expected. Like if your child is bullied you should have them fight back instead of talking to an adult about it. My son has a mild disability that causes low endurance and mild muscle weakness and he wears a scoliosis brace. He would not be able to defend himself very well. He took martial arts lessons last summer but he had to quit when he got the new brace that has to be worn all day. His muscles are getting weaker because he can't exercise in the brace. It angers me when people say kids should just fight back.

Love IT

But Dumbo & Cinderella say that excluding people is bullying.

Social exclusion is a form of bullying and it is condoned by churches in our area. I talked to one of my son's former scout leaders about bullying in our schools. She said it is true that there is a bullying problem here but it is that way everywhere and nothing can be done about it. She grew up in a small town and she was a bully for several years until she became a Christian. When I mentioned the Bully documentary that included a girl who was shunned along with her family for being gay she didn't say anything against it. Social exclusion is practiced by church members against people who are different from them in their thinking or actions.

There is no diversity here. Almost everyone is white. Almost everyone goes to church every Sunday and the football games during football season. Almost everyone loves football. They think you are weird or gay if you can't or won't talk sports. My son and I don't want to talk about sports. I think they make people who are different from them so uncomfortable that they move away. We can't move for family reasons.

I talked to the scout leader about the perception here that all boys in musical theater are gay. She didn't deny that either.

I told her that my son can't do much in the brace and there was no way he could do the hiking or camping so he didn't have a choice but to quit. There was no mention of trying to accommodate his disabilities so that he could at least be around other kids at their meetings. Social exclusion exists in scouting here too.

I don't think anyone will see the documentary. I think they like things just the way they are. My dad said the bullying problem here is similar to what people go through when they are put in prison. They have to find a way to deal with bullies there. I told him it was strange that he should say that because that is what his grandson said it felt like living here--a prison.

My daughter says our family is just like the rest of the community and very judgmental and instead of having Easter dinner with them, she took her little brother to a fast food restaurant. She doesn't think he should have to deal with them and my husband agreed. He enjoyed Easter for the first time in years. He didn't have to deal with the small town football player cousins that ignore him. He really wanted someone to talk to. He didn't want to be stuck with just reading things on his iPhone to get through the monotony of all the sports conversation.

My daughter finally told her boyfriend about our family and why she doesn't want to be around them and he understood.

He is verbally gifted. It is one of the things that made him different from the other kids his age. He would open his mouth and talk like an adult about things that were going on in the news or history or politics, and he did something that you just are not supposed to do here is a town like this. He asked questions. He wanted to know why things are the way they are.

As the Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_Scouts_of_America_membership_controversies says,

'The Boy Scouts of America (BSA), one of the largest private youth organizations in the United States, has policies which prohibit atheists and agnostics from membership in its Scouting program, and prohibit "avowed" homosexual people from leadership roles in its Scouting program as directly violating its fundamental principles and tenets. BSA has denied or revoked membership status or leadership positions of youths and adults for violation of these foundational principles.

The BSA contends that these policies are essential in its mission to instill in young people the values of the Scout Oath and Law.'

Is the Boy Scouts organization therefore guilty of "bullying", because it is excluding people? I don't think so. It has certain moral standards that some people disagree with. They are free not to join.

I don't think you're actually responding to her point as stated.

I think that her point needs to be expanded and clarified to see if your response applies.

From

http://www.stopbullying.gov/kids/facts/index.html

Facts About Bullying

Bullying is being mean to another kid over and over again. Bullying often includes:

Teasing

Talking about hurting someone

Spreading rumors

Leaving kids out on purpose

Attacking someone by hitting them or yelling at them

Note list #4, "leaving kids out on purpose" being a plainer way of saying "social exclusion".

As if specific religious beliefs or sexuality have anything to do with morality... especially considering that the Catholic Church and BSA are two places where your child is most likely to be molested by a trusted adult, something most of us would consider immoral. Well trolled.

I think we're trying to tease out which kinds of social exclusion are positive/good/permissible and which kinds of social exclusion are negative/evil/impermissible.

I think most abused children are abused by family members.

Many children are socially excluded from their parents every year by the department of social services for this very reason.

I agree.

Bostonian, you often post links to interesting and thought-provoking pieces, which is great. Lately, though, some of your comments seem to be deliberate attempts at baiting people rather than the thoughtful analyses that are the norm on this forum. I'd rather not start a culture war here.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, 'specific religious beliefs' are for some the main underpinning of their version of morality.

I really think that adults can reduce bullying through good leadership. They can't be there in every corner of the hallway, but they can set a standard and an expectation of how people should treat each other. We are lucky, they only instance of bullying my sons have experienced was at a Park-district run summer camp led primarily by college and hs students who just did not have the authority they needed for this environment. When I complained, multiple times, they said they would talk to the kids, etc., but nothing happened. I took my boys out and moved them to a YMCA camp where they had zero problems and lots of fun. Still mostly college age kids running the program but I now truly appreciate the "role model" t-shirts Y employees wear. They provided an excellent environment that encouraged the kids to treat each other with kindness.

I also think that we can empower kids to stand up for each other and not tolerate bullying behavior. I think this is what the commercial La Texican mentioned is trying to get at, but I agree that it doesn't really get the point across. The actual programs focus on the fact that lots of kids are aware of the bullying but do nothing. If we can empower THEM to speak up then we can have a real impact. KathleensMum's post on the Ultimate Brag Thread is a great example of this. The trailer for the Bully movie shows a video of a bullying incident on a bus. Numerous other kids observe it and do nothing. If we can change that response, then I think we could see some change in the behaviors.
This can also be done in the classroom through positive leadership, expecting inclusion and even pulling some kids aside and asking them to be role models and leaders in this respect. Expecting kindness, compassion and forgiveness (i.e. not shunning the perpetrators) doesn't really seem that far-fetched to me. As a society we tolerate bullying by saying it "happens all the time" and is "just part of growing up". It doesn't have to be, we have just accepted that it will be.

And third, I think we conflate two types of behaviors when we talk about bullying. One is the anti-social behavior of children who have been mistreated themselves. The other is this experimentation with social power that is also very common. I think these sets of behaviors come from different sources and should actually be treated differently if we want to effectively intervene. The anti-social bully is also a victim and needs help. The social experimentors need to be given clear boundaries. I feel like the "over" emphasis on bullying is a bit problematic in that in seems to say that kids are either victims or bullies. And that the "artsy" kids are the victims and the "sports" kids are the bullies. These stereotypes just exacerbate the problem, imo. It creates enemies that don't have to be.

There's more I'd like to write, but my little one needs my attention now!

On our nationally ranked swim team, the fastest kids go first. End of story. My son at one point was faster than some of the kids but was too shy to push ahead. We mentioned it to the coach, and he finally encouraged him to go first. There was no bullying; it was simply who was the fastest.
We are heavily involved in Cub Scouts and have never heard anything about gays in Scouting. We are in a pretty liberal area though. I have thought the reason why they don't want gay leaders is b/c they somehow think that gays would be more likely to molest little boys than straight leaders (which I don't think is true). There is also a very heavy Mormon influence in Scouting. However, that would to my eye not be bullying either but simple prejudice (which I obviously don't agree with).

And any specific group of religious adherents has its good and bad eggs, there's precious little correlation between religious beliefs and moral outcomes, so your obvious point is irrelevant. Think of morality as "what you do" and religious/philosophical beliefs as "how you explain it." You can explain your actions however you like, but those actions are all that really matters.

As for sexuality, it's as much a moral dilemma as choosing red wine or white. Morality is determined by how you choose to use it... share the wine, hoard it, or steal it? Sip and enjoy, dump it on the floor, or spit it at your host? Drink moderately, excessively, or never at all?

That is quite possibly the strangest analogy I've ever encountered.

[quote=master of none]
My daughter quit her swim team because of the bullying. There were 3-4 kids who bullied the rest of the group of 20. They had to be first in line and nobody was to pass them without stiff consequences.

This year, she is on a homeschool swim team and a bully joined late in the season. This girl is just like the other bullies, but the coach took her aside and told her it was important that all the girls get a chance to work hard and swim fast and she needed to work it out with the other girls to figure out who would go first. This was very hard for the girl but with encouragement for a couple of weeks, she eventually was able to let the faster girls go first sometimes. And she's still working on it and beginning to make friends. That's how it's supposed to work!

Yes exactly! And that girl is in the process of learning the boundaries of acceptable behavior in that setting. She is not "innately" a bully and given an environment with proper support and expectations, she can learn to get along with the other kids.

And to expand on my point about expectations and the over-emphasis on bullying, my concern is that if we, as a culture, accept stereotypes about who are the bullies and who are the victims, this sets up a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. And it discourages kids from making gestures of kindness across these social boundaries. There are so many cultural depictions of athletes as bullies for example, how about all those kids who play sports and AREN'T bullies? And I am sure somewhere there is a "theater kid" who is a bully. In some ways, we justify the behavior by attaching it to these social categories.

And I just want to share a story about something my friend's son did. He's a fifth grader and he observed another kid physically bullying a special ed boy in the class. He intervened, protected the victim, then went straight to the office and told them what happened. He got in trouble for fighting, receiving a detention under the "no tolerance" policy of the school (which strangely enough did not apply to the bully who got into no trouble at all?!). He dutifully did his time in detention, but made himself a badge that said "I am proud of my detention because I stood up for my friend!" They made him take it off in detention, but his teacher let him put it back on in class!

I agree, a wonderful technic. I'm looking for handbags and shoes; can you help me short out where to find them?

I think it's performance art.

Not to be confused with a commercial troll.