A Conversation About Bullying

It is a chilly, October afternoon at a neighborhood homework center. Joe, Peyton and Jared have dropped in to use the free Internet that the center offers, and find themselves drawn into a conversation on bullying in their school and community. The conversation is pure happenstance – there was no intent for this to find its way into this book, or for this conversation to become part of the research for it. They simply overheard an audio report on bullying that was playing on a nearby computer and started talking amongst themselves about their own experiences with being bullied. The opportunity to bring their insights to this report was too good to pass up.

At 13, Jared is the oldest of the trio. Thin, very blond and intense, Jared explains that he has Aspergers Syndrome, and is very good at computers. He’s recently started his own “business” selling cheat codes that he downloads from the Internet. He knows about being bullied, he says, because ‘Kids pick on me a lot because I’m so pale and skinny.”

Peyton, 12, is Jared’s younger brother. Small for his age, Peyton is agile and muscular. He’s recently started Tae Kwon Do lessons, so he can “defend myself against the kids that try to beat me up.”

Joe, 12, is a classmate of Peyton’s and his best friend. Articulate and well-spoken, he too is small for his age with a wide, friendly smile and intense blue eyes. He’s ‘the bomb’ at roller-blading, and has “a ton of medals for winning in Tae Kwon Do tournaments.”

All three boys talk unconcernedly about having been the victim of bullies in the past and even now. Without psychological tests to back it up, there’s no way to know for sure, but there’s no sign of depression, of low self-esteem or poor self-image from any one of them. Rather, each of the three exhibits an excellent sense of his own worth, and confidence in his own abilities despite a history of having been taunted, physically assaulted and socially ostracized by peers and classmates. The conversation that follows leaves one wondering what magic formula produces children with the resilience, optimism and ability to walk away from bullies without the damage that has been shown in so many surveys.

Q: I couldn’t help hearing you talk about getting pushed into the lockers. Does that kind of thing happen a lot in your school?

Joe: Pretty much. Sometimes more than other times.

Jared: It happens in school and after school. Kids push other kids or hit them just because.

Q: I’m writing an article about bullying and how kids can help stop it. Would you boys be willing to answer some questions for me to help me understand what you think would help?

Joe: Sure!

Jared: Yes, I’d like to help.

Peyton: Yeah, I don’t mind.

Q: That’s great. Thanks, guys, I appreciate your help. Can you tell me what bullying is? Has anyone talked to you about bullying?

Joe: Everyone knows what bullying is. It’s when people pick on you for no reason except to make themselves feel big.

Peyton: It’s when you get beat up by other kids just because you’re you.

Q: Have you ever been bullied?

(All three boys nodded vigorously and tried to answer simultaneously. After I slowed them down, they each told their story, with the others interrupting to add comments.)

Jared: I used to get bullied a lot. I still do, but it’s not as bad. When I was in third grade, I used to get beat up on the way home from school all the time, and a bunch of kids used to call me names like Beetlejuice. Sometimes kids would do things to make me mad when the teacher wasn’t looking, and then I’d get in trouble for hitting them or talking to them.

Joe: I’m little so guys think I’m easy to pick on. They push me in the hallways and jump me on the way home from school. And there’s a bunch of kids in our neighborhood who beat up anyone they see on the street after it gets dark. That’s why I always walk home with Peyton after Tae Kwon Do. I got beat up walking home one night, but if there’s more than one kid, they usually leave you alone.

Peyton: People usually say it’s bigger kids picking on little kids, but with me it was all the little kids in the neighborhood. Every time I went outside, a bunch of them would start throwing rocks at me and chasing me and calling me names. It was frustrating, because I couldn’t hit them because they were all littler than me. And it was embarrassing because I was being bullied by a bunch of four and five year olds – but it was a whole gang of them, and rocks hurt. Once I got a fat lip, and they almost knocked out my tooth, and once they gave me a black eye, and everyone was laughing at me because y’know, they were all just little kids.

Q: That sounds pretty grim, Peyton. What did you do to stop it?

Peyton: The older guys told me to hit them back, but that didn’t work. After a while, I figured out that if Tyler wasn’t with them, they didn’t bother me. Well, they did, but they wanted me to play with them if he wasn’t with them. So I made a deal with them. If they stopped throwing rocks at me, I’d show them how to beat Pokemon Emerald (a Gameboy game) and other games.

Q: That sounds like a pretty creative way to handle things, Peyton. Would any of you guys say that you’re bullied more than other boys in your class?

Joe: Sometimes, maybe. Some weeks it’s kinda bad, and some weeks it’s someone else’s turn.

Jared: When I was in third and fourth grade, I got picked on all the time. Kids would poke me or throw things at me, and when I talked back, I’d get in trouble because the teacher didn’t see them. Even my best friend from second grade stopped talking to me. It was pretty terrible, because I didn’t know what I was doing to make everyone hate me, so I started just crawling under my desk and refusing to do anything but read what I wanted to read. There were a couple of boys that would chase me home or beat me up on the way home from school every day, so I started taking shortcuts through people’s yards to get home before them. When my mother took a job as school crossing guard, a lot of that stopped because I could wait with her and walk home with her.

Q: It sounds like the bullying eventually stopped. What happened to stop it?

Jared: I got moved out of a regular classroom and into a smaller one with other kids who had trouble in school. That’s how they found out I have Aspergers’ syndrome. That means I have to work a little harder to see what’s really going on when I talk to other kids. That’s part of what I learn in school now – how to read other people around me so I don’t hit back or think that other kids are being mean when they’re not.

Q: How does that make you feel?

Jared: A lot better. I go to a lot of regular classes now, and instead of picking on me a lot of kids in those classes ask me for help with stuff like on the computer and hints for games.

Q: Joe, you said that some weeks it’s ‘someone else’s turn’. Is there anyone at school that gets picked on all the time by everyone?

Joe: Yeah. There’s this one girl that I feel really bad for. She’s real short and real fat, and she has a big nose and wears glasses. Someone makes her cry almost every day. And there’s this other kid that’s – you know – a little slow. Kids used to pick on him a lot until this one afternoon when he wanted to play basketball. Some of the guys started making fun of him and it made me mad. He can’t help the way he is. So I grabbed a basketball and went over to play with him. Well, we started playing, and then a couple other guys came over and started playing and now he plays with us most of the time.

Q: That was pretty brave of you, Joe. Weren’t you afraid that they’d start picking on you?

Joe: Nah. I figured they pick on me already so what’s the difference? Besides, I know what it’s like when they’re being mean to you.

Q: So I’m wondering. When people are picking on you, what do you do? Is there someone you can tell who’ll help?

Joe: My parents. When I was getting beat up after school every day, they came to pick me up so I wouldn’t walk home alone.

Jared: (nodding in agreement) My mother. And my sister. That time when I got pushed into the lockers, one of my sister’s friends saw what was happening and she stopped it.

Peyton: Yeah, my sister’s friends are real protective. When a boy punched me on the way home from school one day, they came over to the house to make sure I was okay and the next few days they walked home with me.

Joe: Now I walk home with him. They don’t bother you if you’re not alone.

Q: How about teachers? Can’t you tell teachers?

Joe: The teachers don’t care. It happens in front of them all the time, and they don’t do anything at all to stop it.

Q: Do you think it’s because they don’t see what’s happening, Joe?

Joe: No, they just tell the kid to ignore it and not let it bother them. They know and they don’t care.

Q: Just one last question, guys, and then you can get back to your game. Why do you think bullies pick on other kids?

Jared: (with a smirk) They’re socially maladjusted.

After the laughter at Jared’s remark subsided, Joe earnestly leaned forward to give his answer.

Joe: I feel bad for kids that pick on other kids. They probably don’t like themselves very much and have to make other kids feel bad to make themselves feel good. They think that lots of other kids like them, but really, everyone else talks about them behind their back.

Peyton: They’re jerks. Maybe they were made fun of when they were kids, or their parents torture them. They think it’s okay to treat other kids that way. But it’s not.

In mulling over this conversation later, I was struck by two things. The first, as I said at the start of this chapter was the remarkable self assurance and self-confidence that all three boys displayed. It was so contrary to what one would expect from boys who had been regularly bullied in their early and middle school years. I was struck by it so forcefully, that I brought the subject up with a number of adults over the course of the next few days. Their answers seemed to point toward a theory that was already forming in my mind about this.

“Sure, it hurt when kids made fun of me for being short,” said Mark, now 30 years old and a successful computer programmer. “But I was always a cocky little kid with a good sense of humor. I knew that I was smart enough to make them laugh and leave me alone. Bullies didn’t try it with me more than once.”

“That’s an interesting question,” says Deborah, 45 year old author and mother. “Looking back, I can recall some incidents of being bullied but never being terribly bothered by it. I think it was because school wasn’t my ‘real life’. I had my own social group at home, and I was part of a dance troupe that gave exhibitions around the country. The kids at school were the least important opinions in my eyes. They didn’t know me at all.”

Those comments and what I observed in Jared, Peyton and Joe all seemed to be part of a pattern that is described succinctly by author Michael Thompson, PhD, in his book Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children. In it, he is asked, “What enables some children to experience intense pain and yet grow from social cruelty, while others are crushed by their peers? “

His answer may hold the keys to raising bully-proof children. He says,

“The love of their parents or being valued in other arenas of life. Having a place in your church group, in your grandparent's heart, or with your cousins can go a long way toward ameliorating the pain of social exclusion. It also helps if you have skills other kids don't have and someplace where you can exercise those skills. Extracurricular activities can be extremely important for kids who are socially excluded. “¹

Oddly enough, it was 13 year old Jared, who is diagnosed with a disability that supposedly makes him less aware of social cues, who came closest to a possible clue in helping a child who is dealing with being bullied. When asked, “How would you help a child who is being picked on?” he responded, “I’d help them find something they’re good at. No one can make you feel bad about yourself when you have things that make you feel good.”

The second point that struck me in my conversation with the boys was their insistence that the teachers – and the schools in general – didn’t care about kids being bullied. Again, their comments tallied with a great deal of what the research shows: there was no adult intervention in 85% of the incidents of bullying reported in a study conducted by the World Health Organization.

Thompson goes on to say that 80% of school bullying happens within view and earshot of teachers and other adults. Some of it is not recognized for what it is, and a great deal of it isn’t addressed through pure helplessness. Based on his observations over his years of working in schools, Thompson says that teachers must:

• Be taught to identify social problems and deal with them

• Be given the support and time they need to deal with social problems

• Be supported by a school wide and system wide moral stand against exclusion, scapegoat-ing, bullying and destructive cliques