Mum calling my childhood bully "nice" and "respectful"

you know, maybe it's normal to not have compassion for people that were actively trying to make you kill yourself.

Absolutely it’s not the victim’s problem if their bully is abused or unhappy. We are ultimately responsible for how we act towards others. My point is only that the ‘bullies are fundamentally evil people who randomly do evil things’ is overly simplistic.

I'm not a fan of the maybe the bully had a bad home life. That's not their victims burden to bear, that was for the adults at the time to be concerned with.

For many victims the only way to move on is to live like the bully doesn't exist. I no longer wish anything bad on my bullies (well most of the time) but I don't want contact or to hear what they are up to.

OP I get that you can't dictate who your mother is friends with but she should be keeping this part of her life separate if that's what you need.

You are not being over sensitive
what a weird thjgg bf for your mum to do doing front of your dc
for me that’s where she really really over stepped
I’d tell her how much she’s hurt you and take a break from her

There are plenty of children who had terrible home lives who didn’t go on and bully other children.

Whilst I’m all for looking for the reason why someone is bullying, doesn’t excuse them and my sympathies lie far more with the bullied person.

If my mum made friends with my childhood bully, I don’t think I could ever forgive her but then I know that she completely had my back and wouldn’t ever do that to me.

Some people are just talking about their own experience with bullies and how this made them feel and how it has affected their lives long term, to counter the 'bullies are misunderstood and are probably really nice now' narrative in some of the posts.

OP's post isn't even about her bully per se. It's about her mum's reaction to her daughter finally opening up and telling her about the bullying and its impact on her life and her mum not just shrugging it off but actually telling OP that actually the bully is a really nice person. That's a pretty shitty thing for OP's mum to do. Even if her own experiences with OP's childhood bully are positive, how does it help or support her daughter by telling her this?

I'm sure that some bullies have a terrible home life, possibly struggle at school and take it out on other children. Some bullies have no such issues and just enjoy tormenting their victims.

There has also been a lot of minimising of the long term effects on the victims of bullying which can be serious and life-long. It's not just just someone with glasses once being called 'speccy four eyes' as one particularly clueless poster said.

Sigh. Try thinking about why you’re so addicted to the ‘bullies are just evil people inexplicably doing evil things because they’re Scorpios’ or whatever it is you actually think.

I can't imagine meeting a bully of my children and thinking "she seems nice, don't know what they were moaning about" - but my mother was like this as well. There were two girls at school who made my life a misery for about 3 years, one of them once did something that actually got her suspended from school and as a result of that my mum spoke to her dad, who by all accounts was lovely. Her narrative from then on was that that girl was being manipulated by the other one, that she was really a nice person at heart but she was easily led. This is a girl who tried to set my hair on fire. But the dad had been nice to my mum, so that was more important [shrug]

I'm pretty jaded about all this stuff OP, so maybe I'm being unfair to your mother and she really is just unaware of the effect of this girl, but if she is anything like mine I suspect that bringing it up with her again will just lead to her digging in and trying to "prove" to you how nice she is now. You're under no obligation to listen to this shite. If the woman has her good points, let people who she hasn't bullied try to appreciate them.

it's so sad that you've turned it around in your head to think she's better than you and you were jealous, and that that excuses her being a bully

see, here is that weird trend of trying to make out that the bullies are the "real" victims, it's bullshit

I was tormented and harassed by one girl at school decades ago, and I was still thinking of her occasionally with resentment, until a recent "old girls' reunion" at our school. And there she was, a perfectly agreeable adult, who had done well academically and had a very successful career, in those respects much more successful than me. She said she'd been married and divorced, and has subsequently been in a long and happy relationship with a woman.

I wonder whether I had exaggerated my hurt as a teenager, perhaps some deep down jealousy, recognising that this girl was a very strong character, and was destined for worldly success. Plus the fact that her father was, at that time, famous and hugely respected, whereas my own father (a loving and kindly man) was modest and perpetually hard-up. Yes, maybe I was over-sensitive and envious, and not the " bullied victim " I created.

Your mums a dick!

Is your mother doing this on purpose? Every normal person in the world would be aware that talking about how lovely someone’s bully (or even former bully) is to that person’s victim would be hurtful. The fact this is your mother makes it 10 times worse. What a horrible person your mother is. I’d see less of her.

I believe that childhood bullies can change. As human beings our identities don’t get fixed or frozen at a certain point in time. That being said, a loving parent should have your back.

With respect, you’re projecting. I was bullied in my own schooldays, and my DS was (briefly) bullied at primary before I tackled it via the school — and it’s very clear to me that DS’s bully was a disturbed, neglected child with a mother well known to SS and a father in their home country whom he only saw rarely. He will almost certainly be in a juvenile offenders’ institution by the time he’s 15. My own bully I occasionally see around if I visit my parents. She’s had lifelong addiction issues, and has done prison time.

That doesn’t mean I condone bullying in any sense. Why would I? It had a measurable negative impact on my life and that of my child. But to dub it ‘horrible people who enjoy being spiteful’ is just reductive.

Some of the people on this thread seem to be the type that would watch their child suffering from being bullied and then rush to be friends with the bully and their mum and bang on to their child how lovely the bully is.

Hear, hear!

bullying isn't "naughty" it's cruel and spiteful.

that seems to be the current trend.
anything about bullying and they're all so quick to talk about how the bully is the "real" victim.
hardly anybody seems to have the spine to say that there is something fundamentally WRONG with someone who enjoys causing other people suffering.
the people being bullied are the victims. NOT the bullies. they're just horrible people who enjoy being spiteful to others.

okay then. under what circumstances ARE bullying acceptable then?
if there's a perfectly reasonable reason why that nasty person enjoyed bullying them.

Well your mums never going to know how you feel if you don’t tell her.

You can’t expect her to read your mind, let her know that you feel very let down, how this was your bully and the long term effect it’s had on you and how her choosing to spend time with this woman makes you feel.

exactly. I doubt that thing that was fundamentally wrong in their minds that they enjoyed inflicting misery on other people for fun, ever really goes away.

I hope everyone who thought that making me cry and making my life so utterly miserable when I was at school has had a miserable life. like they gave me.

I don't blame you. I, too, was bullied horribly when at school by the children of a couple of families. They were vile little shits then and I expect they're still vile little shits now.

It took me years to rationalise the situation, although it didn't make me feel any better about it. Frankly, I'd happily dance on their graves.

There is no way you're mum didn't know. She is lying.

She sounds like a nasty piece of work and I wouldn't blame you if you went low or no contact with her.

She was probably your first bully.

My daughter is 12. No way would I treat her like that, much less allow anyone else to.

I would feel utterly and absolutely betrayed if my mum described anyone who had bullied me as anything other than scum.
and she WOULD never describe them as anything other than scum.
no matter how well they put on a nicey nicey front, they are still a person that took pleasure in ruining other peoples lives. that's not normal. that's something fundamentally wrong, enjoying hurting other people.

literally the only reason I'm still alive is because I didn't want to give them the satisfaction of "winning"