Have you ever been a bully? Why?

I’ve never bullied anyone - a few unkind remarks here and there as a teenager but that was part and parcel and I received my fair share of those back. I was a prime target for bullying - overweight, glasses etc but I’ve always had an unshakeable sense of confidence and self esteem (no idea where that came from).
I remember when I was about 12 or 13 and one girl in my class kept making shitty comments to me. I gave it back a bit but mostly ignored her. A few days later I was sitting behind her in a lesson and I remember just seeing her hair crawling with headlice. I just thought…”oh.” Even at 12 or so I was like ah, she must be miserable, that’s why she’s being a cow to me. I don’t think she had a great home life.
I know many people have experienced horrific bullying and I really feel for them. But equally I don’t know how angry I can feel towards bullies younger than about 14 or so? Kids themselves. Having said that I’d be mortified if DD was bullying someone. It’s a really hard one I think.

I am ashamed to admit I have bullied two people. I bullied someone who was bullying me. I had finally had enough and I actually asked him out on a date in front of his girlfriend. It worked though, because he went bright red, and he never bullied me ever again. I think they're actually married now. I also bullied someone who asked me to be her guarantor. I don't know if she thought I was an easy target and would agree to it. But I said no. At that time I was in love with her then fiance. She never knew I fancied him. He never knew I fancied him. So I set up secret accounts to bully her and try it on with him. She never knew it was me behind it all. I knew I had taken things way too far when I sent him a naked picture of myself to him on his wedding day. I only sent a picture of my breasts. So he never knew it was me. But she was so upset. Anyway it was at that point I realized I had to stop. I realized my problems were nothing to do with my ex friend and her now husband, and they were all to do with me. So I closed down all my secret accounts, and I unfriended her on Facebook, all on the wedding day. Never contacted her again ever since. She has never heard from me from that day to this and that was three years ago.

If SEN means that a child genuinely has no agency in their behaviour, of course they can't fairly be punished for it; BUT that doesn't mean that they should just be allowed to freely beat other children, without protecting their targets.

My DS was regularly attacked by a boy with SEN at a club, who would regularly come up behind him and punch him hard in the back of the neck. He did this to other children too. The club leader's reckoning was that he had SEN, which caused the violence, so my DS and the others just had to put up with it. It was one of a few reasons why my DS decided to leave the club after years and stop going.

Even adult professionals who are paid to care for people with very challenging behaviours are taught and enabled to protect themselves and distract/restrain their charges to minimise the impact. Nobody tells them that they just have to accept that they will be punched and it's just tough; so why on earth should a child be expected to?

What about you OP??

I think they aim to "be seen" as kind.

I'm not sure it is always as substantive as it might be.

@Mary678Babe don’t make excuses for being mean

I have no regret for punching a bully repeatedly after constant mocking. I punched them mid insult and it felt amazing.

I'm not sure they are always hurt as much as cowardly.

Cowardly people seek to cloak themselves in power - and to abuse it.

In primary school I'm not sure why (think DB was being mean at home) I made a girl stand in one spot all break time and said mean things. I did it the next day. Then a teacher found out and gave me an absolute rollicking. I was 6 or 7 I think.

When I was 11 I also invented a situation of kissing a boy but deliberately ran away and said he had a snotty nose. It was planned with a friend.

Those were the only 2 things.

I've always made sure not to say or do mean things since then.

Just to clarify. His death was not suicide; he died from a longstanding illness. We remained friends after I did what I did.

If you think that expressing how you feel about bullying is the same as bullying, then you don’t understand bullying.

Really, though? I mean, if this is true it must be something very new. In my experience the ‘be kind’ mantra is highly insincere and yes - often espoused by the Mean Girls’ Brigade both at school and in adulthood.

But I admit I’m not up to speed, so if this is really happening now - great.

Sorry Cyan - that wasn’t directed at you. I was just pondering on what a few pps have said - that the people who bullied them went on to enter ‘caring’ roles as adults.

The news that the horrible girl who tormented my daughter is now preaching Christianity in Nepal certainly left me gobsmacked!

From what I can tell the properly cool girls aim to “be kind” it is extremely uncool to be outright cruel especially not to “punch down” socially. Teens now seem to be far nicer than we were!

I agree with you on this. In some schools it’s seen as uncool to bully kids like you’ve described. Punching down isn’t seen as building yourself up. I don’t know how that comes about though.

I totally get this. It affects some people for the rest of their lives. Forgiving the bullies and putting their minds at rest can go and do one!

I was bullied badly towards the end of primary school and pretty much throughout secondary school. I had red, frizzy hair and glasses. It affected me for a long time - I really couldn’t care less if my bullies have crappy home lives, they made my life a misery. If they apologised to me now I would tell them to fuck off

I was bullied fairly relentlessly from the age of about 11 to 15. I had a nice group of friends but outside of that was fairly relentlessly picked on by other kids at my school.

In my case it really came about because I was an easy target. Before I attended the school aged 11 I had been home educated. I was young / immature for my age, dreamy and scatty, undiagnosed ADHD, impulsive, slightly odd. I didn't know who was popular in music or film, I didn't have any cool interests and I was still interested in playing with my toys when the other girls my age weren't.

Because of these quirks of personality it was incredibly easy for people to get laughs and gain social capital by making fun of me. Even after I'd been at the school for a year and significantly wised up in terms of social development people still thought of me as an odd duck. I think in the tribal world of school where there is a lot of joshing for space in the social hierarchy, people could define what they were or weren't by making fun of me. Joking about how I didn't know who the cool musicians were proved that they did, etc. They could show their credentials for being accepted into the club of cool kids by showing up the ways in which I didn't meet that standard.

I never bullied anyone myself - I never wanted to but also I literally couldn't have. If I'd tried to make fun of someone it would have backfired on me as someone trying to move out of her place in the hierarchy.

I have a weird kind of sympathy for the bullies. They were so horrible to me but it was a result of their own huge anxieties about their place in the social hierarchy. Looking back it was all kids who lacked the skills to be inclusive and kind and interesting on their own terms, who could only cling on to their position by stamping on others. I don't believe I was ever bullied by a truly happy kid, even though many of them were pretty / popular etc.

This is why I think bullying needs addressed on a structural level. You can and should address the behaviour of individuals who are persecuting others but you won't solve the issue unless you're also working relentlessly on creating a genuinely inclusive school community where the entire concept of that hierarchical popularity contest is challenged. I'm not a teacher and I don't have the answers as to how but I know lots of schools are working very hard on community building to try and do that.

I don't believe I've become an adult bully. We continued doing the Piggy thing a few times because we didn't realise she'd stopped; we never sought her out but if we passed in the corridor or something, we'd do it in a sense of "first strike" because we truly thought it was coming (she had made a habit of seeking us out to insult us). After a couple of days we realised she wasn't doing it any more and we also got the sense we had genuinely hurt her; she had obviously tried to hurt us first but still, it wasn't what we were after. We just wanted her to know that she couldn't walk all over us like that without pushback and we wanted her to stop. We were also only about 12. In retrospect, of course we should have just told a teacher but there was the "tattletale" thing. Again, we were 12.

I wouldn’t say I was a bully however I did batter a few girls who were bullying my twin sister to the point they hospitalised her.

Not something I’d do now, I’m not proud of my actions but I’m also not ashamed either.

My teenage brain wanted the bullies to stop and the only way to do that was to fight them (we tried schools, going directly to the parents, police etc).

They didn’t go near my sister again, I then got the reputation of being the hard twin, so no one messed with her again in fear of me then retaliating.

One of the girls who bullied my daughter badly is now a Christian missionary in Nepal. This fascinates me.

Some pps have mentioned that either their bullies, or themselves (having once been a bully) have gone into 'caring professions' such as nursing, care or teaching.

If you've bullied when young and then entered one of these professions - could you say something about why you chose that path and how you reconcile it with what you did in the past? Do you, for example, think of the irony? Or have you blotted out your past behaviour?

I'm genuinely interested, because obviously child bullies grow into adults and while some must mature and have regrets, maybe some don't. They might be in denial or possibly make excuses for their previous behaviour?

I've just remembered, there was a girl who tried to bully me and my friend and we turned it back on her. She took a dislike to us (we weren't very cool) and started seeking us out to tell us we were incredibly ugly and would never get boyfriends. It was unfortunate that she had a very upturned nose, so after a while we began pushing our noses up when she started on us and calling her Piggy, oinking and suggesting that she wasn't in a position to insult how anyone looked. She made out that she didn't care but she did soon stop insulting us
(after threatening to have her brother kill us after school, and quieting down when she heard my
friend had three older brothers who had all served in the army, and anyway we weren't worried). However, we did do it a few times to her before we realised she wasn't starting on us any more and was actually running away and we ought to stop or we'd become the new bullies.

Yes I was a bully, and was bullied, at high school.
genuinely, I didn’t see either a bullying at the time. I had, and still have, a quick perception and sharp sense of humour. I would make jokes and wind people up, and often this would be someone quiet or vulnerable. I thought it was funny but I realise now that it was probably hurtful and humiliating. I feel ashamed.
i was bullied by some older girls at my school, mostly name calling and telling others that they were going to beat me up (they didn’t).
apparently because I was a ‘slag’.

I can post on here anonymously. Yes I have bullied someone and I'm ashamed of it. Someone once asked me to be their guarantor for their house and I said no. I fancied her then fiance at the time. So I mocked and harassed her for years. I realized I had taken it too far when I sent some flowers to her now husband's work and sent them anonymously. So I realized I had to stop. I realized my problems were nothing to do with this person and they were all about me. So I unfriended her on all social media platforms about 5 years ago. Never seen or heard from her since.

I was bullied in the first year of secondary, that passed and school became okay. However, a different insidious kind of bullying started in upper sixth...nasty slanderous gossip and assault to boot !
Unluckily for me I then developed a physical disease as then undiagnosed and was treated like a social pariah... complete bloody nightmare 😳
Effects still with me.