To Discuss How Not To Be A Bullying Victim

I totally agree with this. If the bullying is verbal or excluding, the only way is to decide the bully's opinion of you is valueless and to seek other friends and ignore. But if it's physical, the only way is to fight back hard, immediately. Very unfashionable advice but true.

My daughter was bullied in year 6 by a group of girls who had been her “best friends”, all deciding to just start freezing her out in the last few weeks of term.
She has started year 7 with a bit of a steely resolve and had a couple of girls try it with her again in the new term. I’m not sure what happened over the 6 weeks holidays with her resilience and confidence, but she’s essentially told this new crowd that she’s not up for being messed around and to try elsewhere. They are a pack of girls who seem to have been the mean girls in their own primary school. I think they have genuinely been shocked at the push back, they have probably not had this response previously. Low and behold they are now infighting in their own group and trying to see who can have DD as their own new little BFF.

I was always the smallest in my year at school but don’t ever remember being bullied much outside of a bit of teasing. I did hail from a large family of lunatics though who were well known locally so always assumed that protected me.

See reading this I'd have said neither! DD1 sounds very much like I was at school, and like I commented above, I was so oblivious to the bullying attempts made at me I was never bullied. So I don't think being agressive/having fighting spirit is the only way to not be bullied. If you are genuinely not bothered by the bullies, regardless of how far down the food chain you are, they'll also leave you alone.

So I think about this quite a lot, as looking back bullies tried to bully me, but I was so oblivious they left me alone. They will always pick on someone different/weak/an easy target. But they won't pursue if that person doesn't give them the desired response.

I was an unusual child. I've always been very small, I supposed looking back you have described me as eccentric and I suppose at the time I was a bit square. One example was when one of the 'popular' girls laughed at my socks with her friends. One of them said 'Oh "nice" socks! My gran has some like that". I was oblivious, I just said, "oh yes, they're nice aren't they" and wondered off.

There was another time when someone commented on how flat chested I was, and I just said "yeah i know, it's cus I'm small"

It was literally years later I realised these were bullying attempts (these girls were bullies to others). And had I not been so oblivious, and got upset, then I would have been a target.

This is a hard thing to teach, and if someone is going to get upset then it's very hard to unlearn that. There is this good video about how to beat bullies here in this video. 4,3 mins in is a good place to start of you can't be arsed to watch the whole thing.

I’m not sure this is all entirely true. I was bullied at school, but only recognise it as bullying now I’m an adult. It wasn’t physical but this girl and her friends would go out of their way to spread rumours and turn people against me.

She was of higher social status but I was incredibly secure in myself, and it just didn’t really bother me. I think it might have been rooted in jealousy for various reasons and she just escalated and escalated. I got on with my life with my friends, and at one point she screamed at me in the street in front of our peer group and I just wanted away, and she was so angry.

I’m a bit quirky and was very clever at school, but I honestly didn’t care what she or her cronies thought of me. So I think there’s a bit of anyone can get bullied, but it doesn’t have the same effect on everyone.

I don’t think there was any real instances of physical bullying at our school, I certainly can’t remember ever seeing it or being aware of it (there were fights but usually between equals) - so this was probably as bad as bullying behaviour got in my school.

I wasn’t bullied in school, but I was bullied by family members.
I worked in schools in the past, and I’m not sure the characteristics that are being blamed on this thread are necessarily true. Yes, the loud brasher and more confident kids never got bullied, but I found more than anything it seemed to be down to a combination of the target being a “nice”, polite child and also the bully being jealous of their target. I think the key to potentially stop it is not to let the first thing a bully says/does slide. Call them out on it from the first comment, then they know they are unlikely to be able to mess with you.

Humans are supposedly social creatures, but I don’t think we are really. People can be absolutely vile to each other.

It is probably all about confidence and self esteem - the kids with both were never bothered. It makes sense to try to ensure your child is confident and sure in themselves but it's not like an app you can install, you can do your best as a parent but find that because of other factors, your child can still be the target to those who sense someone weaker.

I was never bullied in school but I was in my first job when I was 17. It was by a woman old enough to be my mother, she was horrible to me, constantly criticised my work, appearance, life choices. She eroded my confidence and I was genuinely scared of her.

I’d like to say that I put her in her place but that never happened, I just escaped from the job and was a thousand times happier but I was determined never to let it happen again and in future jobs when anyone tried it, I either nipped it in the bud or looked for something else because I wasn’t going through that again.

Bullies sense weakness

This, so do abusive men, muggers etc. It's how you carry yourself etc.

Fighting back isn't always the answer, more important how to learn who to stand up or to or back down & how to avoid standing out.

I think your OP is about childhood and teen years? (Workplace stuff is a different kettle of fish IMO!)

Agree that your friend’s comment rings true that it’s a risk to be and seem lacking in confidence and ‘unsure’.

Along with lots of other stuff, eg differences, traits, home situation. I was a ‘know it all’ kind of kid, bossy, worked hard - some kids didn’t like that. Had moved areas so had to try to fit in, had a different accent. Also some difficulties at home meant I wouldn’t speak to anyone about things at school.

At times I also behaved in bullying ways, or was a bystander. Think it stemmed from the stuff going on at home and struggles with the social dynamics at school.

Steely resolve, not giving a shit what other people think and not trying to be part of the crowd, being an independent thinker has worked for me. The best armour is high self-esteem. Bullies are attracted to those who come across as needy. If you blank them and show you don't have the energy for them they go elsewhere.

I think it also depends on the environment...I was bullied a lot in primary school, and then a bit in the first few years of secondary school.
Then when they switched us all around for GCSEs and I found more kids 'like me' it stopped.

I was clever, quiet, and a bit socially awkward.

The psychology of workplace bullying is often poorly understood.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Bully_in_Sight.html?id=9T9mn72jffkC&redir_esc=y

When DS was at school I asked if he was bullied and with the wisdom of a 14 year old he said ‘I’m not the sort that gets bullied’. He had a solid group of friends, wasn’t quite top of the class, played sports and was in a band. If only we could teach it or bottle it!

I'm noticing how unhelpful the advice about how to respond to schoolyard bullying is to my experience of workplace bullying.
As emotionally satisfying as it is to imagine smacking a bullying work colleague I'd rightly be up for assault. Also unemployed and possibly unemployable.
Are there people who learned non-violent responses to bullying in school who were then able to apply that in the workplace?
Or does physically defending yourself in childhood translate to confidence and gravitas that prevents bullying in adulthood?

DH and I regularly talk about this as two people who were picked on in school.

My parents taught me to ignore and tell teacher and don't stoop to their level, which meant I didn't do anything when bullied. I also didn't have a very happy home life so I walked around school like a victim and not confident. My parents also said that if I got into a fight, I might be suspended which will stay on record for uni and job prospects, so I felt like I couldn't do anything.

DH said he got picked on a few times and all he had to do was grab this boy by the collar and push him up against the wall and punch him once. That boy, and his friends, left DH alone and no one else touched him or said anything to him and he went along school in peace. DH said you just need to show them once that you're not an easy target, and they move on.

With DC now I'm trying to teach them exactly this. They don't have to win the fight, or the argument, just don't take it lying down. Stand up for yourself.

Agree, dd1 sadly has been captured by the 'be kind' shite.