To think bullies and evil people never change even when they grow up?

[twoblackdogs]

Just this really.

We had an unofficial class reunion quite recently. There were some really evil bullies in our class, and now they are decent citizens, family people and caring parents, but I looked at them and thought that they just couldn't switch to the good side so easily and fully. How can one be really evil in the school and then suddenly become so very nice and kind and respected, and even doesn't (really?) remember his/her own evil deeds towards others? Do they really forget what they have done to some of their classmates, or they just don't care and think of themselves as good and decent people? Even knowing what they did? Or do they just laugh it off and say "oh, such and such had it coming/was too sensitive for his/her own good"? And everybody just thinks a world of good about them?
I remember my own bully, now a very respected family man. He just sort of laughs everything off. I don't think he's really changed.
Is it possible at all? Can such people change?
I still think that the little shit that once tortured kittens still is the same shit even if all grown up, respected in his job and raising a family.

Thank you all for answers.
It is interesting how easy it is to discern the former bullies and the bullied here. Like in those threads about OW, where one can easily see the wives and the OWs.

In my OP I talked about 16 year olds which were not kids anymore and certainly knew they are doing something bad, and still did it. Sorry for not making it clear in the beginning. So - yes, I still don't believe people who do bad things can change. Outwardly, yes, but they still are the same. And they certainly know what they do and how it makes the others feel.

To that poster who asked if I had done bad things and changed - my childhood was not very nice and easy, but I have never felt any need to hurt somebody or to steal something because of it. So no.

And my bully came from a very impressive family and did bad things to many others just for fun. Just because he could. Probably still does.

We had a boy in our class which had a slight speech problem and was bullied for that. And in the said reunion his bully came over, slapped his shoulder and was rather surprised the other guy was rather cold towards him. Like "why are you so funny, mate". The tree remembers, and the axe forgets.

Bullies don't change.

My older sister was just pure evil. She'd bully so much at school. She'd go after the weakest kids. She bullied me so much, too. Now she sits on ttik tok, making videos about mental health, and it's just comical. She still is horrible and will never change. No idea why she's like this though, we had a good life. I cut her off quite a few years ago but my oldest speaks to her cousins and that's how I know about the tik tok videos.

… but actually you are being rather judgmental and unforgiving.

You are saying that because you were [good qualities] back then, and they were [bad qualities] that your moral superiority still exists. Fundamentally, you know nothing about those people as adults, and have no interest whatsoever in them, other than using them to opine on their awfulness to make yourself feel better.

I’m not saying bullying is OK- it isn’t. And I’m not saying you have to forgive them- you don’t. But their character flaws, don’t give you a free pass on your’s.
(and of course, this applies to me too)

Hard agree. Usually if a kid is being horrible it will be connected to their home life, and the example they have been given. You see this in the children, do they shout, do they swear, are they cruel to each other or happy to fight? It is the home life or home culture that will drive that. Parents don’t need to be aggressive themselves, they can be weak on self discipline and you get similar results.

I won't say they NEVER change but what I will say is I haven't yet met one who did.

"Once a wrong'un always a wrong'un" is my view.

Said before but I think you can change your behaviour though sometimes that can take a lot of work and you might even need some professional help. Your personality is what it is and you have to learn to live with it.

I believe 99% are people who bully were in emotional pain, possibly abused emotionally, mentally, physically or were witness to similar behaviour. I am referring to children here. Where a lot of the time they don't have the chance not to behave that way.

Teens I think it can be the above or their own internal rollercoaster of self hatred, self imposed isolation. Usually they are very unhappy people.

There is I imagine in that 99%cohort also those who enjoy the power, the attention and control element.

I do believe there is the last 1% that are born that way and possibly due to a misfiring of neurons are what you refer to as evil. I don't believe in evil per se but I do know there are some very sick people out there.

This says more about you than about other people. No one is asking you to sympathise with your own bullies, but why are you so insistent that they’re inherently ‘evil’? Teenagers bully for all kinds of reasons. There’s a bully in my 12 year old’s class, and my son was, at one point, bullied by him before I intervened with the school. It’s not hard to see where his life is going to go from here, and it’s likely he’ll be in a young offenders’ centre by his later teens. This won’t be because he’s ‘evil’, though, it will be because he’s been appallingly parented (father overseas, macho ‘boys don’t cry’ ex-military type, mother banned from school property for her harassment of teachers and other parents, and known to SS).

I believe 99% are people who bully were in emotional pain, possibly abused emotionally, mentally, physically or were witness to similar behaviour.

Oh, that old chestnut. "The bully is the primary victim here," In my experience, nastiest bullies are spoiled, entitled, and know they can get away with shit, so they will target the defenseless. They can come from the nicest families, but as soon as they sense parents not watching, then hell breaks loose.

Bullies ALWAYS know what they are doing. Always. There may or may not be a background, but they do it consciously. And I think it's evil to bully people, and probably that says something about me, yes.

Just one more old saying which I think is a bit relevant to this topic:
Boys throw stones at the frogs for fun, but the frogs die for real.

not in my experience, they do not change

One of my bullies even tried to befriend me when an adult, I told her to fuck off

One other bully, ex boyfriend has held on to a grudge for over 20 years against me and then did something despicable to me, he did not change

Some people are not very nice and don’t ever change. In my experience these people can behave appallingly and they don’t care for the consequences. I’ve had to deal with such people who are in their late 40s. I can only hope karma catches up with them one day.

I think about what Michelle Obama says - when they go low, you always go high. I find that a comforting thought when I am dealing with people who lie with abandon and behave appallingly with seemingly no consequences.

I think adults are just better at hiding their mean behaviour and talk about people behind their backs instead of to their face. Teenagers know right from wrong. They know when they're bullying someone. Stop infantilising people in their early 20s.

I've never suggested otherwise. This child I referred to above knows what he's doing, yes, in the sense that he's copying it from his primary role model, who is an aggressive, manipulative, unpleasant woman with (as far as I can judge) MH issues, who gets attention via physical aggression and raising her voice when she can't get it by other means. Her son is desperate for attention, and doesn't get it via the usual means (in a friendly class where boys are in the minority and are always thrilled when a new boy joins the class -- a recently-arrived Ukrainian boy who started with minimal English has joined the group very happily, for instance), he gets it, very successfully, by cruelty, using his size and strength, and manipulation, while his mother shows up (or did, before she was banned from school premises) to complain to the principal about her son being 'excluded' from the boys' group when they, very sensibly, are keeping their distance from someone they don't want to be around.

Which is in no way to minimise his victims' suffering (s I said, my son was among them), but I don't think this child is 'evil', no. I think he's been (probably permanently) warped by his parenting.

There are some people who genuinely change for good or evil, some who fake it, some still have issues, some are serial killers

There is no blanket answer for every single person on the planet

Which is in no way to minimise his victims' suffering (s I said, my son was among them), but I don't think this child is 'evil', no. I think he's been (probably permanently) warped by his parenting.

Ok, not every conflict between children is bullying, and tables can easily be turned when group friendship dynamics change. Sometimes it's enough to sit them down and explain that this sort of behavior will not be tolerated and the bare minimum expected of them is to act civil.
But yes, the kid you described sounds pretty evil and seems its genetic. Risk is that he will run into even a bigger bully eventually and it will not be pretty.

Children aren't evil, even if they're doing bad things because they're too young to know better or to know how to do better. Of course they can change. Who's the same at 35 as they were at 13?

Which is in no way to minimise his victims' suffering (s I said, my son was among them), but I don't think this child is 'evil', no. I think he's been (probably permanently) warped by his parenting.

Jon Venables?

If I turned up at my kid's school and saw the teacher was the boy who cornered me in an empty classroom and groped my breasts, crotch and arse while his two mates blocked the door until my shout summoned a teacher, I'd hit the roof.

Same with the girls who used to beat me up.

It is interesting how easy it is to discern the former bullies and the bullied here. Like in those threads about OW, where one can easily see the wives and the OWs.

I was both, which blows that theory out of the water.

Bullies ALWAYS know what they are doing. Always.

Also not true. I was autistic and didn't know it. I copied to fit in. Unfortunately the role models I chose to copy were my siblings, who bullied me mercilessly from the day I was born. When I look back to school, I was pretty horrible, saying all the unkind things that popped into my head without a thought for anyone else's feelings. I thought I was being funny, because whenever I had got upset, my siblings told me I was overreacting because they were 'only joking'. So of course I thought my victims were overreacting too.

Many dysfunctional families have the kind of dynamic where one child becomes the repository for everyone else's negative feelings and behaviour. Unsurprisingly, that child ends up 'acting out' all of the accumulated pain, which is why you've seen families where everyone appears to have been raised the same way but only one has gone off the rails. But the whole family is out of balance, not just the one.

Anyway, all of my stuff was a long time ago. I've had an autism diagnosis, many years of therapy and am no longer in contact with my family. And I've definitely changed.

I'm not saying all bullying comes from a place of victimisation, but a great deal of it does, which leaves open the possibility for change and growth, and that was certainly true for me. Perhaps other bullies start off nasty and stay that way. My real point is that bullies, like almost all groups we like to label and 'other', aren't some homogeneous group who all behave the same way and are driven by the same impulses. They have as much opportunity to change as most of the rest of the population, and perhaps slightly more incentive, given they are generally unhappy and disliked.

I don't believe in evil or that anyone is born evil. But many, many families have unresolved intergenerational trauma that affects children from day 1, which is why it looks that way.

I don't want to be unkind, because it's clear you're hurting from past experiences, but I think you could do with taking a bit more interest in human behaviour before writing off a large proportion of the population as evil and likely to stay that way.

you could do with taking a bit more interest in human behaviour before writing off a large proportion of the population as evil and likely to stay that way.

Depends if you understand the damage you caused and do you have any remorse.

There was a bully at primary school in the year above me that took a particular dislike to me and gave me a hard time at any opportunity.
30 years later I was walking down the street past some cars that were waiting at traffic lights, I became aware of the driver of one of them staring at me as I approached and as I passed by he glared at me out of his open window. I realised it was the same bully and was trying to intimidate me. He's still an arsehole.
Part of me wanted him to get out the car and have a pop at me.
I'm not 7 anymore, Mickey, see how it works out for you now.

I think some remain the same. Which is why its a struggle making friends with other school parents or toddler groups.
For women they can try to push others out of the group so they stay closest to their favourite. They also manipulate their childs friendships.

One boy in dd class has been a handful since reception he can make loud 'jokey' comments about other kids. He is very clever. He may stop eventually , but school are likely failing him as well as the other child by never pulling him up on it.

Some people do change. Some people do not. Regardless, you are not obliged to forgive/ forget.

I think actions speak volumes. Some people really do grow up/ become better, they often show genuine remorse.

Some people really were clueless children, who did not comprehend the impact of their actions.

Some were horrible bullies, and remain so.

I think you have to judge each individual on their own behaviour then and now.

Much easier said than done though!