Have you ever been a bully? Why?

[Sophiehoney]

This thread, if there's any interest, might get dark so this is just a trigger warning.

The recent thread about someone being contacted by her school bully was really long and I noticed a few people sympathising with the bully and at least one person admitting that they were bullies.

I suspect there probably were a few more people that bullied people but didn't admit it.

Name change if you must but I am just genuinely interested - if you were a bully, why did you do it?

Or if you're not a bully, feel free to give your reasons why you think they do it!

I had an awful childhood, terrible parents, lots of abuse at home.

I was bullied mildly at Primary School - left out of things, teased. I remember going to Brownies and the other girls wiped their snot onto my jumper, laughing.

At secondary school the mild bullying continued and I never felt safe or wanted anywhere. I didn't have a solid group of friends but drifted between people.

Then some horrendous bullying started in year 8, I was threatened and harassed by older kids, it was horrible.

In one class I was sat by a boy who was really short for his age and I teased him; he must have dreaded coming into class.
And then another class, a very meak girl was in a seat and I told her to move, she jumped up really frightened and moved. I think I picked on her a bit.

I'm not sure why I was unkind to those two classmates, and I deeply regret it. I wasn't really horrible but I could have been kinder especially feeling so dreadful and full of anxiety myself.

I don't think bullies are happy. Low self esteem? Bullied themselves? It's no excuse.

You're probably right, but I don't know, I genuinely found some peace in the idea that she might not even remember it. It helped me to realise I'd let her keep on bullying me in my head, whilst SHE got on with her life without a backwards glance.

Maybe that wasn't how it really was, but it helped me at the time, when I still couldn't get past it, despite my life being so much better. Something about that exchange released a switch that released some of the baggage I was carrying.

It's an interesting question to pose, because many former school bullies will deny what they were, or try and minimalise what they did, saying they were ' just kids ' etc.

I was very much bullied in primary school and secondary school in the '80s. I never really got over it. In counselling it came out that I didn't want another child in case it was a boy like me, and he would go through what I did.

As it happens I have a daughter that is bullied, so history has repeated itself anyway. She handles it a lot better that I ever did, and at least I care and me and her mum take the school to task about it. My parents never cared, and it was later in life that I realised how badly they had let me down. Obviously they deny any poor parenting.

I find it strange how in 40 years schools haven't got any better with dealing with it, often the victim has to make concessions.

I'd like to say my bullies ended up losers, but they went to a local trades college for thick lads, and have probably earned ridiculous money as plumbers, plasterers etc.

I thought the ‘my child will never be bullied’ had distinctly threatening overtones.

I was chilled by her confession and I didn’t detect remorse. But I’m grateful that she posted because it was very instructive and I hope it will make an impact on people who have no experience of bullying and a) think it’s easily dealt with or b) are inclined to waste compassion and time on bullies.

I was a teacher as well as the parent of a severely bullied child so I saw bullying from a number of perspectives. I rolled my eyes at the highly ineffective meeting which Saltandvinegar found so amusing - even finding the extreme distress of the bullied child’s mother absolutely hilarious. Only a psychopath would feel like that and if Salt is one, obviously that is not her fault. But not all psychopaths behave like that - she was clearly a very nasty piece of work indeed.

I’m so, so sorry you and your daughter have suffered like this.

No, you don’t get over it. My daughter hasn’t got over it.

As pps have said, some bullies do eventually catch up with normal people and feel a modicum of remorse, but many don’t.

But their victims will be affected for ever.

My parents were the same to my face. Years later, my mum told me she worried about it and spoke to the school. Nobody at the school spoke to me about it, and Mum dismissed it as me being 'oversensitive' at the time.

I asked her why she treated it so lightly. I stopped speaking about it at home, because I'd be laughed at, made to feel I was being silly, it was just 'a bit of teasing'. She said she wanted to 'toughen me up'.

It didn't work. For those who have brought up the 'r' word, you don't get more resilient kids by abandoning them to the wolves because they need to look after themselves. We need to feel someone is listening. They don't have to go in all guns blazing, we just need to feel someone is on our side.

With you on the concerns about having kids. I haven't got any, but when we were talking about it seriously, all I could think of was that I wanted them to take after my husband. I didn't want them to look.like me, or be like me, so convinced was I that this was my fault, my personality, my physical ugliness (which my bullies made a point of announcing at every occasion).

But even if you managed in some small way to dent or make her doubt her own positive self-image, your tirade was not in vain. It will come back and sting in quiet moments.

Yes I was probably a bit of a bully when I was at the end of primary school. I had also been bullied. I can’t really tell you why. I was just a bit emotionally mature, my parents split up around the same time so maybe that’s was part of it. I made friends with someone and we bullied a girl she used to be friends with. I don’t think we were extreme bullies (nothing physical or shouting abuse or constantly insulting etc). We excluded her and must have made mean comments but it got to the point where she was upset enough to report to the school so obviously did affect her. I then feel like I continued to be mean sometimes to some kids but not bullying a specific person until I was maybe year 9 and found a stable group of friends and got a little more mature.

I think there are so many reasons someone might be a bully and ultimately when we’re talking about children, we can’t really hold them to the same standards as adults. I suppose I felt better about myself by putting others down - I have always had very low self esteem and I guess insecure attachment if you want to get psychological.

I do feel bad about it now and in fact even in secondary school, I felt bad about it and regretted it. But that obviously doesn’t really matter.

I suppose I felt better about myself by putting others down👌
Nail on head.

I was bullied throughout primary school including physical assault and a racist element. Secondary school was a bit better but by then, I had lost all trust in people and never formed any true lifelong friendships with anyone.

I did enjoy being on the interview panel when one bully applied for a cleaning job at my company, I took great pleasure in telephoning her to advice she wasnt sucessful 😆.

I don't think many bullies realise how they have affected people and dismiss it as just kids being kids.

Oh what a brilliant ending!

So much love for this!!!!

I think there are so many reasons someone might be a bully and ultimately when we’re talking about children, we can’t really hold them to the same standards as adults. I suppose I felt better about myself by putting others down - I have always had very low self esteem and I guess insecure attachment if you want to get psychological.

Please don't minimise bullying. They might be children but they destroy the self-esteem and ruin the childhoods of other children. Sometimes they cause irreparable damage which is lifelong. Have you thought about that?

Just because you are able to put it behind you doesn't mean your victim can. Own what you did and don't excuse it because you were a child. We were all children but not all children bully.

I wasn’t really excusing it, I was just answering the question. But we do hold children to different ethical/moral standards than adults in general don’t we? What do you want to happen to children who are bullies?

There was a really interesting piece by Hadley Freeman a few years ago about being contacted by a old lecturer who had sexually harassed her, and her realisation that the way she remembered it was fundamentally different to his recollection- very similar to what you are saying. It’s a big mistake to assume the the people who bully us or collude all understand what they are doing in the same way that we do, and understand the impact of what they are doing in the same way their victim does.

as I said earlier, some bullies are motivated primarily by causing pain and fear. If that’s the case then I don’t think there’s much hope. But if the underlying reason for acting I this way is something else, and how they make the other person feel is secondary, I do think there’s hope that they can change. I wouldn’t want to write any child off where there’s hope they can be guided to change.

Someone at primary was a bully, she didn't have a very happy home life though, maybe that was it .

You are absolutely entitled to not believe me when I say this, and I don't really expect you to, but there's absolutely no pride in what I did. None whatsoever.

I wanted to answer the OP's question - why do people bully - and I wanted to do it in a way that really delved into the mind of why people bully, and gave a full answer. That's why it's detailed, honest and factual.

I was trying to make sure I didn't give off any "poor me, feel sorry for me, absolve me of my guilt" vibes. I don't deserve that, nor does anyone have the responsibility to give it to me. This may have made me come across coldly.

I did throw what I thought was a small bit of humour and flippancy in there, this is because I also wanted to avoid coming across as a completely cold, hard psychopath.

If this comes across as pride, then I apologise. It wasn't intention.

I do deserve what happened to me.

I am almost grateful to them.

I did have empathy before the attack. I loved my mum deeply, I felt sorry for her after she came home from long, 12 or 14 hour days, I used to run her baths and sometimes massage her feet. I was kind to her.
I had empathy with my friends too, I would sit with them and talk about their problems with them for hours while we painted each other nails and id normal teenage girl things.

But the people I bullied, I just didn't have empathy for. They were just below me in the hierarchy and in my mind, just fair game. It was absolutely inhumane, but I don't know why I felt like that, something just hadn't worked, just hadn't clicked.

It took being made to feel small myself to flip that switch. That's just how it was, I can't really explain it any better.

Noone had ever made me feel small. It was just me and my mum at home, and she'd always treated me like a princess. I rarely got told off, I always got what I wanted, I was pretty so strangers used to pay me compliments. I just thought I was the absolute Queen of everything and it made me horrible and dangerous, until one day I was put in my place.

I can't say if that switch would have been flipped without those boys (and the aftermath - obviously the rumour got round the school and I wasn't looked up to any more) but I know that it was definitely a turning point for me, one that I am glad I got (and I'm sure others rightly are too)

Yep, I completely get that. But how should schools tackle that do you think?

Several times my daughters have been hit, and when I raised concern with school the response is generally either 'they have SEN' or 'they are a reflection of their environment at home' and 'your girls have lots of support and home so they should be able to manage their emotions around this'

Should children be allowed to behave like this with no consequences, and the impact on their victim be disregarded?
My oldest at 7 became a school refuser due to being sat next to a girl who hit her every day, she told the teacher but nothing hapenned. Now at 10 she has an intense distrust of teachers, and went from 'teachers favourite' before this, to the child who chats back to her teachers, as she has lost respect for them after they didn't protect her from harm, being a 'smart mouth' has become her defense mechanism. This is definitely not ok, and we are working on this, but one child's trauma has now become 2 children's trauma as the aggression towards my daughter was allowed to continue unchecked, until I withdrew her until they moved her.

Yeah I think there is truth to this too. A lot of people don’t realise the impact of their words and actions. Not truly and definitely not as children. To them, it could have been “banter” or “messing around” but to the person on the receiving end, it could have felt brutal and confidence-crushing.

But I think some are very quick to say that we must never forgive any bully and that no bully truly feels remorse. That is too drastic. It can be the case that the bullying destroyed the victims life AND that the bully feels genuine remorse and guilt about it now. It can also be the case that people who are unkind children grow up to be kind adults (and vice versa). You cannot always judge someone based on what they did when they were 14 because in most other contexts we know that 14 year olds don’t have the same cognitive capacities as an adult. That is not intended to minimise the impact on the victim, which often is very significant.

I am also in contact with people from school who would swear blind that they were never bullies (like many on this thread) but I think others who knew them would beg to differ. At least @saltandvineger owns up to what she did and what motivated her at the time. One of the nastiest girls in my year posts stuff on facebook about being anti-bullying and about being kind. In her mind, she is and always was kind. I have more respect for those who own their actions. There’s actually not that many people who have never ever been mean, nasty or teased or excluded someone.

Should children be allowed to behave like this with no consequences, and the impact on their victim be disregarded?

In the case of SEN though, what do you propose is done?

@saltandvineger

I very much appreciate your honesty about this. It's only through people being completely honest (and not trying to excuse themselves or minimising what they did) that we'll ever understand what makes bullies tick.

That's what I am trying to do, I am trying to be completely honest and give a full picture.

I knew full well I'd get hate for it when I wrote it so I do understand.

I'd like them to be separated physically from any opportunity to get close to their victim (I explain this upthread). Permanent exclusion would be difficult because establishing a threshold for it would be nigh-on impossible - it would be like a court case!

But separation within the school: move classes and spend breaks and lunchtimes in a separate building with other bullies. They should be on report and the victim should do a report too each day to ensure that it's not continuing.

Basically - take the bully away, not the victim. Remove them from their audience/flying monkeys/enablers as well as the victim. Isolate them from these people, cut off their supply of sadistic fun and entertainment.

Yes - I know that in practice this would be incredibly difficult to implement. Where do you stop? The Queen/King bully, or all the little enablers who stand around laughing at the victim?

But something on those lines.

Just to add - I'm afraid there would be no sympathy, understanding or allowance made for the bully in my system! That would be reserved for their victim and the victim's needs would come first.

It would be a very tough message I'd want to send to potential bullies: whatever you think your excuse is, don't be a bully. If you've got issues, find another way to express with and deal with them and seek help before you victimise another child.