Hi, I don’t know if you all saw the 20/20 show about bullying the other night, I just thought you all might be interested in looking at the message board on their website concerning that episode. I found it disheartening to say the least, in fact I had a stomach ache after reading a few. Maybe as someone who was teased and threatened in middle school and now a parent of a child who is in middle school and could easily be picked out as a target because of learning differences I am very sensitive. However, the first message about the kids in the article was the opnion that the kids were whiny victims and deserved what they got. Unfortunately, the message I wrote as a reply didn’t go through. There was also someone who was denouncing the IDEA law as being something we parents use to the utmost to keep our little monsters in school. Needless to say, the stories told about experiencing bullying were sad, but the folks whose opinions were to just buck up and take it, that’s life,well…let’s just say, I needed to take a tums afterwards. I just thought you all might find it enlightening to read how folks feel about this issue.
Re: bullying article on 20/20
Blaming children who are citimized by bullies for what happens is not so similar from posecuting a rape victim for leading some poor man to commit his crime.
What needs to happen is children who get caught committing these acts of violence (and most of bullying involves assault, if not battery) is they need to be pulled from regular classes until such time as they complete therapeutic anger management classes and demonstrate that they can live in civil society.
Should they turn out to truly be incorrigible, it should be mandatory that their parents also attend group counseling until such time as the problem is solved.
Often being made to discuss your feelings and otherwise receive counseling services is more punishment than getting hit with a paddle, and many bullies are merely the product of the programming they have received in the home.
But above all, the chief focus of the schools in regard to the vicitms of bullying must be protecting the victim from further abuse, and any school personnel who fail to do so deserve to be subject to civil damages. We trust them with our children, they must not allow this trust to be in vain.
And considering that many time the victims of ritual abuse by bullies are those children who have te least ability to defend themselves, it becomes necessary for the adults in the situation to defend tehm adequately until such time as the victims attain defensive skills or the bullies are permanently removed from the setting.
I cannot begin to relate the horror stories I have been told by adults on the autistic spectrum who have suffered so greatly at the hands of peers and staff alike that their lives were permanently changed for te worse asa result.
Yeah, I’ve read the opinion of those people who think kids should just “toughen up”. Those people are many times the jerks that bully people in the first place.