One Approach to School Bullying.

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Allison Davis said that her son Drew had suffered bullying from the unidentified student for years and, despite repeated attempts to get the school to do something about it, nothing happened.

“When this kid has constantly threatened to beat Drew up along with several of his friends, the school did nothing,” Davis said. “When this kid followed Drew down the hall threatening him and making fun of him AND it was all captured on video, the school did nothing.”

The mother said the student’s bullying only got worse over time, including sending her son threats on social media, voicemails and text messages. Still, she said, the school did nothing.

“In middle school, Drew was afraid to walk down the halls because a swarm of this kid and his minions would make fun of and threaten Drew,” she said. “He quit talking to the adults about it because they never disciplined the bully and it just made the situation worse.”

Davis said she sent the school a “lengthy email” earlier this year and “begged” the school to intervene. Their solution, she said, was to have the two sign a “no contact” contract.

“Drew decided that he would quit relying on the school and the adults who are suppose[d] to protect him and HE would do something,” she wrote. “Three punches and his bully screamed like a baby, his minion friends shut up, and this morning the bully wouldn’t even look at him."

But rather than being “upset” over her son’s behavior, Davis said she was far from it.

“Not even a little bit,” she said.

“I know as a parent I’m suppose[d] to be upset with him for resorting to violence or getting suspended, but I’m not,” she wrote.

Source: Missouri mom defends son beating up school bully in viral post: 'Problem solved'

Totally fine with this too.

Spoke to a student about this recently who was bullied in his earlier school and he said the thing that was hardest to understand was why he didn't just clobber him at the time and get on with life as the school did nothing. Instead he felt really awful about himself for years.

This is a bit like the bullies scene from the movie "The Accountant." However, this solution is not available to everyone.

Autism is not something new: it's been with us for 10,000 years, in my opinion. Furthermore, it's well-known that *most* autistic children have some forms of physical weakness. Mother Nature has made autistic children capable of surviving through bullying episodes. I think I'd like to use another quote from the first Jurassic Park movie: "Life, uh, finds a way." Different children develop different coping mechanisms. Sure, some have not been able to survive, but in evolutionary terms, by definition their genetics did not propagate. That is, as corny as it may sound, statistically speaking, autistic children have been designed to survive through bullying episodes. I personally have had to survive through bad times. I collaborated with the bullies, by helping many of them with their academics. Sure, I have been punched, and I still suffer from the consequences from one bad punch, even till today. But the important thing is, I made through it all. And today, I looked at my life and the lives of those bullies, and frankly, I don't feel bad.

My main point is: children are more resilient than what we give them credit for. Bullies won't ever disappear, that is a given. Survival is a skill. Surviving through being bullied is part of growing up. And that has always been the message I tell my children's teachers. Yes, my children have been bullied. But within reasonable limits, I take those bad experiences as part of their development/formation. Sure, having the teachers talk to the specific bully students, or having the school psychologist talk to the whole class explaining the differences between autistic children and neurotypical children, are all great ideas/solutions. But, the truth is, bullies don't ever disappear. You'll run into bullies again and again. I have seen enough people displaying Jekyll-and-Hyde syndrome: preaching to be nice to people only to behave like bullies one moment later. My point is: face the real world. Those people demanding a bully-free environment, are probably bullying parents themselves, anyway. We don't need to preach for fantasies. The world is what it is. No need for hypocrisy.

When they first built Biosphere 2 (in Arizona), which basically was a gigantic greenhouse, they found out that the trees inside would fall. It was a puzzle for the scientists. Only later did the scientists realize the problem: wind. Lack of wind. See, when the trees are rocked with wind from time to time, their roots become strong. Raising children is no different.

While not effective in every situation, a physical response can effectively communicate to others that of which they are incapable of understanding otherwise. For example one might tell a house dog "no" with regard to a particular undesired behavior to no effect. However, a rolled up newspaper and "speak" in a language the dog can understand.

When I was a freshman in High School the fellow behind me in class decided that flicking my ear with his finger would be amusing. In considering an appropriate response, I decided that requesting he discontinue his amusements would be a waste of time as he seemed impervious to consideration of others. I decided that if I rose suddenly spun around and punched him once in the face and quickly spun back to my seat a one second physical response might be effective. I was correct and the teacher even just ignored the entire incident as well. The fellow even became friendly afterwards. I assume because he felt a kinship with someone who could communicate with him.

edit -

I should note that this was in the 1960s when male behavior had not been criminalized.

When I was young, I was subjected to extreme bullying (physical assaults) during my 3 years of Junior High School. Because I was subjected to severe bullying in school, as a parent, I took an Aspie approach to bullying. Before my oldest daughter entered her first year of school I took her aside and explained to her that sometimes kids at school can be very mean and it is O.K. for you to defend yourself if you need to.

I was the smallest kid in my class and my wife was the smallest kid in her class, so it was natural that our children were the smallest children in their respective classes. When my firstborn daughter was in first or second grade, my wife received a phone call from the principal’s office at school. My wife called me at work and I told her I would resolve the issue when I got home. It turns out that she had bitten someone on the playground. I asked my daughter why she had bitten them. She said they were teasing her. [I thought about this for a few seconds – what tools does a wee little one have to protect herself against a much bigger bully. I would have never thought of her teeth.] My wife was frantic. I pulled my daughter aside and told her that what she did was O.K. because she had done what I had instructed her to do but then I told her to try not to do it again. She made it a point to stay away from bullies in the future. She was never bullied after that.

She was a girl, and you are talking about 1st or 2nd grade. That's very different from high-school level bullying, among boys .... much different. Perhaps if you read "La Ciudad y los Perros" ("The Time of the Hero") you'd refresh your memory on what high school bullying is about. You want to fight against the big ones? Easier said than done, especially when 4 other people hold and immobilize your arms and legs. Bullies do gang up. Movies are movies. Real life is another matter altogether. I don't need fairy tales when I carry permanent physical injury. Hey, but I have survived.

It's also a bit of cultural difference. Americans descend from pioneer culture. My son is probably tall enough that he can defend himself from most boys. But even then, it is just not in our family value to advocate for physical violence. I can't imagine my wife will ever tell my son to retribute, physically. We believe much more in karma. And in a sense, karma does work out that way, in the long term. Both myself and my wife have said to each other many times: life is very fair. I can also tell you about the findings of a friend of mine. He is older than I am. In his 20s he already figured out what's behind the concepts of "good" and "evil." Those two concepts are natural consequences of reinforcement learning and evolution, namely, survival of a species. The point is, doing good is actually beneficial to the long-term survival of a genetic trace (and it works in both directions: survival means generation of the concept of "good" as opposed to "evil".) Sure, things are a bit relative, a bit like the time horizon in Alex Wissner-Gross' equation of intelligence. Good or evil are dependent upon your circle, you horizon in space and time. But when projected to wide enough human societies and long enough time, we tend to arrive at similar universal values.

My point is: autism has existed for thousands of years, just like bullying has existed for thousands of years. Children are quite resilient. They have been made resilient through evolution. Bullying is an issue, but not a big issue. There are other more important things to worry about. Things like: What is life? Can we create life ... intelligent life? (Besides making babies, obviously, ha ha). How can our children survive inside the Technological Singularity, when AI/robots replace human labor, and chaos erupts in our traditional society? (Which, by the way, is happening in present tense.) Being leaders vs. being followers can literally mean the difference between life and death. Those things, are much more important to worry about. Bullies? They have made their choices already, and I don't think they have made wise choices.

During Junior High School, I was the smallest kid in the class. I was new to the school and had no friends This made me a prime candidate for bullying. So in a fair fight I probably would have lost, but for a bully the fight is never fair.

I attended a Catholic School in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois between the 6th - 8th grades. It was there that I became intimately familiar with child abuse from my peer group. I was probably in my “Pleasing Four” stage of child development. One day in the hallway, several boys approached me and asked, “What nationality are you?” I sensed danger and said nothing. They stared at my features and decided, “he has slanty eyes, large buck teeth and large ears; he must be Japanese”. I said nothing. For the next three years all I heard was a constant stream of Japanese jokes.

I must have been told every Japanese joke ever invented. Whenever they threw a joke my way, I maintained a stone cold face. That was a little hard to do sometimes because I wasn’t Japanese and a few of the jokes were actually a little funny. But if I showed any emotion, I knew the jig was up.

The psychological abuse quickly escalated into physical attacks in the hallway. Students at the school were required to meet a certain dress code. Boys had to wear a white shirt and a tie. But a tie is a type of weapon, a noose around my neck. Each day for over a year, I was surrounded by a group of bullies. They grabbed me by the tie and almost chocked me to the point of unconsciousness. After a while, I thought out-of-the-box and arrived at a workable solution. I began wearing a clip-on bow tie. I remember the look on the bully’s face when he tried to pull off my bow tie and it pulled right off. It was a look of great surprise. So I successfully foiled this type of attack.

After I solved the strangulation form of attack, I was subjected to three new types of assault. These assaults were designed to inflict no visible marks. These were:
* a painful kick in the balls
* a jab to the ribcage.
* a chokehold from behind.

The location of the attacks moved from the hallway to the playground and the intensity of the physical attacks moved up a notch. I tried to be a good Catholic boy. I was very small, the smallest in my class. Due to my size and the fact that I never fought back, I was assaulted regularly on a daily basis. This generally occurred during the one-hour recess. The school had a very large asphalt parking lot that substituted as a playground. I felt like I had not a friend in the whole world. I was a complete outcast.

But there was another dimension that was also playing out. If there is one authority that dwarfs the authority given to parents, it was the authority of God. One had to obey the rules “The Ten Commandments” and breaking those rules were “Mortal Sins” which could be punished by spending the rest of your existence after you died in the Fiery Pits of Hell. So every school day we were led to Confession to confess our sins. And then I was taught that there were lesser sins called “Venial Sins”. They were like small versions of “Mortal Sins” and if you broke those rules, it meant that you might have to spend time in Purgatory, which was like receiving a “Time Out”. These “Venial Sins” were like outgrowths of the “Mortal Sins”. So if a “Mortal Sin” was “Thou shall not kill” then a “Venial Sin” was “Thou shall not fight”. And this rule was even more strict because if you let the thought of anger, or revenge enter your heart, that was the same as “Thou shall not fight”.

After several years, the physical assaults began to take their toll. I never fought back. I never so much raise a finger in my defense. I simply morphed into a punching bag. I began to feel real “rage” and instinctively knew it was a sin. It was beyond anger and anger was a “Venial Sin”. It took all my strength and every ounce of self-will that I could muster to contain it. I hated going to school, being tortured each and every day. Why didn’t the other kids understand the sins they were committing? Why was I the only one that saw this? Why must I forgive them like it never really happened at all? This was so very, very hard to do. Night after night, I knelt down and prayed. I asked for God’s help and I forgave those boys who were inflicting so much pain on me. I prayed so much that the calluses on my knees became as thick as soles of my feet.

One day when the bullies had me in a chokehold, I heard a loud crack. Like he succeeded in breaking my neck. It was so loud that even the bully heard it too and it startled him and scared him. So he instinctively released his hold and he and his gang simply walked away.

That night I prayed and prayed especially long that night, probably for over 2 hours. I said to God, “For 3 years I have endured torture, if you want that my life be taken, I am willing to become a martyr. I give you my life willingly.” And then suddenly He spoke to me for the first time and said, “I didn’t say you couldn’t defend others.” This was so far out of left field; I didn’t know what it meant. I thought if I wanted to die, this was sure a good way to do it – by confronting a bully. But then again I thought maybe there are others like me on the playground - other kids being bullied. I did say I was willing to become a martyr. So what is the worst that can happen! At least I can die helping others.

I turned that over and over again in my mind. I wanted a solution that would help me, that would stop the bullying that I was experiencing. But in the end I figured if He wanted me to do this, I should probably try even if it meant I would die in the process.

So during recess on the playground, I looked around and saw on the other side of the playground a fat kid. A bully walked up to him and his gang of boys closely followed. Normally the bully begins with a verbal attack that then escalates into a physical attack. A crowd of children (spectators) then formed around them. I casually walked over to the other side of the playground and went up to the bully and said “Stop, leave him alone.” The bully turned towards me and said something like “You and who else!” He then made the mistake of trying to hit me. My arms began to move so fast that they became a blur. Most of the punches missed but one or two struck home and he was flat on the ground. Everyone in his gang never saw a bully being bullied. They were frozen, dumbstruck. I simply walked away.

Later I was approached by the gang of boys of the bully that normally used me as his punching bag. Then the gang began their verbal assault and then a minute or two later my bully made his appearance. Then something very strange and inexplicable happened. He told his gang to stop. He said, “He’s crazy”. They stopped and walked away and I was never bullied again.

I made sure my sons got martial-arts training. My older son is AS, very skinny and geeky, and also a very gentle, non-violent kid. But he was only physically bullied once. When he was in 5th grade, two much bigger sixth-graders started shoving him, pulled off his backpack and hit him with it, and then one of them grabbed him from behind and started choking him. A minute later that kid had a broken nose and the other was on the ground crying. Fortunately, a crowd of kids witnessed the scene, so when the broken-nosed bully's parents showed up at the principal's office to accuse my son of assault, he was in the clear. No bullying since.

Yes, we all have our cowboy stories to tell others. But if that approach works so well, then why on the government's official antibullying site, there is this message: https://www.stopbullying.gov/kids/what-you-can-do/index.html#bullied
... Don’t fight back.

Huh? Is the government run by a whole bunch of sissies?

Here are the pictures of a bully that was hit back by the bullied.




Yeah, bloody nose and cracked head. Looks like a great lesson to teach to that one bully, right? The only problem is the bullied boy ended up dead.

I understand there are great cowboy stories to tell others. But as I have said, each person has his/her own limited horizon in space and time in life experiences. It is only when you project to a larger societal size and longer time horizon, that you arrive at universal values.

(US government is not run by sissies, look at the recommendations in active shooter situations: https://www.ready.gov/active-shooter:

FIGHT as an absolute last resort.

- Commit to your actions and act as aggressively as possible against the shooter.
- Recruit others to ambush the shooter with makeshift weapons like chairs, fire extinguishers, scissors, books, etc.
- Be prepared to cause severe or lethal injury to the shooter.
- Throw items and improvise weapons to distract and disarm the shooter.

Yep, the US government publicly advocates the killing of a human being, when self-defense is called for.)

Jason, there is an interesting movie I would recommend. It is actually based on a real life story. It is also interesting because it used many of the actual individuals involved to portray themselves. A couple of these individuals actually exhibited some autistic traits IMHO, but not sufficient to make a definitive judgement. The movie is called: “The 15:17 to Paris”.

This film is not about cowboy stories or sissies, it is about the right to self defense and possessing the tools to defend yourself if you need them. It is also about bravery in the face of danger.

Yes, find a teacher or adult if there is one around. If not, you're supposed to be a human punching bag? Day after day, year after year? The physical damage from that is the least of it.

I'd say the US government is 100% wrong on this. It wouldn't be the first time.

And gun violence stuff you quoted has no relevance to routine school bullying.

I have survived to do rather well. Please do not stretch and exaggerate beyond common sense. I got retaliated precisely because I fought back the first time. So much for your great advice. If you are a human punching bag, won't you complain? Won't other people notice? Won't your parents move you to a different school? Please, apply the 80/20 rule, we are not talking about atypical situations here. No need to cite exceptional exceptions. Your advice causes escalation of violence. (Sure, I do have my own cowboy stories, but I don't need to bring them up here. You do get lucky... I did get lucky with some of my macho acts, I could brag all I want, but, those are not the stories that my children need to hear. ... There is a difference between getting lucky and getting killed). If you are a human punching bag, you have injuries to prove. You won't die. (Keep it within typical situations: high school bullies just don't go around killing other students.)

Children are much more resilient than we give them credit for. Each child will figure out their own solution. In my case, teachers soon noticed. I didn't tell the teachers. I think some other students must have told the teachers. The following semester I was moved to a different classroom. Sure, there were still bullies, but they were milder, and I was able to bribe them with academic help. And life became tolerable, even nice, I made many good friends, and was widely respected because I was the smartest kid around. I became who I am today during my high school time. I still have a very fond memory of my high school. If you read the book "La ciudad y los perros" ("The Time of the Hero"), that book hits home with my high school days. My high school wasn't a military school, but I did live inside the school. See, I have a lot of stories to tell my children. Had I gone to a regular school, I wouldn't have those stories. E.g., with a friend, we'd sneak into the physics lab and play with the instruments in the middle of the night. During daytime, I had time to sit on the second floor's balcony, dangle my feet in mid air, and think about life and its meaning. I wouldn't trade those days of my life for anything else. I had freedom to think, to ponder. That is why I sometimes take my daughter out to a park and just let her sit, completely alone, on a bench. Those are the important things in life. Bullies? They have been such an insignificant part of my life. I wish them well, but they invariably end up doing badly.

I recently watched a movie "Giant Little Ones." It was about a story of teenagers. I thought the title of the movie was very apt. We should give more credit to our youngsters. Teenage years could be turbulent, but to borrow a sexist cliché, that's how boys turn into men.

"If you are a human punching bag, won't you complain? Won't other people notice? Won't your parents move you to a different school?"

Obviously that doesn't always happen. Just read some posts on this site. Read the all-too-common stories about kids who are depressed, whose grades suffer, even who are driven to suicide by bullying. Maybe you survived intact, but you're not everyone.

And these are not "cowboy stories," as you dismissively refer to them. Cowboys are in the past, These are, unfortunately, real stories from real life today. Maybe fighting back made your bullying worse, but I think that's atypical. In my and my son's cases, it stopped it.

Are you seriously telling me that if you were assaulted by a thug on a deserted street at night, you'd just passively stand there and let him beat you into unconsciousness?

As a child transitions into being a teenager, they are confronted with another major transition. In this age bracket they pass into puberty and teasing and bullying becomes a major force in their peer group. Those terms are very understated. The term teasing and bullying are terms developed to protect the abusers. They minimize the offense. A more accurate phrase is cruel and relentless torture. In adult society, the terms used are physical abuse, psychological abuse, and assault and they are criminal offenses.

* Bullies are very adept at what they do. It is almost like they took a course in the subject.
* They instinctively recognize those that are weak, alone and defenseless - vulnerable individuals.
* Bullies choose to torment individuals away from the eyes of authorities. They know where in the playground or inside the school, they can strike outside the purview of the authorities. So the location of the fight generally was well hidden – not only by location they had chosen but also by the crowd of spectators that form.
* They know how to inflict the maximum amount of pain without leaving visible marks as evidence [such as a jab to the ribcage, a kick to the nuts, or a chokehold].
* They know about the unwritten rules such as the “Code of Silence” and the “Never Snitch”.
* They enforce these rules to silence witnesses.
* In general, bullies are cowards and rarely fight fair.
* They operate as a group, a gang with lieutenants and soldiers.
* In a conflict, it is always about the one (the victim) versus the many (the gang).
* You show up armed only with your fists to protect yourself, while they might show up armed to the teeth. Any fight is rarely fought on a level playing field and the conclusions are rarely left up to chance.
* And in the aftermath of the physical and verbal attack, it is always the word of the many (the gang), combined with the silence of the eyewitnesses (unwritten code of silence) against the word of the one (the victim). And in general, the victim is blamed.

To understand bullying one must look at it through the lens of a primate. The reason why teasing and bullying is exhibited in humans is because it is an evolutionary trait that evolved in primates. Primates exhibit a social tribe structure based on Alpha, Beta, and Omega members.

This structure is also exhibited in tribes of humans. Humans form into societal groups called gangs. A gang is led by an Alpha Male (otherwise known as the bully) and his lieutenants, Beta Males. Generally this tribe encompasses the entire school class because the other members of the tribe participate as soldiers in the gang or as silent eyewitnesses. The leadership of the gang is determined by brute force. A male Aspie fills the role of an Omega Male, a communal scapegoat or outlet of frustration.

One of the interesting observations about school bullying is that generally for males it peaks in the Junior High School years. This is no accident. What makes the timing of that phase interesting and special? It is because males are transitioning into puberty at that age.

In primates, Alpha Males often gain preferential access to sex or mates and as a result to reproduction and offspring. In humans, this bullying is part of thinning out the herd just prior to the mating age. It either mentally cripples Aspie males for the rest of their life or causes them to become loners and leave the tribe.

All sounds great until you are confronted with actual research.

It may suprise you that that's not the way hunter-gatherer societies operated, at all. Hunter-gatherer societies placed great emphasis on equality. People that bully others were very quickly marginalized. You can read e.g. here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways
As I have repeatedly pointed out, you guys keep looking at small space and short time span. The event horizon matters. Universal values arise only when enlarge you scope. It's evolution. The alpha-male model of a society just doesn't survive very well.

We have law enforcement and a court system for a reason. It reflects precisely the collective weaker guys fighting against the stronger alpha-male ones. Evolution has dictated that this type of arrangement survives better in the long run, than the alpha-male model.

Bullying is not the problem. Just like lack of social skills and verbal skills, are not the problem. The problem is underdevelopment. You don't solve the white elephant in the room and only want to look at the bread crumbs, your youngsters won't do well, anyway.

If bullying has been there for thousands of years, it's time to think about it in the other direction. Namely, it is a good thing, for the survival of a tribe. Really, what doesn't break you, makes you stronger.

Unfortunately, bullying does break a large number of people and many of these are Aspies.

A 2015 study of adults with autism in Northern California, for instance, found they had double the rate of depression and anxiety, and eight times the rate of bipolar disorder, than adults who do not have autism. They also were five times more likely to try to kill themselves. To put that in perspective, about 1 in 56 people with autism attempted suicide, compared to 1 in 313 other adults, according to that study by Kaiser Permanente. A different study found that found that the risk of death by suicide was seven times higher in people with autism than in the general population in Sweden.

Source: [url=THE LINK BETWEEN AUTISM AND SUICIDE RISK]https://iancommunity.org/aic/link-between-autism-and-suicide-risk[/url]