Children who tease - their need to feed their pride

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A question to those of you who are Christian.

I told a bit on what my daughter's suffered through at school in the "Getting to know you" forum. THere's a lot more, sadly, from the elementary school years.

My question: Why do kids feel the need to belittle others so much?

My answer to myself: It's because we're prideful creatures. Pride is an idolatry of the self..."I'M better than you because..." It's playing God, IMO. There's a reason why idolatry (and pride by default) is dealt with so early on by God (in the Ten Commandments in the OT) and Jesus (in His greatest commandments to His disciples in the NT).

The Bible is peppered with references to how deadly of a sin pride is. It's at the top of the seven things the Lord hates (Prov. 6: 16-19, I believe) and is one of three things not from God (1 John 2:16).

And I think it's at the root of the teasing kids with AS or whatever get. That and the fact we're fallen creatures.

Your thoughts?

I have a few of thoughts on this. I think, yes, it is mostly pride, somehow making someone else feel awful makes them feel better. I will never understand this(Sometimes I thank God for my AS). I have been asking this questions over and over, and looking for an answer...I can't find a convincing one.

BTW check your private messages It's at the top of the screen

I tell my kids that other kids tease for two reasons:

1) they're jealous of you for some reason, so think about it and you can probably ID it easily (if this reason applies).

2) someone else teases them and they need to feel they are not so helpless and inferior, so teasing you makes them feel superior.

Even though I have AS, I am guilty of some mild teasing. I have teased other people to get them to tease back. The person who I used to do this to was overly sensitive. That was years ago when we were in fifth and sixth grades. She is tougher now, and I have learnt to back off. We're actually friends now.

I don't seem to fit the usual theory for bullying. Threre were a couple kids I picked on in middle school mainly for entertainment and to get a sense of euphoria. There were four that were noteworty, 2 guys and 2 girls. One started a fight with me and stopped when I drew blood and I think that was the end of that. One was this guy from New Zeland that suffered minor brain damage (easy Sanity) when he was younger and I actually got along pretty well when I wasn't messing with him. I regret not making friends with him instead. He was about 6' tall at the time. One day my friends and I were picking on him, he got pissed at me, and used his backpack like a mace. I think he may have busted the cartialidge in my ear, but the best thing to do was to shut up and pretend it didn't happen. This one girl I picked on verbally made a pathetic attempt to embarass me when she saw me away from school a year later. Her attempt was completely inconsequential. As for the other girl, I've never picked on anybody like that before or since. I'm not even going to fully elaborate on that one. I have conflicting feelings about the bullying I did in middle school now.

Its all about a sense of empowerment.

During the 1992-93 school year, my first in junior high, of which I now refer to as my journeyman year of school, where I ended up hanging with 5 different groups of people in a vain effort to fit in. I happened upon into a situation in a situation in December 1992 where the people I was hanging with at lunch at the time (we all sat at a table in the corner of the cafeteria) would sit around and occasionally make fun of another certain student behind his back over some ret*d thing. I never found out why people started making fun of him, but I use to sit with this person at lunch sometimes during the October and November time frame.

Anyway, by then I had finally gotten a feel of how things were socially for the 7th grade and I realized that (up to that point) I had been spared the majority of bullying and most of it was aimed at him. So I decided that I needed to seperate myself from him to avoid getting it myself. And during this particular lunch in 12/92, my mind hit upon an idea that was sure to score me social points.

I decided instead of isolating myself from him, I would use him as part of an elaborate prank. I would pretend to be his friend, gather up any gossip I could, spread for the amusment of others, and when the time was right, I would reveal the plot to the him in front of everyone else.

I propositioned the idea to the other people at the table, they were all enthusiasitc about it. And so right before Christmas 1992, my plan went into action. I would sit with him at lunch and gather up gossip and spread it just as I had planned. This continued on through out January 1993, till about a week or so before semester break when "the time was right". It was more or less a spur of the moment thing. but myself followed by the people whom I was trying to gain favor from went out into the hallway as he walked by the door where our table was. I broke the news to him that he had been victim of a prank.

He ran off and went upstairs to the gym.

As I had expected, everyone else got a kick out of it, especially the pudding and friend comment. I felt for first time in junior high that I belonged, at the expense of exploiting another person.

However the old adage "what goes around comes around" never held more true. On March 15, 1993, the group of people whom I spent the last four months hanging out with decided they had enough of my presence and voted me out of their group.

I once again found myself a journeyman. It would be the last time I would dabble in the politics of bullying.

12 years later I look back on this event and I now wonder if those I was trying were secretly bad mouthing me behind my back while I was playing out my own prank behind another persons back.

In elementary school, I was made fun of a lot by other kids because I was different than they were. Perhaps it is because we are all different (which is supposed to be something Good), but the Evil in the world corrupts this and twists the message, making it so that we're all trying to be the best by putting others down. As people should know, this is no way to make friends, or to even have others respect you-or at least those who you desire their respect.

The people who bully others for being different are all shallow idiots who wouldnt value the respect of someone different.

Then again, most people aren't worth the effort to earn their respect.

I think that kids tease people who are different, because they are too shallow to appreciate individual differences. Or they think that to be different means to be a lesser person. I don't mean to paint all kids with the same broad Paintbrush. There are a lot of good kids, out there. Sometimes I just seem to run into the Teasemongers.

*hick* Maybe I'm just drunk, but...

I think the main motivation behind teasing/bullying is to earn status among your peers.
In order to do the actual teasing, the target has to be "less" than you (not a peer), and the peer "culture" the bully belongs to encourages that kind of behavior. It's a unifying process, a statement of superiority and solidarity....