Jonah got punched in the eye by Dickie McDick last week on the school bus. After he stopped crying, I told him that if Dickie did it again to punch him back. Jonah’s eyes grew wide, and he was silent for a minute or two processing this very large bit of information. After a few minutes, he got a big smile on his face. Then he asked if was allowed to punch a kid who did something to him a couple of weeks ago. No, I said. The punch must happen immediately after the other kid hits you. Then we went through all the other rules of engagement. You can’t throw the first punch. You have to respond with equal force. For example, if the kid kicks you in the shin, you can’t break his nose. You can’t go around threatening to hit people.
I was making all this up, working from movies and Little Rascals episodes, because my parents were too hippy-love-child to condone violence. Also, I didn’t really need this talk as much as my brother did, because girls are too subtle and sophisticated to punch another girl. Girls are much more likely to spread a rumor that the other girl has a third nipple than to bother with a catfight. So, I was in unfamiliar territory as I laid down the rules for Jonah.
Did I do the wrong thing giving Jonah these rules? Is the best way to deal with a bully to just pound him into the ground when adults have their backs turned?
Apt. 11d 
Catherine Johnson of kitchentablemath.net recommends “Good Friends are Hard to Find” by Frankel for exactly this issue. She has a July 19, 2005 post entitled “How to Stop a Bully.”
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Hey, I’m a girl and was given permission to hit back by my parents at one point.
However – and you may want to clarify this with him – my permission was conditional on having tried other things first. It was Jr. High, I was having trouble with a group of girls and boys who were hitting/tripping/hurting me and a friends. My dad had already talked to the school, too. After that, he said, “If the school isn’t protecting you, you protect yourself and I will back you up as long as I don’t find out you threw the first punch.”
And yes, the best way to deal with a bully is to fight back. The next time the ringleader went after me, I hit him with a chair and kicked him in the crotch. I was never touched again. My husband had the same experience in Jr. High. So did several other friends.
Another thing – if you’re being bullied, the best rule is not equal force but Extreme Prejudice. You have to convince them that you’re either too strong/powerful or just too freaking crazy to mess with. Equal force leaves the power too balanced and a bully will come back and try to “win.” In my experience, anyway.
Sorry you guys are dealing with this… 😦
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But did you tell him never hit a girl? I had a problem with my sensitive son being physically picked on on the bus by a girl two years older that he is. I was conflicted about what to do; how sexist is it to tell our sons, “Never hit girls”?
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Your parents were talking about this at dinner and even your mom said, “Jonah just needs to punch him.” They were then asking your brother to deliver boxing lessons.
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What about cases where the other kid is lots larger than you? A friend of mine has a daughter who’s being picked on by the 8-year-old held-back 1st grader … evidently this kid is huge. She’d never be able to hit back.
Interestingly, this family has been “practicing talkback” the evening. My friend believes the fact that they do not allow disrespectful talk between siblings is leaving her daughter unprotected at school … so these days they sit around and insult each other after dinner, as a game. Parenting takes you in such odd directions sometimes!
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I’ve read this post several times to figure out if you were serious — or it was some kind of metaphor involving a bully like George W. Bush. (Violence is the only way to stop terrorism, etc.)
I can’t imagine ever telling any of my kids to hit anyone. When my third child was in seventh grade, he had some problems with a bully on the school bus, and we all (the kids in the household and me) sat around and brainstormed ways to deal with the bully. Hitting back was never an option any of us considered.
Bullies usually become bullies because they are bigger and stronger — hitting back just escalates the violence and increases your chances of getting hurt and getting in trouble.
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That totally is the right thing to do.
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I too was going down the metaphor road, not so much with Laura’s post, as with Sara’s advice (“Extreme Prejudice”). But, I decided that was the effete, quiche-eating, Ph.D. holding, left coaster in me.
I do not believe all force is wrong (either in the school yard, or in the world). But, I think it should be reserved for those cases where the system has broken down, and there is no other alternative.
What I hope for is that my children’s school environment is not one where the system is broken, and thus individually applied force isn’t necessary. I think physical force simply shouldn’t be tolerated in the school environment, and in the school my daughter attends, it wouldn’t be. But, I don’t think any child should have to accept being hit in school, and as a mom, I’d certainly be thinking about the fastest way to make it stop, if it was happening to my child.
But, the question is, will hitting back be the most effective method? (and, yes, there, my mind, can’t help but turn towards the metaphors of war and all that’s gone so terribly wrong).
bj
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Oh, and, there’s data out there that suggests that our ability to match physical force (and we’re not talking metaphorically here), is very bad. The experiments, involve having people poke each other (through a machine, and the machine throws the first poke). Then, you poke back, as hard as you think you were poked, and your partner pokes you back. You don’t know the instruction your partner has received, but it’s the same instruction as you (i.e. poke back as hard as you’ve been poked). The result is a rapidly escalating strength of poking. The interpretation is that we are very bad at taking the physical sensation and translating it into a matching action.
The same group (Daniel Wolpert’s group) says that the physiological mechanism might also underly one’s inability to tickle oneself.
So, you’re asking for the impossible, when you ask your son to hit back just as hard (and not harder) than he was hit.
bj
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Amusing about the metaphors. Sometimes a punch is just a punch, though I have to admit that I was thinking about international relations when I started coming up with rules for Jonah.
Jo(e), my parents brought us up with your approach to bullies — working it out, using adults as mediators, understanding their pain. At least in this particular instance, none of that will help. The bully in question has real problems, but not ones that we can do anything about. If adults are brought in, he’ll just be meaner to my kid when the adults walk away. My kid is littler, but he’s stronger, so the odds are about even.
I don’t want to complain to the school, because I’ve already tapped the principal for a big favor for next year. But I’m not convinced that she can do anything.
When the bully is a Korea, the only answer is force. They respond well to force and as long as they are in the backseat of the bus being harmlessly annoying, that’s fine. If the bully is too widely unpredictable, stronger, and isn’t necessarily threatening you, then it’s best to walk away.
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For everybody keeping score at home, remember it was a punch in the eye–it really doesn’t get worse than that.
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As someone who just got through teaching a semester of Korean history…. Um, let’s not bring in how the martyr complex works to legitimate the regime in Pyongyang to weaken the argument about schoolyard bullying.
As your son’s been studying some martial arts (am I correct?), make sure he knows where not to hit. Punching people in the throat, and certain strikes should be off-limits. (As should chair throwing or swinging–I mean, a certain amount of this is “how to avoid getting your son into too much legal/administrative trouble” too. As well as holding up appearances and not becoming a bully.)
When I was in elementary school, even being a girl, my mother taught me how to throw a punch for the most force. I never did use it much, admittedly.
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I don’t think there is anything wrong with telling your child to hit back as a last resort. It is not always possible to work things out in a reasonable way. That said, regardless of what favors you have asked from the principal, I think it is important she knows – for everyone’s safety – what is going on.
For myself, I think it is also wise to teach kids about the ways of bullies and how to avoid getting into altercations with them. So I would spend some time sorting out what led up to the punch.
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Avoidance isn’t a deterrant, its the way of people applying logic to an illogical situation. I’d give diplomacy one last try: I’d speak to Dickie’s parents and let them know of the problem. How mortified would you be to get that call?
Let them know you are doing this as a courtesy before getting counsel/school board involved.
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There comes a point where, going to the admin or the school board or whatever other solution seems likely to delay the reckoning teaches the kid that his safety is somebody else’s responsibility, and only somebody else’s responsibility and if the somebody else isn’t up to it, tough for the kid.
We have the right not to be attacked, and being attacked for days or weeks while somebody with too much to do already is screwing around with due process–unless the bully’s parents are more trouble than the vic’s parents in which case nothing will happen–is not only unjust, it’s dangerous. And it teaches the bully that it’s open season on the weak.
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A school bus is an awful place. A state of nature without seatbelts. Adults have no jurisdiction there.
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“Bullies usually become bullies because they are bigger and stronger — hitting back just escalates the violence and increases your chances of getting hurt and getting in trouble.”
No, it does not. If he does not fight back, he will continue to get beaten up, and he will grow up a castrated, panty-waist.
If you won’t defend yourself, it’s worth nobody’s time or trouble to do it for you.
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Laura is quite right about schoolbuses.
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The principal can suspend the bully’s bus privileges. Our school administration has enacted this penalty several times, for kids who have attacked others. This is a major inconvenience for working parents, who usually rely upon the school bus to transport their kids to afterschool care.
Of course, if your son starts hitting back, then it’s no longer a case of one bully. It’s a case of two kids fighting, and they may both be kicked off the bus, and subject to other penalties.
In addition, kids do not necessarily tell the whole story. This is not to say that they lie; it’s only that young kids don’t see things from an adult perspective. (kid) “He hit me in the eye!” (school counselor) “What did you say/do before he hit you in the eye?” (kid) “I only said, move, stupid,” or, “Johnny (kid’s best friend) kicked him.”
The bully probably chose to pick on Jonah just because he seemed to be a good target. This does not mean that your son will be treated well by the school, should anything else happen between the kids. It is more likely that they both get into trouble, and the administration and teachers consider Jonah to be, at best, a kid with a hair-trigger temper.
It would be best to call the principal and request a meeting with the principal and the bully’s parents. Both you and your husband should attend this meeting. You should make clear that you don’t want any kid to get hurt, that Jonah has already been attacked on the school bus, and that it is the school’s responsibility to guarantee his safety. If Jonah is attacked again, you cannot guarantee that the bully won’t get hurt, but you will involve the police. A suitably forceful letter should be sent to both the principal, and the kids’ parents, reiterating your concerns.
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“A school bus is an awful place. A state of nature without seatbelts.
That is just perfect, Laura. I’m going to shameless rip this analogy off and use it next time I make reference to Hobbes in the classroom.
We have only girls, and Melissa has determined that each of them will be able and prepared to respond to bullies and threats as necessary. I really don’t want to see my kids respond to cheap bullying; I don’t mind, and I don’t think they should mind, if some bully and his or her clique (as Connie pointed out, not all bullies are male) consider them weak. A great many fights aren’t worth fighting, even if that means embarrassment and mockery. But if they feel genuinely threatened by some eleven-year-old who won’t stop pinching them and making gross comments no matter what they do, I want them to kick him–hard–in the balls. (That was Melissa’s response to a jerk who harassed her near her locker when she was in eighth grade.)
I realize that such a kick is arguably worse that a punch in the eye. Oh well.
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Russell — Nasty, brutish, and short. Big time.
You know schools won’t put seatbelts on school buses, despite numerous fatalities, because administrators believe that kids will use them as weapons. Nice.
I forgot to mention what the first piece of advice that we gave Jonah, which was to avoid the troublesome kid. If he sat in the front of the bus, we told him to sit in the back. Try to avoid the conflict in the first place.
JuliaK — I don’t want to go into the details of this incident. But I do know that the parents of the bully would much prefer if my kid kicked their kid’s ass, rather than getting administrators involved. They respect a defensive punch.
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I kept thinking of this in terms of Robert Axelrod’s venerable advice on cooperation. Tit-for-tat isn’t perfect, by any means, but it’s not a bad default stance: play nice until the other guy doesn’t, then do what he does back to him. Don’t be a pushover, but don’t hold a grudge.
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This interchange kind of surprised me. It’s far more accepting of physical force than I am or I expected modern parents to be.
But, it started me thinking about the issue. Why is Jonah’s incident different from me posting that a colleague had hit me in the face? If I did, I assume everyone would counsel me to 1) report it in my workplace, and 2) call the police. So, why is it different when a kid hits another kid?
I suspect that part of the reason is that we think that some hitting will occur among children because children haven’t learned (and aren’t yet required to learn) adult impulse control. In the extreme example, there’s the two year old who bites. Of course, if a toddler bit my kid (once, twice, or maybe even three times), I’d be livid, but I wouldn’t think that it was a case for the police.
Is that why everyone is generally supportive of Jonah hitting back? Because, in fact, we don’t think the bully is all that bad (that is, no plans to throw him in jail), and think that an end to playground wars, negotiated by the children will result in a better solution, than rules imposed by adults?
I’ll admit, I’m a bit bewildered by the adults here, and am trying to figure out the advice. I can’t imagine counselling my daughter to hit someone in her school, but I can’t really imagine her getting hit, either.
I’m looking forward to hearing how it all works out.
bj
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“Because, in fact, we don’t think the bully is all that bad…and think that an end to playground wars, negotiated by the children will result in a better solution, than rules imposed by adults?”
bj, I think a lot of what has come out in this thread is reflective of this suggestion of yours. I actually do believe that, unfortunately, more than a few bullies out there are budding psychopaths, meeting little or no resistence in their development at home (because their parents are unattentive or absent, and the worse aspects of our culture swarm into the resulting vaccuum). In such cases, adult authority ought to be involved. But in other cases, where what you have are children or adolescents trying to discover and apply the basic rules of civility and respect amongst their peers? In such cases, I do think that it is important that such rules be seen as something other than a construct that requires/obligates constant parental involvement. The notion of a bully going “too far” or a response being “out of line” needs to be felt as well as taught.
As I said above, I’d rather my children not respond to bullying. (I’d rather they not be bullied, period.) But if the bullying is bordering on the genuinely sadistic or threatening, passivity isn’t, I think, necessarily the best learning policy.
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Since I gave Jonah the advice to avoid the kid and to defend himself, there have been no further problems. My kid was at a disadvantage, because he had rules and the other kid didn’t. Adult intervention only works when there is constant supervision, but this is rarely the case. Places like the school yard, the bus, and the neighborhood street are devoid of adults enforcing rules. I’m out on the street as much as I can, but there aren’t other parents out there ensuring that the kids are nice to each other. The other parents firmly believe that kids have to work things out for themselves, even if it means a punch in the eye. The school doesn’t want to spend the money to put a monitor on the bus. I hate to return to the metaphor that confused everyone, but the UN has similar problems.
There’s probably a certain amount of sexism going on here, bj. The other parents want the boys to work it out for themselves. I don’t know if they would feel that way about things if their girls were getting hurt.
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The reason not to use the el ed version of tell the boss and call the cops is that the public education institutions simply can’t be trusted to do what is necessary.
In addition, I think the unstated presumption is that it has been tried and, as usual, failed.
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I have also been surprised by the level of acceptance for a physical response.
I think what’s behind this is that we believe (probably correctly) that there aren’t a lot of options. Expulsion would probably be more a reward than a punishment, and then the kid comes back to school and we’re back where we started. Furthermore, real punishment coming from parents or school authorities may well provoke reprisals towards Jonah.
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My daughter was taunted by a neighborhood bully. After telling him to stop she kicked him and it ended up being a brawl. This boy hits others and even his mother (an enabler). He never learned not to hit girls apparently, but I’m teaching my daughter how to defend herself. It is strange because the boy is usually nice but has anger management issues. I’m also teaching my daughter that it is best to walk away from a fight rather than initiating the physical confrontation.
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