Over the past couple of months, Jonah has been measuring the goodness or badness of his day by whether or not John C. was nice to him. The bad days included the time that John drew a picture of him looking like a nerd and showed it to the class, the time that John called him "fat lips", and the time that John slammed his head on the floor of the gym during a rough game of dodge ball.
Why is it that gym teachers always have a slight sadist streak in them? When Jonah complained about the head banging, the gym teacher told him to shake it off.
When Jonah told us these stories, especially the heading slamming story, we told him to slug John C. "One quick pop in the nose, Jonah", Steve said, "and the jerk is going to stop messing around with you." There were other shoving stories, so Steve and I upped the slugging advice. We coached him on punching. Jonah has a green belt, so we knew he knew how to do it.
But Jonah couldn’t do it. After eight year of training in pacifism, he couldn’t hit the kid. When the incidents happened, his first reaction was to be hurt and surprised, rather than angry enough to retaliate. In fact, he became so stressed about having to hit the kid, that he started having nightmares and asking other kids to hit him for him.
I told the principal about the problem, and she called the boys into her office for a chat. The boy’s mother was called. This, of course, backfired. And the kid and his buddies really piled on Jonah the next day.
So, we switched tactics and told Jonah to just avoid being around the kid. We told him that he didn’t have to hit John C. back, and he was much relieved about that. We’ve been setting up playdates for Jonah with nicer kids to remind Jonah that he had nice buddies.
We’ve been talking about Hobbes’ state of nature in my political theory class. Life is nasty, brutish, and short on the school playground. There is no governing authority. His principal said that there was nothing she could about this situation without making matters worse. It is odd that kids have to put up with abuses that no adult would tolerate.
The avoidance strategy seems to have worked. Thursday and Friday were good days for Jonah, and he is much happier without the pressure to retaliate.
Apt. 11d 
I got bullied a lot as a kid. It pretty much taught me that school authorities were utterly worthless, either unwilling or unable to lift a finger to stop other kids from beating me up or harrassing me. This is among the various reasons I learned that you simply can’t rely on authority figures to protect you in times of danger, because they won’t.
Pretty much your only options as a kid in the face of this sort of thing is to either learn to avoid them, learn to beat them up, or end up as paste.
I did a lot of third, before i mostly mastered the second and everyone grew up enough to mostly stop it.
Also, my experience of gym teachers is that if you aren’t tough and healthy, they quickly conclude you are useless, at which point you’re lucky if they ONLY let other kids take shots at you.
I wish Jonah good luck, but you pretty much have to assume the school will not lift a finger to help him. And the parents of the kids causing the trouble will be less than useless in stopping it.
(That being said, this is the lessons of my experience and people who weren’t basically weak thanks to their throats constantly clogging with phlegm may have experiences which vary.)
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Keep checking in with Jonah — there is nothing worse than trying to face a school where you think nobody likes you. For a fictional ‘worst case scenario’ ending to the problem, read Jodi Picoult’s “19 Minutes” — it will scare you.
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In my kids’ school, there is a real emphasis on stopping bullying. The principal suspended for two weeks a girl who had beaten up the daughter of a friend, and followed up by threatening suspension of that girl’s cousin for threatening vengeance. Your principal could be doing better for you on this.
Not to say that my daughter is not in a constant struggle to be well thought of and to keep from being torn down by the cliques in first and second grade at the very same school. But physical bullying is suppressed, and it’s good.
Now, there is a danger when I read a book that I think it has insight for the whole world. That said, I was very struck by the Judith Rich Harris book No Two Alike, in which she talks about kids and their constant calibration of their selves to the kid group they find themselves in.
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I wonder how Ridge—– deals with bullying? I bet it’s a whole different world over there.
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I can’t imagine where you’ve gotten the idea that “kids have to put up with abuses no adult would tolerate.” You haven’t worked in a corporation in too long a time, dahling (never mind as an undocumented worker in a restaurant kitchen, as a gardener, or as a domestic worker, etc.). Perhaps the bullying is typically of a less physical nature (though not always)… but I’d say a lot of adults put up with abuse on a daily basis. Yes, you can quit, but then you don’t have a job. Just like you could pull Jonah out of school, but then he has to go somewhere else (or you could always home school!). Those bullies grow up and go somewhere; life doesn’t stop being the playground.
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Laughing, Suze. Yeah, I know that there jerks in the adult world also. Believe me, there’s no shortage of them in academia. That’s why, I didn’t insist that the principal get involved. Jonah does have to learn how to deal with this kid. It isn’t the really bad form of bullying, just the regular old bullying that most of us had to deal with when we were kids. Jonah has to learn how to say “whatever” and to choose better friends to pal around with. He may not be tough enough to hit back, but then he has to find other ways of being tough.
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I don’t know, Laura, when the bullying goes from psych warfare (the pictures, the name-calling) to actual physical violence, I’m going to have to hear why the principal and the PE staff don’t have an explicit, clear policy on acceptable behavior and the consequences when it’s breached.
No kid would ever be ignored if he or she slammed someone’s head into the floor during gym at our school. Not for a second.
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There is a fabulous resource on bullying by Barbara Coloroso (Bully, bullied and the bystander).
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“But physical bullying is suppressed, and it’s good.”
That’s what I’d say about our school, too, and I refuse to believe that the school can’t do anything about it. Honestly, this is probably up there with my alienation form the real world (at least as defined by some) — I think my latte-drinking, move-on world is real, too.
I read the NYT article about the boy who was constantly harrased in bullied in school and just do not see how physical violence is OK because it happens in a school.
The psychological warfare that happens (both at school and in the adult workplace) is harder to deal with, but I really believe in zero tolerance policies about physical violence. Yeah, I know that some toddlers can’t help the developmental stage of biting, but what you’re describing for Jonah just seems unacceptable to me.
I’m seeing some totally inappropriate responses like *me* calling up the principal and telling her that she’ll be sued if she doesn’t do something about it (or yeah, that I’ll punch her in the nose). I know, know, that you can’t do that kind of thing when you’re in a community you want to work with.
I know you’ll figure out what works for Jonah, but every time you talk about this it raises all my mama-ire. It’s just not right for the boy you’ve described as sweet and gentle and kind to have to make this choice (to hit or hit back).
Oh, and if Jonah wanted to do it, I’m coming around to the idea that the quickest solution would be a good bop to the miscreant; but, he doesn’t want to, and he shouldn’t have to.
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The principal could do more; I know our principals do. She could deploy an array of steadily more annoying penalties on the bully, if she wanted to. I don’t blame her alone, though. Each school gets the bullies it desires. If your parent body supports physical bullying, and it sounds as if they do, there will be physical bullying.
Our school doesn’t have repeated physical bullying. Yes, kids try it, but the victims tell their parents, the parents complain to the administration or, in severe cases, call the cops. The bully gets consequences at school and at home, and the physical bullying dies down. It doesn’t entirely stop, of course, because some kids enjoy the negative attention.
Our school, and schools like it, are much more likely to have an active psychological bullying culture, which can be harder for a child to deal with. It makes sense, when you consider that the parent body is composed of professionals and consultants.
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