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“Dad, I’m having a problem at school,” my twelve year old said to me the other day. Being a supportive parent, I asked him to tell me about it.
“Well, today I was waiting near the bike rack for my friend Mike, and I was standing next to another bike, and the girl who owns it yelled at me.”
“What did she say?” I asked.
“She said, ‘Get away from my bike, you F**king B***h!”
“So, stay away from her bike!” I advised him.
“Yeah, but that’s not all,” he went on, “Then she went over to these three big kids, and told them that I called her a F***ing B***h. They came over and started asking me and my friend if I did it, and we both said no. I just walked away from her, and I didn’t say anything to her at all!”
“What happened then?” I asked.
“They followed us halfway home, hollering at us and calling us names. What can I do about her?” he asked.
I have to admit, this is a rough one. I have always told both my sons there are three stages to dealing with bullies:
First, you confront the bully and ask them what the problem is. By opening up communications you might be able to bring about a peaceful resolution to the situation.
If that fails, the next step is to tell a teacher or another school official. If the bully is pushing you around on the school property, a little adult intervention may put an end to it. If the adults who are supposed to supervise the behavior of their charges refuse to act, then I’ll do what I can.
When all else fails, go for blood. If the bully hits you, hit him back, and hard! It doesn’t matter if the school
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disciplines you for it, because what they will do to you is nothing compared to the grief that bully will put you through for the next several years. I know because I’ve been there. Fortunately, neither of my kids has ever had to go that far.
Unfortunately, when the genders are reversed, the rules change a lot, and not for the better. Society seems to think that girls are incapable of being bullies, or if they are, that boys should be man enough to deal with it. As if being sucker-punched onto your butt by a female half again your size isn’t supposed to hurt or be embarrassing because you are a male. As a young lad myself, I was slapped, kicked, punched, and generally tormented by females who were supposed to be family, friends, and significant others. Being well trained, I never hit back, but it wasn’t because it didn’t hurt. It always hurt.
Being a single parent is a difficult job at best, but being a single Father has it’s own unique problems. If I were a single Mom, my son a daughter and the bully a boy, the problem would be pretty easy to deal with. I’d simply call the school and tell them what happened, and my word would be good enough. The bully would be dealt with, and the situation would be over. I’ve seen it happen. So why should it be different for males?
When a father calls the school to complain his son has a bully problem, the administration usually blows it off by saying, “Boys will be boys...what do you expect us to do about it?”
In one case, I told them that if the school refused to look into the matter, I would have to deal with it myself, and I
demanded the phone number and address of the bully’s parents. For some reason, they balked at this, and eventually agreed to have a chat with the
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troubled youth. In this case it worked, but it was the exception rather than the rule.
On most occasions I did have to deal directly with the bully’s parents. I found that a polite, non threatening phone call was sufficient. No matter what his parents did to him, just knowing that the parent of the kid he tormented called his parents sends an unmistakable “I know who you are and I know where you live...” message to the bully, who usually backs off.
This has proven pretty successful, but what about when the bully is a girl? Keeping in mind that I have already had one visit from the local cops when a neighborhood girl falsely accused my youngest son (then eight) of throwing mud balls at her, how do I dare tell him to do anything in his own defense?
How can he protect himself from a female bully who, in the tender years of her adolescence, has already discovered how easily she can manipulate the bigger boys to do her dirty work? Perhaps she’s learned from her mother, or another female role model how easily she can manipulate the system as well! Obviously the three stage system cannot be applied here because the girl knows she can cause him a lot more trouble using nothing more than her mouth.
For the time being, I have told my son to ignore her, avoid her like the plague, never speak to her without a witness present, and even then only to say “Please leave me alone!”
“But then she’s are going to think I’m afraid of her, and so will those three guys she got to come after me!” he complained
“Think about it,” I replied, “Who’s really afraid of her? The guys who do what she tells them to do, or the one who walks away from her?"
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