The trick is not to care most of the time. Then the day you start caring and throwing punches they’re not prepared
Comment on My son got Nikes so he doesn't get teased.
Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoThere is a way out, but it involves not caring what classmates think. That’s a high bar for a lot of kids, especially in middle school, and kids have to come to that conclusion on their own. No amount of adults telling them “you shouldn’t care” will change things.
By high school I found social success after not caring what others thought. But I had been bullied my whole school experience up til that point, so by high school I had run out of fucks to give. In other words, I learned the hard way, but that’s something every teen has to figure out for themselves.
pleaaaaaze@lemmings.world 2 weeks ago
QuizzaciousOtter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Is it even possible to not care at this age though? At this point school and interacting with your peers is a vast majority of your life. I don’t think I have ever seen a kid being bullied every day at school and not caring. How can you not care if you’re scared?
I guess it is possible as you get older, more mature and closer to adulthood. But for a kid in a primary or middle school? Kinda hard to imagine for me.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yes, if they have already figured out how to handle bullies in grade school/middle school. Early grade school there was a bully who picked on me and my older brother helped out. By grade five I was the one helping other kids who were being bullied.
A lot of credit goes to youth groups like 4-H for helping to build self confidence and how to care for others. May have been lucky getting a solid local group though.
Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Oh, it’s absolutely possible, but only after experiencing such isolation that you come to prefer your own company.
The last straw for me came when I finally stood up to my so-called “best friend,” who acted perfectly sweet when we were alone, but who threw me under the bus whenever my bullies were around. Our families were (and sadly, still are) friends, so I’d known her since she was born and there was a lot of social pressure for us to hang out together. She abused me constantly and loved to fuck with my head. I figured that if that was the “best” friend I could have, then I didn’t need friends at all. One day on the bus home, shortly after she’d spread yet another rumor about me, I called her a traitor and a backstabber.
She immediately turned to the bullies sitting behind us (whose hobbies include talking about me, stealing my stuff, and putting gum in my hair) and said, “That’s so funny! She just called me a traitor!” Yep, I was done.
That was in my last year of middle school. Going into high school, I was resolved to not give a fuck what anybody said about me. I decided to stop trying to change myself to fit in. I embraced my own interests without a care what anybody would say.
And that first year of high school was when I ended up making actual, real friends for the first time. People who actually get me. The payoff was huge and still benefits me today, but it came at a great cost during my most impressionable age.
Soggy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I was always a weird kid and had gotten tired of most if my peers in elementary school, so when the cruelty ramped up in middle school I was already ignoring most of what was said or done around me. Most of the fighting was wannabe gang shit so it was easy to avoid. There was a guy I would have punched in the mouth, when he threw a book I was reading in a urinal, but he was quite literally twice my size.