CNN: Woman blames bullies for her 12 year old’s death (I’m getting ranty)
January 29, 2008
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/01/29/bullying.ap/index.html
Highlights (source: CNN)
# Kim Myers said bullying and ridicule drove her 12-year-old to kill himself
# Myers said teachers, students and administrators ignored warning signs
# The Myers family plans to sue the school system alleging wrongful death
While I truly empathize with the mother of this child (anyone dying that young is tragic), I feel that her wrongful death suit is an irrational response. While bullying and other negative behavior should be discouraged by schools, schools cannot completely prevent bullying, short of not permitting students any contact whatsoever. A wrongful death suit will not solve anything. If the school tries to change in response (if they don’t have to cut educational funding due to legal losses), it’ll likely be some general blanket solution that fails to fix anything, like banning dodge-ball. Considering the amount of counseling and meds, and her mother’s attitude, I might be so bold as to presume that Brandon was raised to believe he’s a victim of the bullies.
I have a problem with that mindset. I speak from personal experience that when you spend a lot of time feeling like a victim, you’re most likely a victim of your own making.
I seriously know what I’m saying. I went through quite a lot of bullying and harassment in grade school. From 2nd through 5th grade, harassing me was the “class pasttime.” I had ulcers by the time I was 13. I was in counseling, yadda yadda yadda. I didn’t figure out how to deal with it until I STOPPED taking everyone else’s advice.
My parents tried their best to tell me to “ignore them, don’t let them bother you, and they’ll stop.” I’ve never seen this work. If it upsets you, it upsets you, and that’s nearly impossible to completely hide. Sometimes ignoring them when they know they’ve gotten to you before simply tells them they need to try harder.
Counseling focused on my dealing with the depression and such, which didn’t really address the issue…and made me feel as though I was a victim and the best I could do is bear with it. This did nothing to stop the bullying.
The schools did less than nothing, since it frequently went on out of sight of the teachers. Those that did give adivce, put the blame on me for letting it get to me, and no matter how many kids were kicking and punching me – I was told to not fight back because I was bigger than they were, though the odds were usually six to one.
The person who can be most effective in stopping a bully are those who are bullied.
Bullying is about power.
Bullying is about control.
Bullies do so because it makes them feel powerful. They are usually frightened themselves, and have to intimidate others to gain a sense of control. And those peers that back the bully (or stand by and do nothing) do so either because it makes themselves feel stronger, or because they also fear being bullied.
The only thing that worked (for me) in dealing with the bullies was for me to realize that I GAVE them that power. By thinking of myself as a victim, and looking to others to help me, I enpowered the bully. I had to stop that.
In realizing that it’s really your power that they have, you see that what’s really needed is a change of mindset. When you realize you’re the one giving them the power – that they don’t have any real power themselves – you can take control. When they played their games, I made a point to play them better – or change the game entirely. Put THEM on the defensive. Shortly after I started doing that, the bullying ceased from all sides.
Those who are bullied need to stop the bullying themselves. This doesn’t mean empathise or model yourself after the Columbine shooters or any of the other failures that have chosen violent revenge and death as a way to deal with the world. Doing something illegal takes it from the bully and gives it to the justice system once you get caught. Killing yourself just gave them the ultimate power…they bullied you until you gave up on yourself. It means that you need to realize that YOU are responsible for YOU before anyone else is. If someone has power over you, you have to figure out whether or not YOU are responsible for giving them that power. And if so, how can you regain that power you gave up?
Those who care about a bullied child needs to reinforce this, support them, and help them gain the confidence to take control. This is more than treating depression – it’s harder than taking a pill. That kid had plenty of rational reason to be depressed – it didn’t sound like a “chemical imbalance.” Medicating it treats a symptom, not the mindset that put him in this position – nor does it fix anything. Hence why in the end, it didn’t work.
Schools should teach the kids to not be bullies. However, it’s far more important for parents to teach their kids to not be bullied.
As Henry Rollins once said “The best revenge is to always survive, yourself.” When people beat you down, it’s up to you to get up.
Entry Filed under: General Observations/Rants. Tags: bullies, bully, cnn, depression, kids, parenting, psychology, responsibility, victims.
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1.
Joyce in Knoxville,TN | April 7, 2009 at 1:44 pm
What about teachers who are bully’s. I am 72 years old & still remember when I was in the first grade being shut up in a dark room that was used for storage. And again in the fifth grade a boy slapping me as the teacher walked in the room. He told the teacher I had his note book (which I didn’t). So without asking me she just told him I deserved it. There are so many stories similar to mine that I have heard of about bullying by teachers so it makes you wonder how many teachers choose to look the other way.
2.
Daria | September 16, 2009 at 7:02 pm
My son who graduated from high school in 2000 was the subject of being bullied in 5th and 6th grades. These bullies were all from wealthy families who instead of having times a bit hard for someone to stay home with the kids was not important enough to either parents. Because these parents do not raise their children, and the children raise themselves or by a older sib. These children are given like 20 bucks per day a lot of time! These children can by booze and drugs with this money and some do. I stayed home until my youngest was in kindergarten and let me tell you we had on extra money to spare!~! My son was small, has great big blue eyes with eye lashes about an inch or more long. All the girls that went to school and church with him always said that they were going to marry him and I wonder if this was a jealousy thing in part. There were 5-6 boys much bigger than him that would surround him and taunt him to no end. It was such negative abuse, not only in what they did but to what they said also. This still has an affect on him to this day even though he is as successful as he can be for his age in the Air Force. My son is and has always been very sensitive and wears his heart on his sleeve. He would give the shirt off his back if anyone asked. I went to the principle countless times when my my son was in 5th grade. I was told that the mothers of these children and I would have a meeting together, this never happened. I was told that the parents had been contacted about their child and it was taken care of. This was the end of the school year. The very first day of the next year started up again. I took it upon myself to call each parent the next morning and I told them what was going on and that they were talked by the principle the prior year about this situation and each of the at least 6 parents stated that this was the first time they had heard of it. I told each parent that if it did not cease today, I would call the police and press charges. I don’t think this would have been much help as I had reported a student for running over our mail box and broke it down and then ran over the mail box until it was flat. I called the police and the police feel they should not get involved as this will make the kids worse delinquents than they are, They said this boy had a crush on my daughter and this was the only way he knew to try and get her attention. Bullshit, so this makes it OK for him to do this and have no punishment at all for it. Take a child’s car away for a week and they think twice about what they do or better yet take their cell phone away, this really drives them nuts and these things are privileges and if they are not responsible enough to do the right things they are not mature enough to have these things. This problem with my son stopped the day I call and made my intentions known. He never had a problem again. One kicker was that my son and these boys played on the traveling baseball team together, which means they are the best in the area. They had even gone to each others birthday parties prior to 5th grade, We did not live in the cities, we lived in the south suburbs and moved there when it was mostly farm field. You think you do this your kids will have better schools and better people. My kids would have died before doing something like this. This is something that affects each person in the family to one extent or another. The killer instinct came out in this mom, luckily I was raised better. Well I will get off my soap box and if you would like to discuss this my phone is [Phone # removed by moderator].
Thank-you for letting me get my side of the story in. I feel this needs more attention and how can a child have morals and empathy when no one is there to teach it?
Daria Radec
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Daria Rene’ Radec
3.
slightlymadscience | September 17, 2009 at 6:02 am
Thanks for the comment. FYI I removed the phone number as this is a public blog, and I don’t know if you’d want to get all sorts of random prank phone calls, you never know on the internet. :/
I also went to school in a very nice suburban area. Parents neglecting the responsibility to instill the proper ethics in their children unfortunately is not dependent on income. The kids that gave me the most trouble all came from well-to-do homes where the parents were either too busy, or just assumed that their “perfect little angel” was never capable of doing the things that they did.
In this case, you felt that your son wasn’t in a position to stand up for himself, and you were able to do that for him. Nothing wrong with that, and fortunately in your case, it worked. Hopefully when you did that for your son it helped him see that if it happened in the future (bullies are in every walk of life), that if he did the same for himself, he could put a stop to it as well. I would also think that being in our armed services may also help give him the inner confidence that would cause future bullies to look elsewhere.
However, one question I’d ask, what do you mean by “made my intentions known?” Hopefully nothing too extreme?
Two results that came from my own experiences was that I resolved that my own children would stand up for themselves and not let themselves be bullied, the other being that I’d try mentoring so that – at least on a small scale – I would work with any kids I met to either teach them to not bully others – or not let themselves be bullied. So far, so good.