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We're you bullied in school? What was the worst advice you got about bullying?

My own experience was that parents, teachers and other kids gave the absolute WORST advice about how to handle a bully.

Example: "Just stay away from him (or her).". Now this is just plain silly. Where do bullies thrive? In places such as schools or prisons, in other words, places where their victims are trapped with them and can't get away. Running away doesn't work in situations like that. Hiding doesn't work either; most bullies learn all the potential hiding places on their turf and take great joy in looking thoroughly and very quickly for their victims. Running and hiding also convey fear, a bully's favorite psychological food, and they become even more determined to engage with their obviously frightened fleeing and hiding victim. Then, when the bully finds the hiding or fleeing child and physically punishes him/her, and the child goes home and faces the parent who encouraged him/her to flee, the parent glares at the bruised child and says, "I TOLD YOU to stay away from him/her!" As if encountering the bully once again were the child's fault for disobeying the parent's impossible instructions.

What other examples of useless, or even destructive, advice were you given about dealing with a bully?

Anybody get any good advice about this? Anything that worked?
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Longpatrol · 31-35, M
Tell the teacher. Honestly tried it for 10 years straight. Guess what? My teachers gave less than a shit. What they will pay attention to is if you snap and start kicking the bully’s teeth in or slit your wrists.
greenmountaingal · 70-79, F
@Longpatrol I suffered from that bad advice, too. When I went to the teacher, [i]I[/i] was punished and rather harshly. I am going to write a story about that here within a day or two. There are many reasons teachers can't deal effectively with bullies. And school policies about bullying are usually not very good, either. So-called "Zero Tolerance" policies punish BOTH kids for ANY sort of fighting behaviors. Since most bullies don't care about being disciplined in school, it puts the stress on the kid who is picked on most of the time. It basically punishes the kid who dares to fight back. Other school policies, such as having training sessions where children are taught to develop empathy instead of aggression, do only a little bit of good and mostly affect basically good kids who think kindness to others is the right way to behave.
Longpatrol · 31-35, M
@greenmountaingal [quote]having training sessions where children are taught to develop empathy[/quote] first time 'm hearing about this. Don't think it would have worked in my school. As like you say, they don't care about punishments and heck some of them wore it like badge of honor.