Father forces son to hold pink ‘I am a bully’ sign on Texas highway

FlySolo
reply to post by eletheia

 

No I wasn't 'Lucky' I worked damned hard for that.

As for putting the fear of god in them >> No they don't fear me, they respect me

Not trying to minimize your efforts but others work hard too and don't get the results they want. It really depends on the kid.

My kid doesn't fear me, he just knows I trump him as the Alpha male. What the other poster mentioned is right, kids need to know who's boss. They need to know who's more powerful because they test. Right out of the gate they test you and I learned that very quickly.

Lol ... Typically macho reply. However it's not necessary for you to 'trump' him.
Simply being his father gives you that card and you don't need the 'powerful
Alpha male' part either, he only needs to be able to respect you. All it ever took
from me to my kids was a 'look' and they knew that they were overstepping the
accepted mark.

For me the most pertinent part of your post is 'It really depends on the kid'
As they are all different even within families they are different, their
personalities, their makeup and sensitivities ... some need the 'iron hand
in a velvet glove' others a softer approach. I know all men want for boy's
to be 'manly' (Lol ... in your post >>Alpha, Boss, Powerful) but we can and do
have sensitive male poets dancers composers etc. and that needs to be
considered whilst they are growing up.

A contradiction in terms I have used many times > Treat them all the same differently

I don't understand why they used the word 'force'.

Seems like they are subtly trying to demonize that father's attempt at pareting.

~Tenth

reply to post by goou111


I'm rather ashamed to admit that I was something of a bully myself arounds grades 2-7. When I moved across the country at the end of 4th grade, taking my heavy Newfie accent with me, and was bullied as relentlessly or worse than anything I'd done in my home province.

I wish I could say that that was the end of my bullying days - not so much. 6th grade, moved back to the Rock, and was diven mental by the amount of bullying I was subjected to. By kids I considered friends before I left, no less.

Well, to cope, I began bulling again. I'd find a 'target' and just mercilessly needle that person, use personal facts I knew about them or their familes to break them down to the point of tears. All while this was going on, I was mocked and bullied to tears by other bullies for whom I was their perferred 'target'. It

It got to the point where I'd ride the bus to school every morning with a pocket knife, 4in blade, just praying that some kid would give me an excuse to use it. It's worth noting that by this point some previously undiagnosed mental conditions were manifesting.. it's something of a miracle I didn't stab anybody in class.

Not in any way trying to justify my childhood behaviour, simply making the point that many bullies either have been bullied in the past or are actively being bullied when they themselves bully.

So many years later, thinking back, I feel intense remorse.. but I don't have a time machine to go back and slap my child-self in the back of the head for being a mean little douche. But what I have done is try and find some of the kids I was particularly remorseless to on social media and offer a heartfelt apology.

I did this recently, messaged a kid from 7th grade how I was constantly making fun of for being gay - I recieved the most touching message in response, and he and I remain in contact to this day.

I absolutely applaud what this father did - perhaps the son will look back on this moment as a good life lesson. It's a tough one - I'm unsure how I would have reaced in this kid's shoes, it certainly would have given a wealth of material to my own tormentors.

reply to post by eletheia

Lol ... Typically macho reply. However it's not necessary for you to 'trump' him.
Simply being his father gives you that card and you don't need the 'powerful
Alpha male' part either

You make it sound like this sort of situation doesn't exist. For 4 years this kid was thinking he owned the streets and then finally came to me with a chip on his shoulder larger than his head. Simply being his father wasn't enough and I had to remind him who's really in charge. That's where I earned his respect. Like it or not, kids NEED to have someone in charge. They can deny it all they want but deep down they crave it.

All it ever took
from me to my kids was a 'look'

That worked for me too. For three-months. Like I said, every kid is different and by the sounds of it your kids weren't corrupt with all the wrong influences like mine was. Constantly testing me. Constantly. I wore the velvet glove until it had to come off. Now there's no mistaking where the boundaries lie.

ProspectPhilosopher
I commend this father, I sadly was a bully when I was a child and wish my parents took time to discipline me. I grew up in a disjointed home and was very depressed and took it out on others. So I hope this boy see's the light and does not make the same mistakes as I did. I still feel bad to this day about the thing's I have done.

edit on 5-10-2013 by ProspectPhilosopher because: (no reason given)

i hate bullies and i hope YOU get your just desserts for making this world a horrible place.

your excuse about disjointed family cuts no ice with me.

it is the usual BS excuse trotted out.

bullies deserve severe and sustained punishment with plenty of pain and they should be stripped of all their assets and made to sleep in cardboard boxes for at least 10 years.

if i was in charge i would then on a electric chair in the public and get people to shock the bully and charge only $0.10per shock.

reply to post by ProspectPhilosopher


Everyone makes mistakes, but only a few learn from them or even acknowledge them. It seems as though you have, and that is commendable.

reply to post by beckybecky


So your response to bullies, or even past bullies (childhood) who have since reformed... is to bully them mercilessly? Nice circular logic, that kind of thinking must work out really well for you in your personal life.

reply to post by beckybecky


I'm sure if everyone could watch your life review, we'd have more than one thing to judge you on.

beckybecky
i hate bullies and i hope YOU get your just desserts for making this world a horrible place.

your excuse about disjointed family cuts no ice with me.

it is the usual BS excuse trotted out.

bullies deserve severe and sustained punishment with plenty of pain and they should be stripped of all their assets and made to sleep in cardboard boxes for at least 10 years.

if i was in charge i would then on a electric chair in the public and get people to shock the bully and charge only $0.10per shock.

ProspectPhilosopher has had the benefit of both growing up, and feeling remorse for his actions. That is not only commendable, but should be encouraged, not beaten down. Not all bullies are capable of that kind of 180 degree mental move in their lives. For you to sit here, and rip them for coming to their senses and feeling an appropriate emotional response for their actions makes you garbage. And I'm not at all sorry for saying it that way. Any intolerant post-and-run coward is automatically lower on the totem in my book.

reply to post by Tinkerpeach



oh come on. can we please leave politics out of some of these?

for the record, i am very liberal and i very much approve of this father's form of discipline!

I'm not sure if I would discipline one of my own children in the same way, but and it's a big but I do not believe this father should be criticised for punishing his child in the way he saw fit. I commend him for taking his child's behaviour seriously and for being pro-active in dealing with this situation. Too many parents wouldn't do a single thing or do enough to ensure this behaviour stopped. Too often you see the same parents called in school over and over about their child's bullying behaviour and yet they still go on to cause misery.

I know i'm going off track a little but I actually have major beef with how school's deal with bullying behaviour. I was always taught by my dad to stick up for myself and stand up to bullies. He also taught me to stand up for those not able or confident to do it themselves when I saw injustice. Sometimes that got me into trouble with school but it made me a better person.

Not sure about anywhere else but here in the UK schools now have anti bullying policies...which usually entail reporting bullies and not retaliating. Infact when a child stands up to a bully they usually end up being in as much trouble as the bully themselves. The other alternative is to report them which can be difficult because rules of the playground can still dictate that this person is then a "grass" or weak. So often the bullying continue's without retaliation or reporting because of fear of the consequences. This angers me as I don't understand how this teaches children anything about the real world. Once children leave the comforts of school bullying is still rife in the workplace and social situations etc and it is a life skill being able to deal with it. This said I accept that when bullying gets out of hand that some intervention may be needed.

But the attitude of schools that if a child retaliates against a bully it makes them just as bad as the bully is utter bullcrap. It is stripping a whole generation of young people of necessary skills for life.

Replying to eletheia

Typically macho reply.

So that human isn't allowed an opinion -- if they have one and it differs, it seems 'masculine' hence it seems 'macho' hence it is bad?

Maybe macho is sometimes good. Why are we denigrating a man for having an opinion like a man, about a man acting like a father? Is the underlying problem masculinity in general or what?

ProspectPhilosopher wrote:

I hope this boy see's the light and does not make the same mistakes as I did.

And then beckybecky replied to that:

i hate bullies and i hope YOU get your just desserts for making this world a horrible place.... bullies deserve severe and sustained punishment with plenty of pain and they should be stripped of all their assets and made to sleep in cardboard boxes for at least 10 years.

My god. So being a public bully online to sincere, humbled and apologetic people is ok as long as one is safe and anonymous. The only thing worse than a strong bully in person is a snivelingly hysterical weak one online.

Replying to Logos23

But the attitude of schools that if a child retaliates against a bully it makes them just as bad as the bully is utter bullcrap. It is stripping a whole generation of young people of necessary skills for life.

I agree. When my daughter was in 5th and 6th grade, she was bullied horribly by one boy. He literally stalked her in the halls, loudly shouted favored abusive names at her, and she was already shy and easily humiliated so she was just a sort of neon-sign-victim for that age. She reported him repeatedly until she said, "Mom, there is no point. He's in the dean's office every day anyway. Nothing ever changes. I just miss class." I tried to talk to the school, no result. It got worse and worse. She begged me to let her homeschool and I said, you need to learn to deal with people, this is life. I taught her some minor self defense moves. I told her I would absolutely support her if she yelled back or even fought him. (I had a hard time understanding some of this I expect, because I was a drastically different personality as a child than she is.)

She got more and more depressed, until I would pick her up from school and she would sit glassy-eyed against the window, saying little, and by the time she was near the end of sixth grade, she was telling me she wanted to die. That there was no point in living. She didn't do schoolwork and when she did, she left it in her locker, she just didn't care enough to bother with anything any more. She was literally failing and I couldn't even get the school to proactively work with me to deal with that because they said it was her responsibility not mine, and they wouldn't even give me some kind of daily 'yes she turned in her work' slip like they had when I was in school. I told her I was going to hire a local soldier to teach her to fight for real, and promised her I would totally support her kicking this guy's ass -- she NEEDED to stand up for herself. To me it was an issue of needing to take some empowerment back already. Not to be coddled or defended but to learn to defend herself. But the situation was too far gone by that point. I pulled her out of public school entirely (thank God I live in Oklahoma) which was the best thing I ever did. (The young bully in question left school a couple years later when he was caught dealing crack.)

I regret only that I did not pursue the fight-training vastly earlier in her life (I did have her in karate for a couple years, but not enough to make her particular personality confident apparently). The "early" solution to that kid would have been stopping it. The later reasonable solution would have been her actually fighting back. I do not see that as unreasonable violence, I see it as a matter of self-respect and courage and needing to feel a sense of confidence and strength. (Apparently raising her on Xena didn't help lol.)

Well I guess the other thing I regret is that I didn't realize how much schools have changed. When I was in school, there was always a couple or a few kids who were from fractured drug/violent homes who were unusually dysfunctional, but they were a notable few. Now that is the NORM. Particularly in poor areas. This makes the environment in school a radically different situation than it was when I was in it. I failed to realize just how different the environment could be, between the late 70s-early 80s in a well-off California school vs. the late-00's in nowhere Oklahoma. School is not just 'school.' It's not the same in all times, all places. I suspect most parents, like me, assume that it's pretty similar to whatever we experienced. That is not always the case.

Scorchio
reply to post by Bedlam

 

It really depends on the individual.

I used to get caned at school nearly every day. Myself and 3 mates were once caned on the stage in assembly in front of the entire year. We laughed.

I really didn't care a lot if the teachers whacked me either, with maybe the exception of the principal, who I actually liked. But Dad, it was different. If I screwed up to the point I got the belt, it hit home. He didn't mark me up or anything, but just knowing you'd pushed him into that gave you feedback about it being over the limit. We had a lot of autonomy, didn't want to screw that up. Plus we sort of policed each other, four brothers less than two years apart.

RedCairo
Replying to eletheia

Typically macho reply.

So that human isn't allowed an opinion -- if they have one and it differs, it seems 'masculine' hence it seems 'macho' hence it is bad?

Maybe macho is sometimes good. Why are we denigrating a man for having an opinion like a man, about a man acting like a father? Is the underlying problem masculinity in general or what?

ProspectPhilosopher wrote:

I hope this boy see's the light and does not make the same mistakes as I did.

And then beckybecky replied to that:

i hate bullies and i hope YOU get your just desserts for making this world a horrible place.... bullies deserve severe and sustained punishment with plenty of pain and they should be stripped of all their assets and made to sleep in cardboard boxes for at least 10 years.

My god. So being a public bully online to sincere, humbled and apologetic people is ok as long as one is safe and anonymous. The only thing worse than a strong bully in person is a snivelingly hysterical weak one online.

Replying to Logos23

But the attitude of schools that if a child retaliates against a bully it makes them just as bad as the bully is utter bullcrap. It is stripping a whole generation of young people of necessary skills for life.

I agree. When my daughter was in 5th and 6th grade, she was bullied horribly by one boy. He literally stalked her in the halls, loudly shouted favored abusive names at her, and she was already shy and easily humiliated so she was just a sort of neon-sign-victim for that age. She reported him repeatedly until she said, "Mom, there is no point. He's in the dean's office every day anyway. Nothing ever changes. I just miss class." I tried to talk to the school, no result. It got worse and worse. She begged me to let her homeschool and I said, you need to learn to deal with people, this is life. I taught her some minor self defense moves. I told her I would absolutely support her if she yelled back or even fought him. (I had a hard time understanding some of this I expect, because I was a drastically different personality as a child than she is.)

She got more and more depressed, until I would pick her up from school and she would sit glassy-eyed against the window, saying little, and by the time she was near the end of sixth grade, she was telling me she wanted to die. That there was no point in living. She didn't do schoolwork and when she did, she left it in her locker, she just didn't care enough to bother with anything any more. She was literally failing and I couldn't even get the school to proactively work with me to deal with that because they said it was her responsibility not mine, and they wouldn't even give me some kind of daily 'yes she turned in her work' slip like they had when I was in school. I told her I was going to hire a local soldier to teach her to fight for real, and promised her I would totally support her kicking this guy's ass -- she NEEDED to stand up for herself. To me it was an issue of needing to take some empowerment back already. Not to be coddled or defended but to learn to defend herself. But the situation was too far gone by that point. I pulled her out of public school entirely (thank God I live in Oklahoma) which was the best thing I ever did. (The young bully in question left school a couple years later when he was caught dealing crack.)

I regret only that I did not pursue the fight-training vastly earlier in her life (I did have her in karate for a couple years, but not enough to make her particular personality confident apparently). The "early" solution to that kid would have been stopping it. The later reasonable solution would have been her actually fighting back. I do not see that as unreasonable violence, I see it as a matter of self-respect and courage and needing to feel a sense of confidence and strength. (Apparently raising her on Xena didn't help lol.)

Well I guess the other thing I regret is that I didn't realize how much schools have changed. When I was in school, there was always a couple or a few kids who were from fractured drug/violent homes who were unusually dysfunctional, but they were a notable few. Now that is the NORM. Particularly in poor areas. This makes the environment in school a radically different situation than it was when I was in it. I failed to realize just how different the environment could be, between the late 70s-early 80s in a well-off California school vs. the late-00's in nowhere Oklahoma. School is not just 'school.' It's not the same in all times, all places. I suspect most parents, like me, assume that it's pretty similar to whatever we experienced. That is not always the case.

My goodness your post struck a chord with me. I dealt with it differently though.

Years ago when my eldest was just 7, my husband died and I had to move back to my home town. This meant I had to put my daughter into a different school. I had two younger children too but they were under school age.

Anyway, my very quiet, very shy daughter suddenly hated school and I had a hard time getting her to open up and tell me why. It turned out there was a 10 year old boy bullying her in school. Every morning she would tell me she had tummy ache and felt unwell, I knew it was because of this kid. She was terrified of him. I was fuming.

I went to school and saw the head, who promised to deal with it. And he did deal with it. But a couple of days later my daughter told me this kid began to bully her outside school.
I saw this kid walk past my house that same day with his two friends, they were laughing and swearing as they walked. I flew out of the house and grabbed this kid by his jacket and swung him round a few times in front of his shocked friends, whilst asking him how he likes being pushed and shoved about by someone bigger. I ragged him around a bit more and gave his ears a couple of good hard whacks. I loudly promised him if I find out he even so much as looks in my daughter's direction in future I'll be waiting, and asked if he understood.

He understood alright.

Conclusion: No more bullying instantly.

Probably be in jail for assault for doing that nowdays.

A guy was bullying one of my children and I talked to the bus driver, teacher, principal several times over the course of a week's time.

nothing helped till my bullied daughter told me the last name of the kid who was bullying her.

I called the bully's dad and told him if the bullying did not stop IMMEDIATELY THAT I WOULD BE AT HIS HOUSE IN HIS FRONT YARD CALLING HIM OUT FOR A FIST FIGHT ON HIS FRONT YARD THAT VERY DAY.

THE BULLYING STOPPED IMMEDIATELY.

reply to post by doobydoll


The people who complain about disciplining children literally do not discipline their children.

I personally know a number of people whose parents spoiled them, and did not discipline them--and yes, they do grow up to become selfish drug addicts and criminals.

Not saying that I personally have a problem with "drug use." But, when you do not discipline your kids, it seems like they have no since of reality when it comes to assessing the consequences of their actions.