Episode 3: Grundle

[Sawah]

Do not, I repeat, do not Google this at work, especially not google image search. My poor sweet virginal (ha) eyes!

Also, we talk about childhood bullies and The Real Ghostbusters, don't miss out!

~Sawah

[Mike]

Nowadays (here at least), schools recognize that bus time is definitely school time and school responsibility. It's up to our school to handle reported incidents on the bus.

[SBH]

I’m very happy to hear that bullying intervention and prevention has been extended to the school bus, since according to this article, more school bus drivers than on-school property people notice bullying:

http://www.nea.org/home/63929.htm

As I’ve mentioned in Grundle, it seems that awareness of childhood bullying has progressed to awareness of the need to intervene, as is the lasting and damaging impact of childhood bullying, thank goodness.

Oh, btw...hi, all!

- SBH

[Phoebe]

I wish I had time to collate thoughts in response to this in a better way - I've listened to the first two and most of three now (still listening to the end) and you're hitting on topics that really need discussion. I know they're important for everyone but they're also important "nerd-pride-related" topics in the sense that many proud nerds have experienced childhood bullying, toxic friendships, and other things that are coming up here. Some of the personal stories shared have hit me hard, whether it's because they were so breathtakingly upsetting, and/or because they called up memory, sweet memory of childhood. How well we learn to hide and regulate our behaviors.

Despite decades of talk about self esteem and the need to address bullying, I feel like we're not really scratching the surface of this topic in public discourse. It feels like schools only recently started moving toward taking bullying more seriously (and is it successful? not sure), and that people have just started moving beyond tired narratives like "bullied school shooter" to the basic recognition that "school shooter guy" was more likely to have been bullying or harassing other people, sometimes the people he ended up shooting. Why this bizarre ease of associating mass murder with "must've been bullied"? It's a further monstrous version of "he harasses you because he likes you". No, he has anger and enjoys taking it out on someone, and the fact that people recognize these behaviors as similar to "romantic interest" only tells you just how screwed up the department of romantic interest expression has been.

I thought it was really important that you talked about the fact that bullied kids can also be bullies to others, having learned these frightening dynamics, or that the kids doing the bullying are likely victims of their own bad experiences elsewhere. I was bullied but never saw myself as a victim of bullying; I don't know to express this but interpersonal violence among children was so NORMAL that I grew used to it in some way and developed a bizarre resilience too young. Oh, it occurs to me that surviving the trauma of abuse has no small role in developing this mental armor for other situations. Yep. Great. But anyway, interpersonal violence, insults, aggression, the imposition of hierarchies, ridicule, demands for conformity - this seemed normal, though I felt lucky to escape and somehow pass invisibly along the sidelines. I've witnessed so much bullying, usually in a situation where I would have served equally well as target and therefore was in no position to put a stop to it.

Sawah's story about the hairpulling (also from earlier episode) just boom! puts me in tears not only because it's so terrible that a little child would have to suffer that way, but because I know that if I had been sitting right there I probably would have felt powerless to do anything, probably never would have reported it, probably would have tried in some mute and ineffective way to be friendly but without wanting to risk turning myself into the next victim. I SOOOOO vividly remember the faces and obvious emotions of kids in my school who were bullied, especially the girls, where I felt like all I could do about it was try to be nice to them, but my social currency was already so low that it felt I was doing nothing worthwhile, and when you're a small child you immediately comprehend that the bullied victim is somehow tainted for further social interaction because in having solidarity with her, you likely will be drawn into victimhood. I mean, how Fucked Up is that? I'm talking early primary grades, this is what I recall happening. And you can be friends with that bullied girl when you're in a group setting because then the stigma of her victimization is spread out and borne successfully by a whole pack of girls, but if it's just the two of you, or even maybe three of you, it's not enough to resist the violence of the upper-echelon hierarchies of girldom. This probably sounds crazeeee but this is truth - listening to your stories really brings back the memories and I'm not sure anyone talks about this. I don't know if this still happens; I imagine that it does. I remember my mother telling me her experiences, oh so similar.

I can't remember EVER telling any adults about ANY of this. None of it. I don't remember other kids doing so either - maybe occasional complaints about conflict on the playground? But I don't recall any actual disclosure of the most serious incidents I saw or experienced.

Amen to everything being said in Episode 3 about teacher training and the things teachers should be telling to kids. I have several K-12 teacher friends and relatives where I live who lean hard on this and make deliberate training in kindness a part of everyday life in the classroom. We have swallowed this myth that empathy, kindness, the traits of good cooperative citizenship in general, are somehow burst forth by luck and nature and can't be trained into people. Even kids who don't experience empathy can learn what is expected and how to go through the right motions for social reward.

Here's a topic that also came up for me hard during this particular episode, and I wonder if either of you have experiences with the same or know of it - or if people on this board have experienced it with themselves or their kids. Not sure how to explain this; I'll throw caution to the wind here - please remember this is a story about trauma and not a case of bragging. I was much smarter as a kid than I am now and I was often bullied by teachers because of it. It shocks me to realize and say this but, I mean, this was my reality for a long time. Apparently it was a pain in the ass to deal with a kid too smart to be taught whatever it is you're prepared to teach, and to make new extra plans for that kid, and for some reason it's threatening to your sense of adult control that grade schooler knows a lot of stuff you don't know and thus probably requires punishment and ridicule. Thank God the other half of the teachers were the pure light to that darkness, and I poured out my best work for them and didn't sour on the whole process of education. I had another teacher try to do this bullying shit to me when I was 17 and I would no longer take one minute of it, thank God, so at first she gave me an F and then another teacher made her change it to a C because I had As on every single one of my exams and papers, and apparently there was a limit to how dishonest she was allowed to be. But, she had her joy: I was not the valedictorian and more obedient girls ascended accordingly. I bear that poor woman no ill will; this is one case where the parental-cheerleading diagnosis of "they're only jealous" was so true, and in hindsight, damn, how tragic is that? How tragic, for an adult woman to be so filled with jealous fury by the 17 year old version of me. She told me she was certain I would crash and burn in college, apparently unaware I was already attending college half the day and had been for years. Maybe someday if I hit the skids she will show up, with her walker or whatever, to gloat.

My youngest kid could be having similar problems but instead the teachers have embraced it as delightful, as a fun challenge that will expand their repertoire of teaching skills. I am brought to tears of gratitude by this, like when the teacher needs a call back from me and my heart pounds a little, but it turns out the kid did nothing wrong and instead she wants advice about what new math challenge we should cook up. And they treat the kid completely normally like the others, not as some freakish aberration. I can't even go on typing; suffice to say this positive, uplifting response from the teachers means a lot.

It really Does Something to you as a very young child to harden yourself against the psychological knife-wounds delivered by middle aged women you started off trusting and naturally loving, the way that all little lovers of learning immediately love a teacher. Then she turns on you, in annoyance, disgust, eyerolling, sarcasm, this woman who is supposed to be proud of you for knowing new things. The upside is that you are then well-hardened mentally for bullying from other kids, and you've learned early how to hide yourself away, pass for normal, not use fancy words, be terribly interested in Sports. This little tour down memory lane has been fascinating, because I have been learning some things from a very smart person lately about gender politics and it is her thesis that radical feminists are united by some kind of problematic mothering experience. No way, I said, confident in the starbursting perfection of my own mothering and grandmotherings, by the best women imaginable. All good on the mothering front, said I. But now I see: a different kind of mother figure was often a great betrayer, and that is enough for my friend's hypothesis to be borne out. Interesting. Well, your show is like going to therapy, but cheaper!

[SBH]

Hi Phoebe!

Actually, you’ve hit on something that I was planning to bring up in part 2 of the Bullying series, which is going to be on adult bullying. I remember in Grundle, Sawah asked if I had been victim of childhood bullying, to which my answer was “no, not really” (benefit of having your Aunt as the principal, so mean girls had to SUCK IT), however, I had bully teachers, and some who even mentioned out loud that they had to be “careful” with me because “Ms. John is her aunt.” I mean, how messed up do you have to be as an adult, to not only bully your students, but to be aware of your sociopathology enough to figure that you had to hide it from a certain student because you would get in trouble. Also disturbing was that one was such a bully, that I developed anxiety symptoms that were misdiagnosed as migraines by the time I was 9, so...kinda makes you realise how awful this teacher was to all the other students who didn’t have the benefit of her being so “careful” with me. There’ll be more on that, trust me.

Thanks for sharing your experiences! I know that Sawah is very passionate about her experiences resonating and helping others, which was the point of the show, so thank you for participating in the chatter!

- SBH