My son had been bullied in grade school and it was suggested to me that maybe my son was part of the problem. He lacked certain social ques and seemed to have trouble with his peers. After I pulled my self out of defense mode, I realized the teacher, whom I trusted, was picking up on something the rest of us missed. My son had been diagnosed with ADD and a big part of that for some kids is social anxiety and social problems. It did not excuse the bullies behavior but did help understand why my son seemed to attract bullies.

I found activities that were less team related and more personal achievement type things to build his self-esteem and also put him in some peer groups to build his social interaction. He is now in his second year of college. He prefers smaller groups to larger ones, popularity was never important to him, but the bullying did stop. I'm glad for both of us that I took in that educator's words and approached it from a different angle. It was an immense help to my son.

Offtopic: Cheez-its, cell phones, and Zagat maps.

I highly doubt there is a sudden "epidemic" of bullying - this is just another highly-politicized attempt to push victim-group politics "for the children".

All the language I've seen in anti-bullying literature closely matches other trumped-up victimology nonsense - it all points in the single direction of increased nanny-state nosiness, and the criminalization of behaviors that the government cannot really regulate.

I'm surprised that The Goddess - who is constantly harping on the need for parents to parent - hasn't seen through this. A large part of the problem in this case is parents not parenting - and a consequent hand-wringing-leftie urge to step in and regulate.

We've already got bread-dead "educators" suspending grade schoolers for bringing water "guns" to school - do we REALLY want these A-holes administering "anti-bullying" programs with even more arbitrary judgement calls?

I highly doubt there is a sudden "epidemic" of bullying - this is just another highly-politicized attempt to push victim-group politics "for the children".

All the language I've seen in anti-bullying literature closely matches other trumped-up victimology nonsense - it all points in the single direction of increased nanny-state nosiness, and the criminalization of behaviors that the government cannot really regulate.

I'm surprised that The Goddess - who is constantly harping on the need for parents to parent - hasn't seen through this. A large part of the problem in this case is parents not parenting - and a consequent hand-wringing-leftie urge to step in and exert control "for our own good".

We've already got bread-dead "educators" suspending grade schoolers for bringing water "guns" to school - do we REALLY want these A-holes administering "anti-bullying" programs with even more arbitrary judgement calls?

Ben David, I don't think that there is a sudden bullying epidemic. There has always been bullying. I remember witnessing it when I was a kid and feeling nervous when I tried to be nice to a victim because I feared it would make me a target of the bullies. The difference is that now the bullying is done anonymously on the internet and a kid can say something about another kid and have it spread in a way we didn't experience as kids. My daughter's friend was a victim of what began as a stupid kid argument and went crazy with all of the people online joining in. The things said were very mean and I'm sure most of the kids chiming in would not have said such things to the girls face. With so many of the suicides in the news due to bullying, I'm surprised that anyone can make a claim that it doesn't go on.

There is certainly an increase in bullying and it's largely due to liberal policies which prohibit schools from punishing bullies by expelling them. This is ultimately caused by the liberal AND religious conservative philosophy that a person isn't responsible for their own actions, rather their actions are the result of external influences--it's TV, porn, video games, sexism, racism, demon rum, etc..

(Starting with Rousseau and heading onto Marx and Skinner, amongst others, you have the related beliefs of The Noble Savage and The Blank Slate, both of which are utter nonsense, but which persist to this day and deeply influence laws and policies. I believe that an extension of these beliefs, that society itself is supreme, lead directly to Communism, Fascism and Naziism. It's also lead to the subtle fascism in our society, from the TSA down to the school room.)

Kristen:

With so many of the suicides in the news due to bullying, I'm surprised that anyone can make a claim that it doesn't go on.

1) I never said it doesn't go on.

2) Who is shaping the narrative - putting these stories out there, creating an impression way beyond that actual numbers, and providing the politically useful interpretation that bullying was the cause?

Sorry - I've seen this media manipulation before.

This is how the oppressive PC speech and behavior codes were sold to us - and the existing "zero tolerance" nonsense already in schools.

It goes like this:

1) Leftists frame the issue so their opinion is the norm, and generate pseudo-science.

For example: feminist "experts" define "sexual harrassment" in accordance with their every-man-a-rapist agenda - and publish "scientific" studies that find (surprise!) a spike in "harrassment" based on their ideological criteria.

2) The PC media runs with the pseudo-science, creating a confirming echo-chamber for the agenda-driven opinions of the "academics", and generating a we-must-do-something panic.

3) Our betters impose nanny-state regulation "for our own good". To prevent "hate" and "bullying".

Lather, rinse, repeat - change out the PC victim group, and this pity-mongering two-step has been used to move goalposts leftward on several social issues.

Take a look at the anti-bullying literature and you see the same language used as for campus speech codes - the left appoints itself to define what is "nice" and "fair" - and (surprise!) the definition delegitimizes any opinion but theirs.

We already have way too much PC indoctrination in our schools - just this week an "educator" was reportedly penalizing children for saying "God bless you" when a fellow student sneezes.

The open-ended, squishily subjective nature of "bullying" leaves us open to a whole new layer of "I feel insulted therefore you are evil" victimology politics, PC manipulation, and demonization.

At the grade school level.
Given how cowed most college students are by the heavy-handed PC indoctrination on most campuses - how do we expect school children to stand up for their freedom to think?

No thank you - no PC handwringing for me.

Not until you can prove there's been more than a flurry of highly dramatized anecdotes.

Phoebe Prince was both bully and victim, and Emily Bazelon's Slate series nearly got her lynched for reporting this.

I know I'm a few days behind here, but I just have to comment on this. I teach at a private school. We have few "real" bullies because the behavior is simply not tolerated. However, nearly every year I have at least one bully-victim in my class. This is the kid - nearly always a boy - who has a variety of issues such as ADD, Aspergers, etc. They totally miss social cues and don't realize that their behavior is driving everyone else in the room nuts.

Every year I see the same pattern: The bully-victim says rude things about other students, disrupts their learning, causes arguments on the playground, etc. The other kids, for the most part, start out the year trying to be understanding. They go to the teachers and ask us to make the bully-victim stop doing all of the things he is doing that are making their school day unpleasant. I speak with the student privately and suggest ways he can fit in better. I meet with the parents, repeatedly. Mom gives me lots of excuses for his behavior. If dad is present, he either says nothing or is shut down by mom if he acknowledges that his son might be causing the problem. Nothing changes.

As the year goes by, the other students lose patience and start refusing to play with the bully-victim. They begin responding to the bully-victim's rude words with rude words of their own. (At our school physical altercations are rare, fortunately.) I try to coax the rest of the class into being more understanding. They try, for a while. Their parents call and complain that the bully-victim is making their students miserable.

I set up more meetings with the bully-victim's parents. Nearly every time, the bully-victim's parents refuse to believe that their child might be the problem. In their eyes, it is always the other students who are the mean ones, while their child is the poor, unfortunate victim.

Frequently the bully-victim's family chooses to move him to another school at the end of the year. Sometimes our administration makes the difficult choice that the student simply cannot continue with us. The rest of the kids in the class - and their parents - silently rejoice that they won't have to deal with him next year. But I am deeply distressed, because I know that things will not get better for the bully-victim. He is going to repeat the same pattern in his new school, and that new school might very well be a place where "real" bullying is tolerated. I sometimes hear reports about how the bully-victim is doing in his new school. Without exception, he is always doing the same or worse. It breaks my heart because, as annoying and stress-inducing as they may be, I love those kids.