This is a comment by Dan on the post “Fight or Flight“.
Dan said:
“Great video. I took a different approach growing up. I learned my violent method of conflict resolution from my parents’, who were always fighting. I was beat with belts, Sizzler tracks, and whatever was handy in the moment. My parents even had a leather strap fashioned for the specific purpose of modifying our behavior. My mother would drag us down the hallway by our hair as a taste of what was to come.
“I have lost count of the number of physical fist fights I’ve had. My last one was in college, but I’ve been close to throwing a fist well into my adult life.
“The only ‘pride’ I take in my violent behavior is my obsessive focus on thwarting bullies. I have never picked a fight or had one picked with me. I have only entered a fight to introduce balance – violent balance. I have always stood up for kids like the one self-described by the gentleman in the video. “Bullies make me angry and they only seem to understand one thing,” I tell myself.
“My children have witnessed my aggressive reactions to the behaviors of others. Always bullies. Always violent bullies. I have never raised a hand to my own children and cannot imagine doing so—ever! I have always told my children that mine is not a good example. I tell them how proud I am of their resistance to violence. I have told my son that he is the bigger man for not following his father’s example and that I would be disappointed if he ever entered a fight. I try to rationalize my hypocrisy as a carry-over from my childhood, which I also explain to my children.
“Neither of my children have ever been in a fight (19 and 17).
“I don’t think I’m cured, but age has calmed me down. I witness the behaviors of our zero sum society and I am reminded of those bullies on the playground (daily) and the one pulling me down the hallway by the hair. I can’t help but think the only thing these bullies will ever understand is an anti-bully engaging them on terms they can understand. I remain in awe of peaceful protesters and I respect them. I’m just not capable of a passive reaction to people overreaching, overtaking, and over controlling, simply because they can.
“I’m a work in progress.”
Photo credit: Flickr / Polina Sergeeva
About the Editors
Thanks for sharing your growth. Thanks for being honest with your children. Thanks for standing up for those who could not.
My reaction to bullying was to become violent and i’m happy to say that i wouldn’t change it.
I hoped adults would step in and i hoped the bully would have a change of heart but neither happened.
The bully moved away but i realized that he wouldn’t be the last bully i’d face, and that’s when i fought back.
Nowadays i kick myself for not fighting back sooner, for putting my life in someone elses hands for so long.
Personally I lean towards confrontation with bullies. I think I did even before I knew otherwise, as apparently when bullied on a playground as a three year old, I put up with being picked on by an older boy for some considerable time, before I finally hit him back. Thing is, I don’t think he was expecting to get hit back, at least not at the time that I finally did it.
Then society in the 80s began to work itself upon me. Fighting is bad. Listen to Mom. Don’t pick fights with others. Don’t say mean things to people. Guess what that produced: a little boy who was afraid to stand up for himself in elementry school. Who couldn’t take being teased or made fun of by other children. Not a cry baby per se, but a boy who didn’t have a temper, didn’t want to get in a fight and was in fact afraid to get in a fight, because he didn’t want to get in trouble. Kids like this, especially ones with more than a little bit of nerd in them, tend to be magnets for bullies. Bullies must have been cool in the 1980s, but Im pretty sure they are definitely not cool now.
By the time I was in 5th grade, about 10 years old, I had a fairly bad problem of being bullied. By more than one Bully too. But I just took it. And Kept taking it and taking it. My mom had always told me it was okay to defend myself if somebody else hit me first, but that I was never supposed to throw the first punch. Thats probably a pretty good rule most of the time. But for me, an insult from a bully wasn’t a punch, and I guess I didn’t consider the occasional push to count either.
Until one day, actually around Christmas break I think, I asked my mother if I could just not go to school the next day because said Bully was going to be there and I just didn’t want to have to be around him. Right then, my mother seemingly changed tune and said I needed to confront the bully. Give him an ultimatum, to stop bullying me, or I would kick his butt at recess. Then if he doesn’t stop, plan to follow through. She actually told me to do that. She told me to tell it to him like a challenge to him, like throwing down the gauntlet, and that most bullys are cowards. From a certian perspective it could be viewed as picking a fight. It seems like some modern parenting would look down on a mother telling her ten year old son to pick a fight with the bully, because all fighting is bad, and starting fights is especially bad.
But confronting that bully is exactly what I needed to do. My mother was precisely right. The next day came and he made fun at my expense again, and I looked to this kid, a boy I had know since kindergarden and said something like “Christopher, I have had it with your bullying. I will meet you behind the building at recess, unless you are too scared to fight me because you are afraid I will beat you up.”
That might have been a bit more forward that was necessary, but it sure did the trick. Recess came and shortly after the bell rang for recess, I met him behind the building and started swinging. I don’t think he was really thought I was going to do that, but I figured Id given him more than enough warning, so I just went after him. He was backing up so fast he almost tripped over himself, but he couldnt bring himself to run away so he tried to take a swing at me with his fist and insult me some more for being crazy. No problem. I just kept swinging, until I knocked him down. Overwhelming force was the best solution.
I don’t believe in starting fights, but I don’t believe in fair fights either. I believe in fighting to win.