Bullied as a child, Tor Constantino shares hard-won insights to shatter misconceptions and help parents handle bullying more effectively.
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My family moved around a lot when I was growing up.
Every two years or so, I had to attend a different school, and since I was the “new kid” at each school I invariably experienced bullying in some manner—it consisted mostly of shoving, destruction of my things, and schoolyard fighting.
It seems that I was not alone in my experience.
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According to the most recent government statistics, 44 percent of middle schools reported bullying problems, while more than 20 percent of both elementary and high schools reported similar issues.
Even though bullying episodes tapered off for me in high school, I still managed to get into three separate fights while working through my secondary education.
While my parents were very supportive through every incident, they didn’t fully understand what it was like being bullied.
I want better for my kids who are currently in the fifth and eighth grades respectfully. We talk with them every day about school, my wife volunteers at the school regularly and thankfully neither daughter has been bullied yet—at least not that they’ve mentioned to us.
I hope they won’t have to.
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I was also bully by minorities too and if minorities want to bully other groups of people, then they should not complain about being bullied back, get their butts taken to court for hate crimes and other civil right violation crimes, get their butts whipped on the streets because they ran into the wrong person(s) and/or get bullied by the police. They should not complain about their civil rights when many of them don’t care about other people’s civil rights.
Sorry to hear your story and the rough upbringing G – but thanks for sharing it! Who knows, it might helps someone else.
I always suspect that bullies were average or better-than-average self-esteem, and I also believe that one reason why they bully is because they don’t want other people to have the same level of self-esteem that they possess. They hate it when other people have self-esteem because it means that they don’t have control. Yeah, I was bullied and there was nothing I could do about it for the most part, because bully girls, bully boys, bully NCOs and military officers and bully managers and bully co-workers tend to circle the wagon and protect their own people for various reasons. I… Read more »