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Insight
While talking about a number of things with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alatefeline last night a couple of things came up.
One was unconscious assumptions. The other was the old canard "it takes two to make a fight".
While reading this article, the two ideas bashed together in my head.
The problem with "it takes two to fight" is the horribly inaccurate assumption it makes about "male" interactions in childhood. Namely that the choice is "fight"/"don't fight".
In reality, the choice is "get beat up"/"try to protect yourself". so it's actually unconscious gaslighting.
I mentioned "male" above because in my experience, it's always the female authority figures spouting this nonsensical piece of "wisdom". I suspect that is because of the differences in "male" and "female" socialization. Boys are expected to have fights. girls are "trained" to attack in less physical ways.
Though come to think of it, "it takes to to have a fight" *should* be equally applicable (and wrong) to the social sniping among girls, which can get *really* nasty by high school.
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me" is another horrible example of gaslighting kids and is another bit of "wisdom" that should be stomped on *hard*.
Name calling can do *more* damage than physical assault, Bruises, even broken bones heal a lot faster than the emotional damage those "harmless" words can inflict.
I know I'm far from the only person to have PTSD from *emotional* abuse.
alatefeline last night a couple of things came up.One was unconscious assumptions. The other was the old canard "it takes two to make a fight".
While reading this article, the two ideas bashed together in my head.
The problem with "it takes two to fight" is the horribly inaccurate assumption it makes about "male" interactions in childhood. Namely that the choice is "fight"/"don't fight".
In reality, the choice is "get beat up"/"try to protect yourself". so it's actually unconscious gaslighting.
I mentioned "male" above because in my experience, it's always the female authority figures spouting this nonsensical piece of "wisdom". I suspect that is because of the differences in "male" and "female" socialization. Boys are expected to have fights. girls are "trained" to attack in less physical ways.
Though come to think of it, "it takes to to have a fight" *should* be equally applicable (and wrong) to the social sniping among girls, which can get *really* nasty by high school.
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me" is another horrible example of gaslighting kids and is another bit of "wisdom" that should be stomped on *hard*.
Name calling can do *more* damage than physical assault, Bruises, even broken bones heal a lot faster than the emotional damage those "harmless" words can inflict.
I know I'm far from the only person to have PTSD from *emotional* abuse.
no subject
Analysis from my perspective (some experience, but not drastic or majorly traumatic, experience of childhood bullying; adult experience as an educator) follows. CW for discussion of children and adults and emotional abuse ...
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It may take two people to have an equal back-and-forth, positive or negative, but many interactions AREN'T equal. Someone initiates, or escalates, something; the other person has to respond *somehow,* even if the response is being passive or avoiding them, and passivity/avoidance/politeness just do NOT stop people who want to push or take or hurt or take advantage.
If the list of acceptable-to-adults ways for kids to respond to other kids hurting them doesn't include anything that actually WORKS, that's the adults creating and enabling an abusive situation.
If the adults don't set boundaries that are clear and consistent about 'this is not something that we just let happen here', NOBODY feels safe. (And all this is assuming the adults themselves are basically functional and not directly abusive, which is a big assumption.)
When one kid treats another kid or kids in ways that are *harmful* and/or violate their boundaries, the adult expectation should be that they have to do more than say 'sorry' and expect to be instantly rewarded. Kids have to do, have to be taught and helped and expected to do, the WORK of making amends to one another and to their community. Otherwise ... whenever someone hurts someone else's body, or their things, or harms them emotionally through words or actions that violate their boundaries and sense of reasonable safety ... if they get an escape clause like 'takes two to fight' or 'boys will be boys' or 'oh, girls just are clique-y at this age' or 'but I said sorry!' ... well, all the other kids that they have (directly or indirectly) hurt are being emotionally neglected at best, AND the kid who caused harm is being trained into negative behavior patterns that will set them up to be miserable and cause misery around them.
That takes a lot of time and resources to set limits, stop the problem in its tracks, redirect the action taking place, separate kids who need space (or that others need space from), help them de-escalate and become emotionally regulated and meet their individual needs, address underlying issues, talk through choices and solutions, and come up with a plan to try to fix things; and it will NOT be perfect; and kids will need a lot of support all through the process whether they did harm, or were harmed, or both. Building a community with accountability and respect and kindness and value given to diversity and room to grow is NOT easy, but it's also not *optional* for healthy socialization. Sadly we have lots and lots of adult priorities operating to make kids unhealthy and unhappy in our society...
*hugs offered*
Thanks again for hanging out with me yesterday evening!!!
no subject
Right. Inaction is an action, which is seldom considered, and the *reaction* to inaction is often far worse for the victim.
Far too often the "acceptable" behaviors are based on pious hopes, rather than having any connection with reality.
This is also why so many laws fail to have the intended effect. Those proposing them *assume* both that everyone else reacts the way they do *and* that everyone else *wants* what they do.
This leads to things like Prohibition, the "war on drugs" and school policies that do not take into account the culture(s) of the kids and adults.
I don't mean cultures from an ethnic standpoint. I mean things like "don't involve adults" and "don't tattle" that are part of the *society* that kids in various age groups have passed on for *centuries*.
Not just clear and consistent. They have to "make sense" from the viewpoint of the kids both individually and as part of "kid culture".
Frankly, I think we might do better if we worked on persuading "kid culture" to change a few things.
If we can get them to adopt changes in the "rules" (actually "customs") that they pass on as new kids join the group, then it becomes self-sustaining.
Oh, but doing that makes things *appear* to be going well, which is all that many care about. appearance matter. Reality doesn't.
adult society needs to fix those exact same problems in itself before we'll get a lot of traction with kids. They can spot hypocrisy a mile away.
Still, trying to fix kids will make it easier to fix adults when *they* grow up.
Given that adult society has many of the same problems, it will be an uphill battle.
Not needed, but cheerfully accepted.
I need to get a *big* beanbag chair so (willing) vistors can cuddle with me. :-)
Hey, that was good for me, too.
no subject
"Kid culture" (there are actually *several*, for different age ranges) is essentially tribal.
a thought I've had is that we should try not merely molding the tribal customs, but trying to set up multiple "tribes" in each age range so that more kids will have a group they fit into.
Add some customs for resolving inter-tribal differences (preferably non-violently, but with at least *controlled* violence if necessary) such as games, sports, or other challenges and you might get something a lot better than we have now.
Since gangs are essentially tribes as well, we could do a lot worse than designing ones that can interact more acceptably but keep the things that make folks *want* to join them.
I've sensed story potential here, but not sure I could write it without help from some sociology and anthropology types.
no subject
There are a LOT of kid cultures. Different regions and ethnic groups have some different customs, which overlap and tie in with the age-differences. Some age difference things between groups of kids are cultural, some are developmental, some are cohort effects. You've correctly identified some very important things that are going on.
Tribal customs and norms are well worth attention to creating and designing... as well as doing the linguist/descriptive anthropologist thing of 'oh, that's an interesting specific functional Thing I observed people regularly doing, looks like it works because of X and Y' and the spec-fic thing of tagging on '... wonder if something like that could fit with Z as well'. Previous generation's efforts at that gave us a lot of organizations 'for' kids and 'about' exposing kids to some concept of healthy kid-culture ... frex, Boy Scouts and Girl Scout, which have evolved into large, rigid, hide-bound institutions that are themselves adult-run and full of problems. Maybe that's partly a problem of scale, but it's also a potential failure mode for anything that's big enough to be impactful at scale.
On a smaller scale, there is a lot of excellent professional development for educators available on activities (that can be adult-initiated but kid-centered and also eventually kid-run) to facilitate community-building and the co-creation of little rituals of respect and social maintenance within a group or a class, but there isn't reliable or sound institutional support for doing the things that that professional development makes obvious are needed (like feeding everyone a real meal, with time to talk and chances to share and to help, with enough time to eat it, for fracks sake).
Like my experience with student-run activity clubs in college (gaming, LARP, fencing, etc) and with trying to find parent volunteers as a teacher, with the main target groups aging in and out so fast, it's hard to have a working structure that's fully populated and harder to have that structure not become a rigid tool with which people bludgeon each other rather than a functional living shared set of norms and customs ... so ... there have to be designated roles within each 'kid tribe' group for mentors, tradition-keepers, and group alums to keep continuity ... but with checks so that people who just like being powerful don't automatically perch themselves in that mentor-role and warp the group around them ... as well as a route for new ideas to change and break up things that no longer work ... and so on ...
no subject
It turned up in Australia within months, and the show hadn't even started there yet.
They were able to trace it to the kid of an American executive/engineer/something, who'd been brought to Australia by his company to run something.
But yeah, I see the need for safeguards. My goal would be to have the tribes be as "hands off" as possible, but with customs (taboos!) to stop most problems in the bud.
I expect membership would be more on developmental stage than strict age. If you've got somebody who's going to be at a six-year-old level for the rest of their life, why kick them out of a group can fit in with.
But some sort of "tribal elders" are probably needed to help when the kids *need* it, but mostly let things alone. Definitely don't want power hungry types for that.
"Excessive" interest in kids (as currently "defined") would actually be an asset as long as it wasn't sexual or something that would lead to neglecting their duties.
Also need some nurse/medic types. Either as part of the tribe, or at neutral locations where the kids can come to them. Getting folks who'd make that as pleasant as possible so as to avoid the all-too-common idea of hiding injuries because getting them looked at *hurts* or leads to excessive scolding.
Hmm for the more "macho" tribes, making being brave about fact that it hurts, but doing it anyway would be a useful meme.
For others, sharing the pain and being able to cry it out may work better.
I'd hope we could get them to not be *totally* gender segregated, but go more on interests/behavior (though that sort of thing is, I suspect more adult concern/indoctrination than anything inherent)
As much as they are decried, initiations do serve a social purpose. Bonding and other things. Having to do something hard (but not too hard) and maybe a bit embarrassing can be a useful social glue.
It's keeping it from turning into hazing that's a problem.
ps. I'm enjoying brainstorming this with you.
Well ...
It takes two sides to have a war, but only one to have a massacre. "It takes two to fight" is usually said when trying to train someone to be a good victim and not resist.
Well, resist. They may still beat the shit out of you, and you may still get punished for having boundaries, but you don't have to make it EASY for them. You can at least make the bastards PAY for it.
Re: Well ...
When in reality, things would escalate until the victim *couldn't* ignore it.
I'm also fairly certain that a lot of this comes from teachers and staff not wanting to have to sort out who did what when there are conflicting stories.
Especially when parents would come swooping in complaining that their "little angel" couldn't *possibly* have done anything wrong.
Or worse yet, that there was nothing wrong with picking on the other kid, he "deserved" it because [x].
Of course, having enough people to actually *supervise* the kids at recess (and *doing* so!) would eliminate that problem.
Maybe video surveillance (with audio!) might help. But then you have to regulate how long the recordings can be kept. And what *else* can be done with them.
Re: Well ...
Ignoring the bully has about a 3% chance of success. The most successful tactic against bullies, hiring a lawyer, has a dismal 16% chance of success. In light of there being no effective solutions from the victim's level, no wonder all the advice is bad. NONE of it works.
The best way to stop bullying if from above. If someone with more power physically separates the bully from the victim, imposes sanctions, and if necessary ousts the bully from the group then that is effective.
>>I'm also fairly certain that a lot of this comes from teachers and staff not wanting to have to sort out who did what when there are conflicting stories.<<
Of course.
>>Of course, having enough people to actually *supervise* the kids at recess (and *doing* so!) would eliminate that problem.<<
The best ratio is around 10 or 12 students to one teacher. Plenty of interaction and not much room to make trouble. Also, you rarely have more than one troublemaker in a group. With 35 kids you have 3 or 4.
>> Maybe video surveillance (with audio!) might help. But then you have to regulate how long the recordings can be kept. And what *else* can be done with them.<<
Not in this society. Police cameras are supposed to do that, but they are overwhelmingly used against citizens. Come on, we have video of police slowly strangling a man to death with an illegal technique in broad daylight in front of a crowd, and it was ruled perfectly okay. In a fundamentally unjust society, cameras are useless. They only help when it's widely considered wrong to hurt people -- and then you don't really need them.
no subject
In many schools, fighting back is considered "prolonging the violence" and officially banned. Of course, what prolongs the violence is letting bullies get away with hurting other kids.
I have over 30 years of self-defense martial arts training and even taught a few friends. Propper self-defense can be something as simple as easily breaking the grip of someone trying to intimidate you, or blocking a punch without hitting back. Yet in some schools such actions will get the defender in more trouble from authorities than that levied upon the attacker.
no subject
Back in 8th or 9th grade, I was walking home with a friend. A guy who'd been giving me trouble for *years* came up to us and sprayed me in the face with a tear gas pen he'd shoplifted.
I went back to school and filed a complaint with one of the counselors. My friend tried to talk me out of it, pointing out that I'd be ostracized etc.
I pointed that that that wouldn't be any worse than what was already going on. He accompanied me back to the school anyway.
Both I and the guy who attacked me were suspended for 3 days. (note that this had happened several blocks from the school).
If I knew then what I know now, I'd just have called the police and left the school out of it.
Note, the police *were* contacted and he did have something legal happen to him.
But if I'd left the school out of it, I'd not have missed three days of school.
Or I could have gone to the school and reported like I did and told them what they could do with my suspension. "I'm sure the [local paper & TV] would be *very* interested in why you are suspending the *victim*."