Adult Survivors of Bullying/Peer Abuse™

Well, here is my take on the movie Bully. Please keep in mind that this is a review, and the movie will probably get opinions from all sides. Please, please be respectful of each other’s opinions if you comment. Do not attack one another. I am saying this ahead of time, as I know this movie has people running on emotions. Agree to
disagree and move on.  Also, there are going to be spoilers in here. If you do not like these, then please do not read below here.

I should start with the school represented in the movie. The
principal? OMGAH! What kind of principal is that? Here are parts of the movie where she could have taken action, with a little education.

Towards the beginning, when she took a little boy out of class for a talk, she was either talking to him about being bullied or talking to him about being a bully. I cannot remember.  If it was about being bullied, she should have referred him to a guidance counselor and spoken to the bully separately. I never saw her speak to the bully and no punishment was issued. Then, she walked down the hall, saying, “What am I doing? I do not know what I am doing,” and other words that amounted to ‘blah, blah’.  No kidding!  The principal had probably never been trained or taken the time to educate herself on this problem!

When the kids were standing outside and she let them in, she stopped two boys.  She told them to shake hands and ‘play nice’, but in different words. As you saw, the victim refused to do it. The bully did do it.  For that, she excused the bully and kept the victim behind. She fussed at him for not cooperating. Um, the bully
was hurting him regularly and she did nothing? Again, let’s blame the
victim and make this kid the bad guy. Oh and the bully smelled like a rose. Of
course, with her standing there, the bully would cooperate!  That bully was not an idiot.  Why didn’t she get the bully back and find out why he was bullying? There was no punishment for the bully.  The principal just bitched at the victim because he was reluctant to shake hands. Would you want to make peace with someone who possibly threatened you and violated you on a daily basis? She should have stepped back and talked to the bully. Also, she should have asked both boys if any witnesses were around when the abuse was happening. It goes back to peer mediation. If I have said it once, I will say it again: peer mediation is crap unless it involves little kids and mild cases. This did not look like a mild case to me.

This really burned me up: Alex’s parents came to talk to the principal about the behavior on the bus.  The principal suggested putting him on another bus.  As if that would solve the problem! These abusers would just abuse someone else if Alex were gone. The principal needed to learn that these abusers/bullies must be
stopped.  Bullies move on to other kids after they are finished with the first one.  During the meeting, she said she rode the bus route and the kids were “good as gold”. No kidding! She was on the bus. The kids would not have been stupid. Who is going to pull that crap with her on the bus?  Then she showed photos of her
grandkids – sheesh!  Later, we see she informed the assistant principal about the bullying.  The principal got kids into the office individually, and yes, a couple of them admitted to harming Alex.  One kid, with ‘Vikings’ written on his shirt, was the worst. He sat there all, pompous and arrogant, and said, “Yes, I did this to Alex because he made me mad.” Well guess what, kid? I deal with people who make me mad a lot, but I do not physically abuse them! If I were that principal, I would have been on the phone immediately with that child’s parents and looked into detention or expulsion (first offense). What did she do?  Instead, she
gave Alex grief because he did not report any incidents!  The kids shown on Alex’s bus were monsters!  I would suspect they scared him into not telling. The language they used was horrible.  Do you remember this movie got an R rating due to language and everyone was up in arms? I can see why it was rated R. These kids live in an R-rated society.  The language they use is horrible. It is not as if they have never heard the language before. They use it daily!

Every time those kids were on the bus, the driver did nothing. Nada! Alex was
pushed out of his seat and the driver did nothing.  Alex was choked and the driver did nothing.  Good as gold, my shoe!

The little girl in Mississippi was another scenario that peeved me off. Yes, she brought a gun and pulled it out on the bus. It appeared that the bus had a camera on it. She was charged with 45 counts of kidnapping and placed in juvenile hall .  I must ask why the kids who abused her were not punished in the first place.  A
person does not ‘snap’ without being pushed to the limit first. That ignorant
whatshisface said, “You don’t bring a gun to school, regardless,” or something
to that effect. Yeah, let’s make her the only bad guy and ignore the abusers’
part in it.  A camera was on the bus! I was glad she was able to go home, but once again, there was no accountability for the abusers.  That bus driver should have
punished the ones giving her a hard time as well.

The bullycides were heartbreaking and very sad. I did get sad at these parts. I am so glad Kirk Smalley has formed Stand for the Silent. Events and rallies like this are needed. They get people fired up. They remember those who are gone: a great way to show children how to develop empathy.

Then there was the school board meeting, or whatever it was. Again, ignorance abounds, and the parents were devastated. Kids even stood up and talked about this abuse. The resource officer did nothing. I am hearing a lot about these officers doing nothing.  Something can be done. Why didn’t they document it? Why didn’t they recommend an arbitration program or family court? No, I do not believe these
alternatives are “harsh”; I believe they will hit home. Listen — arbitration
programs have 96% success rates. Family court will knock them into reality.
Most importantly, why were parents not called? Resource officers should liaise with law enforcement when dealing with these issues.

Listen:  a kid who is choking others, constantly verbally or physically abusing them –or anyone involved in this type of abuse, for that matter– needs to be evaluated. I am serious!  A high school kid was choking another kid:  where is the joke in that? When I was in high school, I knew someone could die from being choked. It is not a joke!  Even then, I knew it was not a joke, but serious business. A kid was sitting on another kid’s head because the kid made him mad?  No, that kid needs some serious anger management. I am not joking.

Suspension, expulsion, and ISS are not acceptable punishments, especially for re-offenders. To older kids, suspension is a vacation. Let the punishment fit the crime!  These methods might work in elementary school, but in middle and high school, they will not.  Expulsion will only allow these kids to go to another school and pull the same crap on someone else.  As for ISS, I had that in high school and
spent the day passing notes with another girl in there. I did not learn
anything at all from that punishment except a bunch of gossip from the other
girl.

A lot of times, kids don’t tell because they carry shame with them. I saw how Alex got rid of some of that frustration. He played on the trampoline.  Also, he went dangerously close to a moving train at one point. They fear telling because they know they will “get it” from the abuser later on. This shame is the same as in any other type of abuse.

This is what I mean by education:  nobody should demand that someone who is
being abused must shake hands with an abuser as if nothing is wrong. Would anyone expect that of the victim of a sexual abuser? Heck, no! In all of these
scenarios, bullies/abusers were not held accountable for their behavior. Why? Lack of education on the part of the adults!

There were no real solutions in this movie.  This is interesting, because someone wanted me to come and speak during the month of June. They said my book also did not offer “practical solutions.”  My solutions are based on what is happening and what can be done that is not being done. I now wonder what they
would think of this movie, as there were no real solutions.  At the end, we saw the gay girl say people would not sit with her in class. We saw the rally for Stand for the Silent on the bullycides. We learned from Alex’s parents that he will probably never fit in. So what? If fitting in means being nasty and rude, I would not want to fit in, either. I liked Alex; I saw a lot of myself in him.

This was a movie that tried to grab at empathy within kids
and adults. You bet it did! It touched me and made me teary- eyed. I felt for
the kids being abused and the kids who lost their lives. I also felt for the
families, because as you saw, this affects the whole family and not just the
child. I was furious at these schools, at the ignorance of the adults. As one
parent in the movie said, “You do not really understand unless you walk in that
person’s shoes.”  I can assure you this is the case. As a society, we lack social empathy and pain. I did a blog about this once.  These kids are destroying one
another, and when they reach 18, we expect them to come into society as
well-adjusted adults.  It is not going to happen!

Also, we are so busy trying to reach the kids. However, adults are not educating themselves in the process. How can we expect these kids to change when we continue with our own behavior? I was watching a reality show one night, which featured both children and adults. They did an episode on fighting bullying. I watched it and counted 30 incidents of bullying among the adults in the 45 minutes of airtime. That’s about an incident every 30 seconds.  I know it was a lot. Why were those adults fighting something they were doing themselves? This is also what I mean by lack of education.

Again, this is my opinion.  There is so much more I could say.

The greatest problem is that this is not considered a form of abuse. We have child abuse, sexual abuse, domestic abuse, animal abuse and elder abuse.  Then, we have bullying. Just saying!

Thanks go to Rebecca Freeman for editing this for me! It is much appreciated