My son started 9th grade at this school where he knew 1 girl from summer camp. They were good friends at camp and he was thrilled to move somewhere where he knew someone. She had grown up at that school.
The first week he was there, she suddenly stopped talking to him—apparently, he wasn’t cool enough for her friends, so she would roll her eyes and say OMG, OMG over and over when he would talk to her. She ignored him completely and would not answer his questions about what was wrong—only would smile sweetly and say, “What? Anything wrong? Of course not!” Then when he thought everything was okay and said, “Hi,” she would say OMG, and ignore him again. This turned her friends off to him.
My son was fully blindsided by this sudden change in her friendship and tried several times to talk with her and ask what he did wrong. He approached her with concern and caring, but she would freak out and tell her friends he was stalking her- that didn’t help his case. He was on the football team with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend started to push my son around and said to stop harassing his girlfriend. Funny thing is, when her car broke down later, it was him she called to give her a ride home because her friend had a nail appointment that she wouldn’t cancel—and being who he is, he gave her a ride home.
One day, he stood up to her and said, “Enough!! Stop it!” She twisted that around into an attack and went crying to her friends again. I work with her mom, so I thought—okay, maybe the moms could figure it out. For 2 months after that kids at school would say, “Waa, waa, run to your mommy,” to my son constantly- in class, in the halls, they said, “WaaWaa.” I simply couldn’t protect him. It started with that small group of kids targeting him, but by his junior year, it had become a large group of kids—it was like cancer and teenagers are like that—they jump on the bandwagon without using their own judgment calls. There were situations where my son would do something innocuous and they would slap their own ugly interpretation on it and in their minds, it became fact.
My son, amazingly enough, just kept on being himself and slowly got his own group of friends. He did, however, become bitter and developed a low self esteem, but kept on the best he could. Many teachers loved him and when one of his swim teammates committed suicide, it was our house everyone came to for group support—my son’s kindness was evident to everyone, but they couldn’t afford to really be friends with him without becoming a target too. After the suicide, some people started telling my son to kill himself to make the world a better place.
After that, I just moved him to a different school. When he moved, some kids there called his old school and they were told he was a woman-beater so he had to start there on a deficit as well. The only thing I can say is – he made it through, hit some really rough spots, has become very crusty and seems hard at first, has to deal with a poor self-perception and is still healing from it, but is doing really well these past few months. He graduated 2 years ago—it took 2 years to really stabilize again.
I have learned from this situation that bullying is not just an individual to individual thing, but can easily become a group activity. The more people that target the victim, the more justified they feel in increasing or continuing the bullying. It’s unbelievable how strong groupthink is when it takes over. Sometimes even teachers get involved and they feel empowered and fully justified in attacking a student because everyone, together, has agreed that crappy person totally deserves it. Even after suicide occurs, there is sometimes no compassion because the group has established an agreement that the person is that worthless. I’ve seen it with my son, among the students I teach and in different situations. This scenario is far, far from unique—it’s everywhere.
Sometimes the “poison” can be stopped, sometimes it really can’t because everyone’s too invested in their mindset. I’ve said a lot—there’s a lot to say about bullying, targeting, mobbing, victimizing, attacking—all that. I know you’re studying this area, so anything to help your studies!!
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