Treating bullying as everyone's problem reduces incidence in primary schools

I think a lot of bullying is rooted in a form of social awkward way to initiate play. And/or a form of testing the other to see if 1) the other kid is a equal alpha/beta scale in the pecking order or 2) a weakling that will tolerate bullying behavior thus boosting my alpha/beta standing in the pack.

There’s obviously some other complexity but i think this sums up a lot of the most common reasons that almost every kids will give/receive at some point. Some kids are just pure evil and enjoy inflicting pain, that’s out there but less common.

this is true in my experience. There is the stupid psychotic kind of bully, but there is also the misguided kind that thinks this is how boys are supposed to bond. In my case I cried when I was bullied after several times cause i thought it was so uncool and he stopped and we became friends. Not super close or anything. I guess i figured he wasn't stupid or evil.

I became friends with most people that tested my boundaries (I don’t even like calling what I experienced “bullying” it was so minor). But I was also always extremely intolerant of it. Meaning, I fought back or retaliated in equal or worse ways. It wasn’t the best way but it worked. I moved a lot as a kid and there was always a new group I was having to integrate with and so I got used to dealing with all the typically stuff that came with that. I once had a kid messing with me on a school bus, I asked him to stop, tried to avoid sitting near him, but finally after about 3 days of him doing whatever he was doing I smacked him across the nose with the spine of my textbook and there was so much blood. I got detention for a week and some corporal punishment (smacks with a wooden paddle iirc). He never messed with me again and I became Mr. Popularity for standing up to this kid who was I guess a jerk to everyone. It was only second grade and didn’t last because we moved again at the end of the year. I don’t remember if i became friends with that guy, that memory stands out because my reaction was so severe. By middle school, we’d do dumb stuff like smack each other in the back of the head or tripping each other in the halls of school. The kids that didn’t participate probably felt bullied when some one tried to “befriend them”, everyone else became friends. We all would laugh about it and play together at recess, basketball, wallball, etc came out of it.

Now, I’m a dad of a 6 year old son. We’ve been telling him his whole life to be respectful and keep his hands to himself. He has and is truly baffled by kids with aggressive attitudes. He’s been around it occasionally his whole life, having to play nice or talk it out with another kid but while he’s still pretty chill and peaceful it’s now obvious he’s essentially bully bate. He’s too kind and tolerant of other kids being jerks. This past few months we made the switch to telling him that defending himself is OK. It felt weird, like we did everything right but now have to backtrack because of the failure of other parents. Or, and maybe more likely, it’s the case that some kids are just more innately better/worse behaved and we just haven’t properly prepared our kid to deal with it. Idk but I’m totally willing to deal with the fallout of him getting in trouble defending himself versus the fallout of him not defending himself and being a victim with lasting damage to his self confidence/mental health.