Dear B:

In your original post, you shared that you were bullied by a peer (a girl your age) during primary school all the way to high school, for over 10 years, and you didn’t tell your parents. In a later post, after I asked you why you didn’t tell your parents, you shared that you did tell them. I was surprised because how could you… forget to mention in your original post that you told your parents, seems to me that telling them about such a distressing ongoing situation would be a memorable event.

You explained in later posts (and in your very last post), that the Bully started bullying you when you were 6. She bullied you for 5-6 years before you told your parents. On the 5th or 6th year, in the presence of your parents, you weren’t able to stop yourself from crying, and so, it happened that you told them. When you told them, they wanted to take action, but you did not let them. After some time, because you kept coming home crying, they went to your school and talked to your teacher, but the teacher dismissed their concerns and that was the end of what your parents did in regard to interrupting your years-long bullying in school. They did buy you self-help books though and paid for your therapy.

At another time, you shared that you didn’t tell your parents about the bullying because you met the bully’s parents, knew that they thought that their daughter (your bully) was an angel, and that they will believe her (not you) and defend her. You also shared that you first went straight to your teacher for help because your teacher witnessed the bullying. But your teacher, instead of helping you (the bullied) stood up for the bully who was her favorite student.

It was some time after you deleted your thread that I understood why, in your first post when you presented the topic of school bullying, you forgot to mention that you told your parents: it simply wasn’t memorable, nothing came out of it, no help for you.

You didn’t tell them about being bullied for the first 5-6 years, I now understand, because you didn’t have faith in their ability to help you, and when you finally told them (not because you planned on telling them, but because you couldn’t stop yourself from crying and they asked you what’s wrong), they wanted to take action, but you didn’t let them because you didn’t have faith in them helping you. Your choice of the words, I didn’t let them, indicates to me that you viewed them as weak. A child who views her parents as strong and capable and in charge, does not… let her parents do or not do anything; strong parents will not allow their child to decide for them what they should or should not do.

When you met your bully’s parents, you were impressed by them being strong parents who will defend their daughters. On the other hand, you viewed your parents correctly as weak parents. There was no one to back you up, and the Bully must have known that- she probably met your parents, must as you have met hers, and she was impressed by them being weak, timid, passive perhaps, so she knew that you had no one to back you up.

Bullies and abusers of any age, who target children, choose children who have absent, disengaged or weak parents.

You shared that you asked her one time why she was bullying you, and her answer was: because I can! She could because you didn’t have strong parents on your side. If you did, she would be afraid to bully you!

A baby automatically reaches out to her mother for what she needs, food, comfort, protection, no second thoughts, but you did not reach out to your mother or your father for protection because you learned over time that when it comes to protection, you don’t get it by reaching out to your parents

You didn’t let them take any action to defend you because (I think) you didn’t believe that they will succeed even if they tried, being as weak as they were. Maybe you protected them from trying and failing to successfully confront the strong adults: your teacher (who favored your bully and stood up for her), or the bully’s parents (who thought their daughter was an angel and would successfully defend her).

Wikipedia: “School bullying, like bullying outside the school context, refers to one or more perpetrators who have greater physical or social power than their victim” – your bully’s greater social power sources were her parents and her teacher.

anita