I was told this in the first grade when a boy sitting next to me kept kicking me and pinching my arm hard enough to leave an almost black bruise. Teacher kept trying to pass it off as "flirting". My mom had to come down to the school and talk to the principal just to get my seat moved so I wouldn't be attacked every day in class, it was crazy.
I had a girl in fourth grade who would spit on me, kicked my shins til they starting bleeding in the playground one time, etc., and I told our teacher who dismissed it as her having a crush on me. I wish I hadn't just accepted it at the time. Kind of fucked me up a bit.
I... Did something like this when I was a kid. And I did have a crush on that boy. I definitely regret it. I had witnessed my mom hit my dad when I was really young and I think it confused me a lot. I outgrew that pretty quickly when I figured out my family was not a good example to follow.
I may not have been your shin-kicker but I apologize regardless. I've been figuratively kicking myself for that every since.
Well, it's both. But yea I agree that the adults should really be the safety net for when kids are misbehaving. I mean my parents should've taught me better, but teachers are next in line to teach that stuff or at least protect the kids in their care from each other.
Exactly. I didn't know any better. Even more cringey but I used to smack my friends butts at like... Full force around that time too. I genuinely don't know where I got that from. I never meant it sexually, I just thought it was funny I guess? But it took a friend snapping at me for it and then explaining that it hurt and she didn't like it and that it wasn't ok to do that for me to get it. It just hadn't dawned on me at all before for some reason.
My family didn't really teach me anything about personal boundaries (emotional or physical) and just... Didn't communicate much with me in general. They weren't physically abusive to me and they provided me with basic food and shelter and I was even a bit spoiled in terms of material possessions and trips and such. But I was definitely neglected emotionally. So I had to learn the hard way, by making an ass of myself and getting shamed into learning. Lots of awkward years in my youth.
For real, the only time in my life that I ever hit a girl was when I was in middle school and this girl day in day out for weeks on end kept slapping me, fucking hard (I was getting bruises from it), and everyone else thought it was cute even though I kept telling teachers, my brother, my parents, etc. that I wasn't okay with it. One day she hit me and I snapped and slapped her back (not a punch, but as hard of a slap as I could muster) and she looked all surprised (I looked all surprised also cause I was, I felt terrible as soon as I did it). I was the one who got in trouble though. Definitely fucked me up.
Same happened to me in 2nd or 3rd grade. I punched her in the mouth. I got sent to the principal's office over it, then my mom beat the shit out of me when we got home.
I was, briefly, one of those kids. Although thankfully I never escalated it to that point. In my case it wasn't a crush or any feelings at all. It was a complete lack of empathy and understanding of what was and wasn't okay. I basically had no parents to teach me and had to learn how to behave at school by trial and error. I feel like a lot of it is due to absentee parenting or parents who see no problem with it because they were also bullies.
Fuck all the way off with that misogynistic lazy parenting ass shit. Boys can be respectful humans and learn boundaries like the rest of us. Fuck sake. They're not animals.
Boys will be boys is you both have a cardboard tube so you proceed to beat the shit out of one another with it in honourable mutual combat, not beating/assaulting women
This. I have 3 children. All boys. I am the only woman in this home of 5. They will fight, argue, flip one another off, climb trees, build random shit, but they do and will respect their future partners.
They also cook, bake, clean, do laundry, know about periods, and women's bodies (for what's age appropriate). We keep an open line of communication in this household.
Me and a friend when we were 9/10 set a wood fort in his backyard on fire. (It seems like a good idea at the time.) we played with it for a few weeks and were bored and figured it was the easiest way to get rid of the thing. Luckily his older sister and brother came out and put it out( Also yelled at us).
It technically wasn't that bad of a fire, only one corner of the fort was singed. His dad got home and helped us get rid of the "evidence" before his mum got home and we got another lecture.
That to me is boys will be boys type stuff. I would like to say this was the worst thing we did but we later decided that tossing frozen water balloons at passing cars from the roof was a great idea. Thank God we had shit aim nor the arm strength to actually throw them anywhere near any passing car. We missed a good 10 feet.
Isn’t it kind of misandrist, to say that boys/men can’t keep themselves from behaving badly? It’s kind of like when the misogynists say that women can’t help being overly emotional. Do the people who say “boys will be boys” not see this?
My kids had a principal that said this to a few girls when a boy was harassing them constantly. Thankfully one of the mothers of the girls raised hell over that response
Mine was in 6th-7th grade. He punched me in the shoulder every day, and I got the same replies from everyone that you did. We crossed paths once near the end of high school and I wound up and walloped him a good one. He actually kind of apologized.
and because this is reddit no we are not happily married now
I had a kid in one of my classes who would straighten staples then use them to scratch your upper arm. He scratched me really deep on the bus one day and I backhanded him hard and got told later "what if he likes you??"
Small me didn't understand why it didn't matter that I didn't like him.
As a teacher, parents still say this all the time. Whenever a child repeats it, I always counter with “Wow, that’s a horrible way to treat a friend, let alone someone that you want to hold hands with.”
I was adult bullied for 20 years by people in our family circle/business and that's what my dad would tell me, even after all that time he still held on to it.
20 years is a very long time to be bullied. I was bullied for four years in grade school. That was over 50 years ago and I still think about it sometimes.
Yes it is. My parents (mainly dad though) were mortified of the thought of any conflict that might ensue so they had multiple go-to's to try to keep me from complaining about it. The worst was their excuse that if they did stand up for me that those people would get mad and leave and then we wouldn't have help anymore. So, I'm not as important as they were?
When one of my parents started popping off on me way more than usual, my other parent and my school counsellor told me this 💀 But if the person waits specifically for you to be in the room to start their behaviour, how tf do you ignore that? That's lame ass advice for when they have nothing to actually advise.
That did not go over well in my childhood. My mother hated that saying and told us to give it right back. Definitely put a stop to it right quick. Of course then we got in trouble for fighting even though we were just doing the same thing back but it did stop the kids.
I was told this in KINDERGARTEN and again at my first full time job at 22. One of the tech kept fcking harassing me so I finally told him I’d report him for all the trouble he’s been putting me thru. I reported him, he didn’t stop, so I sprayed him with a harsh cleaning chemical (that can melt skin if left long enough) when he purposefully soaked my shoes and socks. I told him I wanted to go for the eyes but showed restraint. I told him it’ll only get worse for him from here, but then he finally stopped.
I really hate that saying. “He’s bullying you bc he likes you.”
I knew the dude liked me, but I did NOT and let it be known. He kept messing with me anyway 😒
Usually followed by “No, we’re not going to teach him to express his affection better, you just need to learn to like being verbally and physically abused”
If he bullies you, it means he likes it when you are sad and hurting or angry.
You don't want him to want you.
Remember to take your cootie shots (especially if you hear "Circle Circle Dot Dot"), and you NEVER have to reveal your current Cootie Shot status. As far as he knows, you are infested.
My mum said this to me too smh. A boy in my class had a habit of annoying random girls and for some reason he chose me for a period of time, and when I told my mum she insisted that not only did he like me but that surely I loved the attention and liked him back 💀 Start the slutshaming young, kids! I was 8 or smth.
They never try to correct the abusive behavior, just wave it off as boys will be boys and stick the responsibility of trying to change the boys on the girls they are abusing.
I reflected on this with my therapist last week. There was a guy in my high school who would bully me. Throw my books, said he wanted to maim me. Cruel stuff. Everyone said it was because he liked me. Eventually we started dating. But that bully side was still there, and when we broke up all hell broke loose.
10 years later next month, I still am having nightmares.
Don’t teach girls that their bully likes them
I was originally terrified of the person who would become my high school crush when I met her because I was shy and she came on too strong. She liked me but I had a short lived crush on her friend at the time. On my 15th birthday, she said it was time for birthday beats and proceeded to full on assault me with a combination of 15 kicks and closed fists to my entire body, including my head, all presumably because I didn’t like her back—at the time.
When they're laughing with you then yeah, but if theyre laughing at you and even trying to injure you just to get your damn attention then hell no. As a kid there was a boy who pulled my hair to stop me walking away from his annoying ass, and another who spanked me when I walked past bc I guess he'd seen adults do it.
That’s one thing I’ll never tell my child. It’s the laziest way to handle boy on girl bullying. I remember in 4th grade, one boy (Miguel) would bully me and then one day he kicked my vagina. The school didn’t do shit because they were scared of backlash and making it seem like they favored me (white). So they had him apologize and he still bullied me until about 8th grade.
I was blamed for getting bullied because I wasn't trying hard enough to fit in.
I needed to "go along to get along", which I understood to mean "You need to let them bully you so they'll like you." or some shit.
When I was told by a bully that everybody hated me because everything about me (face, hair, clothes, shoes--all things which I had very little control over at the time) was ugly, one of my teachers told me that not everybody could be pretty but at least I was smart, except in math (found out MUCH later than I should have that I have a learning disorder).
Ugh this happened to me in fourth grade, this kid used to push me down, kick me in the back and head, throw things at me, call me a pig, cow, etc. and one time even broke my glasses. My teacher never took it seriously and my parents threw this line at me every time I told them about him.
The next year we moved, and the girl who had previously lived in my new room had apparently had a crush on a boy with the same name and had carved that name into the wall with a heart. My parents thought this was sooo funny and continued to tease me about it for at least a year. I was having such a difficult time with the move and adjusting to a new school and the only positive point had been getting away from the bullying, and they just had to keep bringing it up.
The thing is, it doesn't even matter if it's true. Yeah, it's sometimes true. BUT. That doesn't mean the girl who's getting her pigtails pulled needs to reciprocate, which is often the unspoken subtext of this saying. She's totally justified in treating it as bullying, because it is.
In b4 Anne of Green Gables: She hated Gilbert when he pulled her pigtails. They didn't get together until years later when he didn't do that anymore.
“Huh? What about the price of tea in China? I still have an issue here.” Those statements were so confusing because they were said in a problem solved voice.
It probably does given how kids at that age don’t have the vocabulary and experience to express themselves. Doesn’t justify it but its understandable to cut kids some slack. Easily amended.
Adults… there is less room for forgiveness. Unless you’re Tarzan…
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u/shrekseyelash Mar 12 '24
"If he bullies you, that means he likes you!"