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Relationship Topics
When Your Child Is Bullied
My Personal Experience with Bullying
After years of harassment in school, I eventually learned how to defend myself from attack. During my third year in high school, my family moved and sent me to a new high school. Almost immediately, I had to deal with several who saw me as an easy mark. One of them followed me down the hall between classes, taunting and picking on me. I had had enough. I wheeled around and threw my books in his face. By the time he could see me again I was on top of him.
Fortunately, I was six foot two and able to hold my own. That was the end of our conflict. Word quickly got around to the others and they left me alone. But if I had weighed 30 pounds less and been about eight inches shorter, I would have been the continued target of these big dudes. That is the world in which adolescent boys live. As Little Orphan Annie sang in the Broadway production, It's a hard-knock life.
Let me admit, in passing, that I also thought it would be fun to bully someone at one point. I was an immature ninth grader who had been through a difficult year of harassment. It seemed reasonable that I pass along the pain to someone else. I selected who I thought was a good candidate and began giving him grief. Denny was about my size, but I took him for a sissy.
One day right before class, I was on his case big time. Unfortunately, he turned out to be much tougher than I thought. Denny suddenly hit me with about six sharp blows to the head before I knew what was happening. He really rang my bell, which was one of the greater shocks of my life. I gave up my bullying career then and there. My heart just wasn't in it. Dr. James Dobson
Excerpted by permission from Bringing Up Boys (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001.
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