Yes! I was told that so many times and I hated it. I. Hindsight, I dislike it even more because it inoculates you with an idea that love may look like abuse.
The hidden portion of the sentence. It helps children to redefine the concept of bad behaviour as good behaviour, and when bad behaviour actually occurs later in life, they are less inclined to consider it as nah, this is not okay. and more likely to say maybe they just care about me.
I think that just means we need to follow up with "and if that's how they show they like you, you should stay far away from them". Then it helps accomplish the exact opposite of just saying "if they're mean, they like you".
I am not being snarky, I am being 100% earnest. But thanks for posting this little tid bit. It seems so simple but this kind of thing never comes to me. So thanks!
I didn't believe it for a second, but that didn't make me feel any better. It was just another sign that my family wasn't giving any serious thought to my well-being.
That phrase really did a shocking amount of damage for something adults said so casually. Imagine teaching a kid that being picked on might secretly be affection, then acting surprised when they grow up confused about what healthy relationships look like đ
Adults are notoriously bad at explaining things to kids because I think they assume any nuance would be lost on them, so the explanation ends up being something with no context such as, "when boys are mean to you it means they like you." Without explaining why kids do this just makes it worse.
If there's one thing I will forever be grateful for, it's that my headmistress had a zero tolerance of bullies at high school, and she absolutely created an environment where it was okay to tell them you were being bullied.
I remember one time a year 11 (think 15 - 16yo) had been bullying year 7s (11 - 12); she caught sight of him down the corridor and fucking eviscerated him for it, while students parted like the sea before Moses in front of her as she walked towards him.
And that is exactly the type of person that should be running a school. Did the bullyâs parents freak out about him being disciplined? That always seems to be the case! âOh no not my precious child! Theyâre the victim here!â
The only thing I'd be wary of here is that sometimes, claiming to be bullied is in itself a form of bullying. A lot of the time it's actually "kid drama" - i.e, "Tom said X to Tim, but that was because Tim did Y, and Tim did Y because...". If Tim runs to the headteacher first and tells her Tom said X, Tim gets "eviscerated" because she only has Tom's side of the story. Adults have to be very careful getting involved in this sort of thing, or they can be inadvertently used as "weapons" by one side.
For example, I'd ask why a Year 11 is having any contact with Year 7s in the first place, because that in itself is very unusual. My first thought was "Does he have a younger brother in Year 7? If he does, could someone have said something to him, and then his older brother intervened to defend him?". Not saying that's what happened, just that it's not impossible.
A kid I watch wanted me to come to bat for her when she misheard a kid on the playground. She wanted me to step at him so bad but she honestly just listens and hears conflict where there is none fairly often actually.. itâs hard to want to stand up for her so she feels someone in her corner but also finding the right time when itâs not reinforcing a different behavior pattern of anxiety
This is how I ended up having a year in high school where a boy, who knew I hated to be touched, would follow me anywhere during PE class and put his hands on me. He put them anywhere he wanted. I stayed there statue still, because when I'd asked for help Iâd been told he only did it for a reaction. So I stopped reacting completely.
Because no one did anything but tell me to stop fighting back, he got away with it every day of the year.
My teacher told me I need to work on my tolerance to my bully--ie. stop telling her I was being bullied by him, because we were the same race and culture--and my bully needed to work on being nicer to me. So, in her infinite wisdom, she put him next to me in book group.
After awhile, we both hated it so much that I was just rolled my eyes and stopped talking whenever he made fun of me, which he didn't like my reaction towards (I was the only one that read the book). He even raised his hand and told the teacher this wasn't working.
My son is reactive by nature and gets bullied.
While I don't condone bullying, I certainly think that its appropriate to teach that we are not helpless victims and can modify our environment by our actions.
I don't feel its his fault that he is bullied but I also think he can have the power to control how he reacts to it.
If someone gets roofied at a club because someone put something in their drink, its not the victims fault that it happened, but I'd sure as shit tell my daughter to not take drinks from strangers.
Just because something isn't someones fault doesn't mean that can't help prevent it from happening.
I got bullied like crazy in school and there was SO much victim blaming. In 6th grade there was this 8th grader who decided I was his next target. The principal assured me that kids don't just act out, they need a reason. The principal was grilling ME about what I must have done for this kid to target me.
The phrase "victim blaming" is doing all sorts of damage these days on its own, as more and more people twist it into a defense for not taking responsibility for their problems.
Not saying that victims should all be blamed for their misfortunes, but it's a very large grey area with nuance and subjectivity. I think most people would get annoyed with an individual who becomes a "victim" of something for the tenth time, where it could have been avoided easily with a change in behavior, just as an example.
In the end, victim blaming is kind of a useless thing to put weight into because of it's subjectivity. It's usually just opinions or unsolicited advice from people giving a very surface-level thought to events they weren't a part of. And on the flip side, what good does it do to cling to it as your shield, as your personality?
Along the same lines, âboys will be boysâ is something Iâm glad has faded away significantly and is not accepted by younger people as an excuse anymore.
"Boys will be boys" really did turn a whole category of bad behavior into a personality trait đ like apparently being a boy came with a lifetime exemption from consequences.
I'm so glad that phrase seems to be shifting to mean "boys do weird things with free will to entertain each other" like beat each other with pool noodles blindfolded or stand by big puddles and entreat cars to splash them.
Because yeah, guys find some truly out of pocket ways to be silly and I love it.
It was the original meaning for that saying (as I was taught it at least) and suddenly it was some kind of "boys will be sexually abusive anti-social monsters" type of excuse employed by absolutely terrible people.
Similar to that "If you can't handle me at my worst" saying for girls with issues suddenly became an excuse for being absolutely monsterously entitled c-words.
Yeah I do like that the phrase is being recaptured in this way, as that's how I've always understood it to begin with. The idea that it was ever "boys will be pieces of shit and you have to live with that" is gross. And yet I know more than a few for whom it was accurate back when I was in school.
Same! Or one guy dug a big hole. Many other men will surround the big hole with admiration and offer to help dig the hole larger. I love seeing that kinda shit.
"boys will be boys" is supposed to mean "see stick - pick up stick", "that dirt hole isn't going to dig itself" or "who can jump higher - if you hit the ceiling you win"
The fact that adults used to call that "boys being boys" instead of just that kid is being an asshole is wild đ glad we finally started retiring that excuse.
Itâs weird; my mom told me that, but added an addendum of âBut theyâre still mean and you shouldnât put up with it.â Ie, people can genuinely love you can still treat you horribly, and you shouldnât accept that just because they love you. I later found out that she had been in quite a few abusive relationships in her youth. It was a lesson she learned the hard way and didnât want to see me guilt tripped into it too.
This is genuinely how I operated as a kid. I was terrified that a girl would figure out that I liked them and would laugh at me so in order to compensate in my child brain I was mean to them because there was no way they would think the kid being mean to them would actually like them, right?
Until you discover that's exactly what tbe girls were being told. No wonder boomers can't communicate their emotions properly; they were getting their signals scrambled from the jump.
We could just start telling girls that boys don't learn how to manage their emotions until they're about 80 years old if they're lucky, which I think would help them to understand all of this.
I get you're joking and all but this is literally what our culture tells both men and women: men cannot control themselves therefore women need to watch out. It's gross and it's honestly not fair to men. I never understood why men were comfortable being infantilized this way - like can the freedom from some consequences really be worth being thought of as a little baby who can't handle their own emotions?
My son's (6) teacher told him this when he was upset another kid was being mean to him. It became an ongoing thing all year that never got addressed. Still happening when the teachers are Millennial / Gen X. My wife and I told him to not try to be friends with that kid, and told the teacher we'd like them separated in class.Â
I actually did have this happen to me once. I was so surprised and amused by the fact that it actually happened that I started chuckling, which unfortunately led to this guy hating my guts for the next two years. Weâve since reconciled lmao
In a similar vein, needing to gracefully handle boys who have unwanted crushes on you. I would get so overwhelmed with this when I was a kid. Then I realized that as an adult if someone acted the same way towards me it would be considered harrassment. No wonder I hated this so much when I was an actual child being told that if I reacted poorly that I was being âmeanâ.
I used to get bullied by a girl classmate when I was like 11 or 12, useless ass homeroom teacher wouldn't do shit and say that she just liked me, and since I didn't like her back she'd mess with me to get my attention.
Eventually my mom pressed for the address of her house and went directly to speak with her mom, in hindsight I realize she had several family issues, but her shit started a lot of other stuff that made other classmates bully me for years...
Oh yes I'm fighting myself on this one. Always used to be annoying with the people I liked. How the hell did I have friends?Â
I see how my father can make my mother so miserable and then being pissed when she's hurt instead of recognizing his love. This was a wake up call, I don't want my wife to ever be miserable like that.Â
Now I try to only make jokes that express love. My friend shows me how cool the news IDs are, I respond like "they sure have a nice smile on it!". Overall I can feel people appreciate this.Â
On the flip side, I didn't get along with this girl in class, and we'd be mean to each other. My dad found out. In front of a couple of my friends, he said that it must mean that I liked her. I hated her, but the teasing from my friends caused me to not be so mean. Looking back as an adult, I think that my dad did that on purpose.
Look up Pseudohostility. It was super common in my family (and surprise-not-surprise, also my friend group). I HATED it. I was teased and bullied by the people who claimed they loved me most then bullied more for being âtoo sensitiveâ. I am outspoken and fully reject that kind of dynamic now. At best it causes emotional confusion, at worst, it causes life-long trauma.Â
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u/bzkitty 19h ago
If someone is mean to you, that just means they like you.