Teach your kids to fight

Back in the day, if you were bullied, you ether stood up or you ran and hid. Back in my day, lord am I that old?, it was settled in the school yard, or at a bus stop, the bullied sometimes won, and sometimes they didn't, but ether way the large majority of the time the bullying stopped.

Somewhere things changed, and the bullied are punished as much as the bully himself, in other words we gave protected status to the bullies, we somehow made it bad to stand up for yourself.


It wasn't pretty there were black eyes, busted lips, broken noses, and even a few cracked ribs, but all of those things heal. But what does not heal is when you make someone helpless. 


Bullies are cowards, they really are afraid, and most of the time are trying to prove to themselves they are not afraid, by picking on the smaller, the weaker, those that don't quite fit in. We have given them free rein, and the problem has mushroomed to a point that we can no longer control it or them.


The victims are told they have to play nice, and endure the taunts, that if they respond they will pay a price, and by making them helpless, drive them to desperate measures.


To quote Theodore Roosevelt:
"No greater wrong can ever be done than to put a good man at the mercy of evil, while telling him not to defend himself or his fellows. In no way can the success of evil be made more sure"  


and:


“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”


Teach your kids to stand up, and teach them how and when to fight, they will be better adults for it