Did you tease as a child?

[Miss Chicken]

When I was a girl I was teased by other children, mainly because I had a speech problem. As a result I could never hurt another child by teasing them not even my little brother.

I remember one girl at school who was very popular but never teased anyone. She was just a very kind-hearted girl (sadly she died when she was 11).

I know a lot of people here were bullied and tease but I am wondering if any one will admit that they sometimes, or even often, teased other children.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

To my shame, once or twice. Not because I liked it- I hated it- but because it was that or have them turn against me. I was so used to being the target it was a massive relief when it wasn't me for a change. I was bullied rather seriously- going far beyond "teasing"- and when it was someone else I said nothing because for a while I was secure. Once or twice, I even participated slightly. Luckily, the targeted boy in question knew why I was doing that, and I don't think he ever held it against me. Still, I feel guilty about it to this day (it wasn't anything serious I did, but still, I wish I'd been a little braver)

Really, my memories of age 11-16 are horrible. It's terrible the way children treat each other. In my community it was particularly bad. I don't actually know if it's only here, but from what I've heard it's everywhere. Our societies are so competitive and aggressive. Children are taught that if they kick someone else down and stand on their back to get something, they should. They are taught to hate and abuse anyone who is different or weak. They are united not by love and by appreciation but by fear and action against someone else. This really has to change.

With the exception of those few shameful incidents, I treated other children with kindness, appreciation and loyalty. They tried to walk all over me. They thought they were manipulating me, but I could see right through them all. However, I lacked the courage to actually put a stop to it and let them know. You learnt to keep your mouth shut, anyway. Accusing them of anything was all the excuse they needed to paint you as the villain of the piece as an excuse to attack you. Over the years, as we matured, I was able to influence them, however, and show them my way was better. And in late adolescence, I found many people who were wonderful and friendly. Plenty of people grow out of the childhood nastiness, but most children today are horrible.

To be honest, I'm reluctant to even send my future children to school (if I can afford good tutors it might have to be that*) because, unless things change drastically, I know exactly what they're in for.


* I value scholarship and study very highly, but if they have to suffer as I did to get it, I'm not surte I could let that happen...

 

[Michael Chris]

I was never teased and I never teased.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I never teased anyone until it happened to me. I was severely bullied, and my situation was a bit like Deranged Nasat's. If I didn't participate in the teasing, I would be just as subject to it. It only happened a couple times but I did go along with it, at least until I got a bit older and started sticking up for other kids because I was sick of seeing them treated the same way I was. A bunch of us banded together because the school wouldn't do anything about the problem. We were like a bunch of stereotypes: the poor kid, the fat kid, the new kid, the token black kid, and the weird kid (me).

People who are bullied often become bullies themselves. They don't call it a "cycle of violence" for nothing.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I occasionally stood up for a child but I knew I wasn't at risk when I did so.

I was a tomboy and I was actually liked by boys. Unfortunately my school had separate boys and girls playground so I didn't have protection from my male friends during school hours. Luckily I walked home from school with the boys so I was safe from girls after school.

Sometimes the boys would pick on a weaker boy and i would always side with the weaker boy. The boys never held this against me, nor did they ever turn on me, and often I could help the boy being bullied and teased.

 

[sidious618]

Yes, there was a time in my life, thankfully a short one, where I had no problem insulting someone even if they didn't really deserve it. It's the only thing I've done that I truly regret.

 

[ShamelessMcBundy]

Who didn't?

 

[Daneel]

Strangely, my childhood best friend and I regularly teased each other -- I teased him for being short and he teased me for being fat. At first, I was actually quite hurt when he called me fat (and he wasn't the only one to do so, I might add), but eventually I just sort of let it roll off me... or at least I tried to let it roll off me. Still kind of bothered me though. I hate to admit it, but I never even stopped to consider that my calling him short might have hurt him in a similar manner -- it just seemed to me that being called "fat" was worse, but that might just be because I was the one being teased in those instances. Eventually we both matured as we grew and stopped calling each other names, but I now regret that I didn't really consider his feelings at all times; even though my name-calling wasn't done out of malice (nor was his, I'm sure), I now realize how much it can still hurt anyway.

As a child, I was more often the one being teased than the one doing the teasing. I won't claim that I was perfect as a youngster (occasionally I would join in when others made fun of the "weird kids", usually behind their backs), but generally I think I was a bit more mature than most of my peers... and never mean-spirited, as a few of them seemed to be.

 

[Roger Wilco]

Yes, I'm quite ashamed to say in hindsight. Some of the things I did were pretty horrible actually.

 

[Cutter John]

Nope. I was the one gettign teased. I was seriously introverted and spent my entire four years of high school with a target on my back. Very nasty, cruel stuff, and its effected how I've relate to people ever since. I grew up with a lot of bottled up hostility and have had trouble socializing. Its to the point that I can't even stand to hear people laughing behind me and I overreact badly to any sort of innocent teasing at work.

Maybe if I'd spent more time lashing out instead of the 'If you ignore them they'll go away' method things might have been different.

Very rarely tease anyone myself though, unles sits someone I'm close to and trust. I'm paranoid about hurting someones feelings. Or worse, get them teasing back and end up taking it the wrong way.

 

[mimic]

There was one boy in middle school who was a little odd to start out with, but his Dad died in fifth grade and he got really weird. He would spaz out if you touched his stuff, that kind of thing. During band camp he would stand in the middle of the football field and play some Zelda song on his trumpet and say that he was 'summoning a hurricane.' He got teased a lot for that. I never joined in, but I didn't make much of an effort to defend him, either. I feel bad about that. The kid's more or less normal now; college did him a lot of good.

I definitely do tease, but not in a mean way. It's my sense of humor. I'm a big fan of "Steve is old" jokes (he's almost 30! ) and I make fun of Shane for his dislike of the Eagles and neat freakishness and Pat for keeping odd pets (a pet cockroach??? really???). I know they can take it though, and they dish it right back. Usually. Pat's the only one who's any good at it.

 

[nevermore]

I know a lot of people here were bullied and tease but I am wondering if any one will admit that they sometimes, or even often, teased other children.

Yo.

I was kind of a bully, actually. Still am sometimes, though at least I've learned to tinge it with humor and not say every mean thing that pops into my head.

 

[JonathonWally]

I don't bully, I call it like I see it.

 

[nevermore]

^I want to change my answer to that.

eta: I should point out that I really only picked on my friends. I went to very small schools though, so that was a relatively large pool of people.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Only my sisters, really. Until they grew up, then they started teasing me.

In the playground food chain, I always ended up as being teased, never brave/foolish/manly/confident/stupid enough to be able to tease others. IN every school I attended, I always ended up in a peer group of other teased people, where even there the people formed their own tease hierarchy. In that sub-class of schoolkids, while I could safely say I wasn't among the Even More Teased (although given our lowly position in the school popularity structure, it was merely all good-natured banter and never malicious), I merely sat in the background.

 

[RandyS]

I always gave as good as I got.

 

[thestrangequark]

I only ever teased my sisters, and that was always good-natured teasing. I was only teased a couple of times as a kid, I was generally well-liked. With one exception the rare teasing I did receive never bothered me. I did get teased when I returned to school following a month in the hospital after my diabetes diagnosis. A couple of kids had parents or grandparents with type 2 diabetes and teased me about it being my fault, that I ate too much sugar, that I must have been really fat at some point. They clearly didn't know the difference between type 1 and type 2, and even though I knew having diabetes wasn't my fault, I was still hurt by the accusation. I think that mostly had to do with being 12, which is a terrible age to be, and having missed that crucial 1st month needed to get used to junior high school.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I didn't tease as a child, but I do now!

 

[Leroy]

I've both made fun of people and been made fun of at some point in my life. The kids that got the standard fare of bullying are lucky I got sexually harassed throughout junior high and high school.

 

[Jono]

I teased and I got teased when I was a kid. Out of my siblings I was the bully and was the one that got yelled at for picking on my brother or sister. At school got teased a bit but I was high in the food chain for most of my life at school so I dealt out a more than I received, of which some of it I feel bad about. Not all because there were a few people I genuinely hated for legitimate reasons.