The Boy Crisis by Warren Farrell & John Gray

Author:Warren Farrell & John Gray
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.
Published: 2018-01-23T05:00:00+00:00

The Bully and the Bullied

To this day, I vividly recall Jimmy standing across from me with a brick in his hand, threatening to smash my skull. Like Gabriel, I had just moved to a new neighborhood, in Waldwick, New Jersey, and had spent too much time talking positively about my old neighborhood in Paramus. Jimmy didn’t like me “threatening” his territory, and, as his brick hovered over me and my mind raced with visions of a brick smashing my skull, I was blessed to access my limited reserve of seventh-grader emotional intelligence: searching for something I respected about Jimmy.

Eureka! I recalled that Jimmy had formed a small club of neighborhood friends. I offered, “Jimmy, you’re a leader. You got Bobby and a lot of the kids in our neighborhood to join your club, and then they made you captain. Why do you think they made you captain?” I don’t recall what Jimmy answered; I do recall that as he started telling me why they wanted him to be captain, that his arm kept lowering the brick, until he dropped it into the gutter.

Because so many of us have experienced the damage of being bullied, and are disenchanted with the lose-lose choices we thought we had as boys—get beaten up, run away, or fight back—it is easy to believe it is our job as parents to keep expanding the punishment of bullies until the bullying stops.

In my encounter with Jimmy, though, I unwittingly discovered an alternative to getting beaten up, running away, or fighting back: seeing the bully as someone in search of respect, knowing that if we can help the bully find what he can respect about himself, the brick of anger will fall.

In brief, I inadvertently found that one way to fight disrespect is with respect. I couldn’t have put it that way in seventh grade, and it wasn’t my leading instinct—but somehow, in my search to survive, I accessed that option, and doubtless it has stayed with me so long because it worked so well.

Later I learned that bullies are often being abused at home by a bully parent,16 or are neglected and rudderless with little or no father involvement. I discovered that, counterintuitively, bullies and the bullied often have a lot in common: they are often both underachievers with low self-esteem.

If we are to bridge the gap between health intelligence and heroic intelligence, it starts with compassion not only for the bullied but also for the bully.

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