Bullying Breakthrough

Here is another case study, which illustrates many of the points we’ve been discussing:

Matthew Polly is the best-selling author of American Shaolin, Tapped Out and Bruce Lee: A Life. His writing has also appeared in publications such as The Washington Post and Esquire. He is a Princeton University graduate and Rhodes Scholar, and a fellow at Yale University. He grew up in Topeka, Kansas, spent two years studying kung fu at the Shaolin Temple in Henan, China, and now lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

“The bullying started at elementary school. I had the annoying habit of knowing the answers to the teachers’ questions. That, of course, annoyed the other boys, so they took their frustrations out on me.?

I never told my parents about it; I found it too shameful. Sometimes I would run away, hoping they didn’t catch me. Sometimes I’d just take the hit and drop my head, employing the ‘Gandhi strategy’. I had the belief that if I kept up passive resistance long enough, it would stop it. But it didn’t.

Looking back, I know it would have ended if I’d fought back, but I was too afraid to fight. That continued to bother me later in life. The terror that paralyses you means you let yourself be a victim. What I learned in the long run was that bullies take advantage of weakness. They don’t like strength and they don’t like someone who fights back. They don’t actually want a fight; they just want to hurt somebody easily. That was the mistake I made as a child.

I never stopped studying or doing well at school but growing up I never thought that being smart was a good thing; being smart was what got you hit. The biggest effect of being bullied was that by the time I was a teenager I just wanted to leave and get out of my hometown. So I left and went to college at Princeton, which is full of smart kids. Suddenly, I had an entire group of people around me who were the same as me. That’s where I started studying martial arts. I made friends, had girlfriends, felt normal – at least, I didn’t feel different from everyone else. I wasn't bullied anymore.

The biggest insight I have gained on this subject is that when you stand up for yourself, other people respect you. I’m highly engaged in making my five-year-old son bully-proof. He takes Tae Kwon Do and I mildly tease and joke with him a lot, so he is comfortable with verbal roughhousing. Most of all, I encourage him not to back down when something bad happens. You want your child to be polite and mannerly, but you don’t want them to be an easy target for bullies.”