Promoting Empathy to Stop Bullying

[Pix]

This looks hopeful:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/free...ing-babies

Mary Gordon founded Roots of Empathy after years of working with abusive parents and abused children. She saw the cycle. Children growing up unloved and surrounded by violence became unloving and violent parents. The idea behind her new program was to bring real babies and their moms (and sometimes dads) into school classrooms so that children from all backgrounds could gain experience looking at babies, talking about babies, and thinking about what it is like to be a baby. The idea was that this would help set children on the road to becoming, ultimately, better parents.

She found, through experience, that her program also had a remarkable, more immediate effect on the classrooms that participated. The children who had this experience--of a monthly visit from a baby and parent--became kinder and more compassionate with one another. Bullying declined. Kids who were previously teased and taunted for being different were now in many cases admired for their differences. Apparently, the exposure to the infant, and the discussions of the thoughts and feelings that the infant evoked, served as a powerful force for the spread of compassion throughout the classroom--an effect that would last the whole month, from one baby visit to the next.

[Bowyn Aerrow]

I'm afraid that once a person hit age 7, if their parents have failed to bond with them, show them affection and love and even abused them, they are warped for life. It is pretty much well known that children who were raised in an unloving home, not shown comfort and compassion while being a baby end up being emotionally distant (at best) and are unable to form the same strong bonds of emotional attachment and have issues with showing their emotions physically. Hugging, cuddling, and other such positive behaviors are a stumbling block for them - for life.

This guy may be an expert at studying abusive relationships, but I am an expert at living inside of abusive relationships. A couple with a baby all playing (acting) nice looks like to adults playing (acting) at being nice in public.

As a child of abuse I know - in my gut, that all of these loving homes and 'good parents' are actors - playing at being nice and good, the reality is that we all get beaten, starved, locked in closets, thrown down stairs, punched, slapped and lots of other things in the privacy of our own home, because that is exactly what happened to me, while in public both of my parents put on their civilization masks and played at being 'good parents' at home they ripped off the masks and did as they wanted.

This kind of knowing is not undone by intellectual understanding. Its not undone by a few sessions of seeing a normal family going about normal, constructive ways of dealing with issues. Its as visceral of an experience as one can get and its not shaken, not with year and decades of therapy, not with heavy medication use, its as hard wired into your basic programing as breathing - more so since most people an hold their breath for a little while.

Bullies are mostly mini-abusers, or abusers who do not have a specific target such as a spouse or a kid. Their behaviors, their use of bullying techniques are the same techniques used by abusers with their victims. Most abusers start off with bullying tactics before laying in with the physical violence. Their mouths are often the most abusive weapon they have and they use it, often, and gain power from seeing the damage their words do.

Its a power trip - they gain control, often the control they feel they do not have in in everyday situations, power they lost to another person who stole it from them, so they go out seeking another person to steal that power back from.

Seeing a nice parent and a baby does nothing to restore the balance of power.


By the time the symptoms are showing they're beyond mere empathy fixing their issues. Yeah sure, they will put on a nice face and smile, may even change their behaviors in the short term, knowing that folk are watching, but in the long term watching a baby and its parent(s) is like watching TV - it ain't the real thing.

Abusers become great actors, they know intellectually that society expects X,Y and Z. They do not understand why, they don't want it themselves, but they do understand that if society find out that they are into A,B,C instead of X,Y,Z that society will seek to take their power away from them.

Most abusers, perhaps as high as 98% of them are/were victims themselves.

You cannot undo the effects of abuse. Once its done, its done for good - its always there, is always carried by that person - for life. I have slight abusive tendencies - when angry I do not hold back and will dig deep for the most painful, hurtful things to say. Granted I never initiated a fist fight, but there are plenty of doors and walls that got a hole punched in them way back before I found constructive ways to deal with my anger.

I am still affected by what my parents did to me. My mind and heart are warped and twisted, I have a skewed sense of what is and is not 'real' in the world. just one minor example: Again, I know that people acting nice to their kids in public is all an act - I know it emotionally, at the core of me being because we acted when I was a kid - we acted like the perfect family - I did it out of fear of being killed. My parents did it out of fear of being punished.

I see a baby and I see the always hungry mouth. Most babies are hideous to me. I can't get over how people oooh and aaah over the precious bundle of meat saying how cute it is when it is pretty much a hideous looking beastie. Someone says 'I'm pregnant' I start mentally ticking off all the issues that person has and why they are so terribly unfit to be a parent.

I do not get that overwhelming sense of love and compassion. My emotions are skewed, by the abuse I received as a child. I do not relate to the baby/parent relationship in the normative ways that non-abused people do. I can't - not unwilling, I am unable.

I have no idea what a bully actually thinks when they see a baby, maybe its a rush of strong emotion at seeing a potential victim, and innocent that they can corrupt - perhaps as strong a rush as when I see a baggy of speed?

I seriously doubt that a bully/abuser has the same correct emotions that fall within nominal parameters for non-abused/abusive individuals. I seriously doubt that they see this parent/baby doing their thing and they feel and think the same things that non-abused, non-bullies feel.

[dfiant]

Desperate mum at wits' end over bully son