On Bullying among Young Boys

My observations here are of early childhood bullying among boys, roughly ages 4 to 10, and may apply less for older kids/teens, among girls, etc. My observations also don’t apply to budding psychopaths or those with severe personality disorders, who may have some genetic predisposition to violence and bullying, or in any case are extreme outliers. 

Veils of Silence

“Oh, that’s right. You get to go through all that now.” –An elderly neighbor, when I mentioned our son was being bullied.

When my wife became pregnant with our first child, she learned that there was a veil of silence surrounding many of the day-to-day aspects of being pregnant and giving birth, and this veil was only lifted for you once you became pregnant and were in the presence of other women who’d been through it. Then, the stories and cautions and warnings about the whole experience began. This wasn’t a coordinated effort on the part of every mother she knew, but a silent cultural expectation she didn’t know existed until she became pregnant.

There is a similar veil of silence around bullying among children, despite the best efforts of many school systems and local governments. Our son Daniel, currently age 9, has been bullied for years by a particularly cruel and cunning child the same age, named Michael. We’ve discussed it with family and one or two older friends, and the experience is roughly the same: People who would never raise the issue on their own now express words of sympathy or wisdom they gained when they or their own kids were bullied in the past. Many people (and/or their children) have been bullied, but most stay silent about it.

I was bullied a few times as a kid, but never talked about it to my own parents and it’s never come up in conversation that I can recall. I’m part of it.

 

The Setting

We live around the DC beltway, in what passes on east coast incomes for a middle to upper-middle class townhouse community in the suburbs. Our neighborhood is of very mixed ethnicity, and has people from all over the US and a good number from other countries. The presence of so many Federal jobs ensures a decent level of stability. The neighborhood is known for being family-friendly, and having several playgrounds and other facilities maintained by our HOA. There’s an actual sense of community in the neighborhood, and everyone we know who moves out tells us they wish they’d stayed. Kids are allowed to roam and play outside with low/no supervision. So, a nice place that we lucked out moving into.

Our son is Daniel. His best friend is Andrew. The bully is Michael. The bully’s best friend and sidekick is Robert. The bullying began when all the boys were 6 years old, and there are still incidents today, at age 9. All names have been changed.

 

A Basic Typology of Bullies

By the time bullies are roughly ages 6 to 9, they’ve either been caught or “haven’t” been caught bullying. There are three types among young boys at this age range.

The Reformed Bully

Typically, a child that started some bullying behaviors early, perhaps daycare, preschool, or kindergarten. His parents were notified by the daycare/school or parents of the victim(s), and his parents took decisive action to correct this behavior. A reformed bully was caught early and lives in a home that recognizes and stops such behavior. I suspect these are the most common bullies, but they’re not usually classified as such because they don’t last long and are seen, accurately, as going through an early childhood phase that was corrected.

The Crude Bully

The stereotypical schoolyard bullies, the ones that everyone knows about and kids talk about and learn to avoid if they can. These are bullies as commonly depicted in comic strips, movies, and on TV, so most people know what they are like. They tend to bully a wide range of victims, other than any sidekicks or small gangs that follow them, and only relenting against any kids who are physically capable of fighting back and winning. They are frequently caught bullying, but they don’t change their ways. Their parents are either unable or unwilling to stop them.

Crude bullies are not very adaptable or cunning, though their tactics can still evolve over time.

The Careful Bully

The crude schoolyard bully is in the media and cultural spotlight, while careful bullies are in the shadows. And, being in the shadows, they are much harder to identify and stop.

These are the bullies that “haven’t” been caught, though I use quotes here because these kids in fact have been caught, likely many times at the earliest ages, but the consequences they faced were minimal and, crucially, they have adapted their tactics to make future detection less likely.

With careful bullies, it’s often the case that only their victims know what they’re up to, and the array of tactics they can deploy far surpasses that of crude bullies. The ideal careful bully chooses his victims and waits for the right time and place to attack, almost always when no adults are around and the victim is alone, or perhaps when only one or two trusted kids are nearby. Compared to the crude bully, he is less likely to physically attack his victim than to cause psychological distress and trauma. When they do get physical, the best careful bullies do not leave evidence of their attacks, can make their attacks look like accidents, or can portray their victims as aggressors. Their tactics evolve over time. Careful bullies have a small number of victims, often just one, which further shields them from detection. Two or more kids making the same claims about bullying might be taken seriously, but just one kid, especially if less popular or with lower social skills, will not be believed.

A careful bully may be known to everyone else as a nice and normal child. There may be one in your kid’s grade at school. You may even have invited him to your house. You have no idea of what he actually gets up to and wouldn’t believe it if you were told. But that’s the reality of it—if he weren’t careful and able to hide his activities, he’d have been caught and outed. He hasn’t been, and remains undetected and one of the “good” kids.

I suspect that these bullies, if they remain successfully concealed and surrounded by permissive or clueless adults, may transform into two different types in their teenage years: “Popular” bullies who conduct their activities more openly but use social clout to cover themselves (the football coach’s son, the local politician’s son, etc.), and “quiet abusers,” who continue picking on victims and mastering the arts of concealment and gaslighting. And of course, there’s nothing stopping kids who are popular bullies in public from being quiet abusers in private. It seems logical that a large segment of adult abusers and manipulators, especially those who are not in jail, come from the careful bully category.

 

What Makes a Bully? Where Do They Come From?

This section is mostly speculation, with conclusions arrived at by working backward from observations of our local bullies and their families. No attempt at a comprehensive answer is made here.

Bullies likely drink from three possible wellsprings: (1) Normal experimentation and cognitive development leading to adoption of some bad behaviors. (2) Trouble at home, such as an emotionally or physically abusive parent. The child could be reacting to the stress of his home life, relieving it by re-enacting some of what he has gone through. (3) Bad feedback loops, where a child is either not faced with consequences, punished too severely (eg beatings), or is in fact rewarded for bullying and aggressive behavior. This reward does not have to be explicitly understood as such by the bully’s parents.

Some form of (3) seems necessary for a bully to keep going, while (1) or (2) serve more as initial impulses that probably need (3) to sustain themselves.

All bullies start out crude, especially at young ages, and do not conceal their activities. Reformed bullies are detected and prevented before they can go further. Crude bullies continue their activities with relatively little sophistication and remain crude even as they age, adapting slowly if at all. Careful bullies also start out crude, but learn and adapt very quickly. It may be possible for an older child to start bullying and be careful from the get-go, but I suspect that genuine “new bullies” past age 10 or so are uncommon and obvious/crude.

The tracks are laid early in life.

 

Victims

Surely bullying changes over time, but just as history never repeats but often rhymes, childhood bullying targets tend to share certain characteristics that likely don’t change much across generations.

From discussions with a few other parents, it appears that it’s still the case that neurodivergent kids are disproportionately targeted. If a child has an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) with the school, the odds of them being the target of bullying rise dramatically. Children with autism, physical delays, Tourette’s, ADHD, and so on appear to be the targets of bullying much more frequently than children without.

These children often don’t have the same level or type of social intelligence as their peers. They may have trouble identifying threats from other children, and take a long time to understand that another child is in fact a bully and intent on shaming or hurting them. They may not be able to participate in the same activities as other kids and so are ostracized and, having fewer friends, are easier targets for bullies.

As an illustration, a parent of non-neurodivergent and relatively popular kids recently mentioned in conversation that she knew of only one bully in the neighborhood, a crude bully who bothers everyone. Unfortunately, based on who has targeted our son, there are six bullies in our neighborhood, two of whom she invited to her son’s last birthday party. At the party she remarked upon how careful she and her son are about who he plays with, choosing only nice kids. But the two she invited are careful bullies and know how to code switch, and they don’t target her kids. One of them was Michael, who has traumatized our son on several occasions.

Victim Behaviors: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn, Flop

The commonly known “fight or flight” reflex can be expanded out into five different responses to bullies. Fighters will not run from a bully, and will usually yell back and may get physical in return. But they won’t necessarily actively fight back either. Sometimes fighting takes the form of shrugging off attacks (especially verbal) and going about their business, stoically enduring. I was the latter as a child, while my son is a mix of both passive and active resistance. Flyers simply get away from the bully, often running away whenever he so much as appears. Fawners try to appease the bully to get him to stop. Freezers are unable to move or respond to the bully. As for “floppers,” I suspect that most young kids are not at a point where their trauma response is to faint, though it may be possible.

Crude bullies do not want to encounter Fight reflexes, they seek out kids who are incapable of defending themselves and who will either run (Flight), take their abuse (Freeze or Flop), or suck up to them (Fawn) and give them toys, lunch money, etc.

By contrast, careful and cunning bullies will go for any victim, including Fighters. When a Fight victim responds by yelling back, getting physical, or doing anything in response, the careful bully can use the victim’s apparent agitation against him in a variety of ways, outlined in the section below. Careful bullies will also target Flight and other responders as well, but the Fight preference is notable versus crude bullies.

Victim Communication

This may be surprising to some readers, but victims may not talk about what’s happened to them and remain silent to their parents or other caregivers and friends. And this is true even for kids who have healthy relationships with their parents. It is likely some combination of shame, fear of retaliation, and, especially at younger ages when the bullying is new, confusion. Once our son started talking to us about what his bully was doing to him, one of his first questions was “why is he doing this to me?” In addition to being hurt, he was genuinely confused that this one particular kid, who had started out as his friend, was going out of his way to be so cruel, and I suspect some of that confusion prevented him from speaking out.

There’s an additional twist that may be present, and was in our case, which is the confusion between bullying and tattling. Schools, at least our school system, are very good at explaining the difference between tattling—telling on another child for a minor disagreement or physical altercation that is not repeated and likely accidental or just a misunderstanding—and bullying, which is repeated and intentional targeting of a child with intent to harm and embarrass them. A child may confuse the two and believe that reporting a bully is tantamount to tattling.

Case Studies: Daniel and Andrew, Victims

At age 6, when the bullying first started, our son Daniel tried to tell on Michael to Michael’s mom, but was bluntly told that he was tattling and that he should stop because tattling was wrong. School had already taught him that tattling was wrong, so, with our extremely literal and logical son, the circuit closed in his brain and he said nothing more, not even to us. Until, one day, Michael lured him out of sight behind a bush, told him to stay quiet, and proceeded to choke and threaten him. That was enough to overcome Daniel’s refusal to tell on Michael, and marked the start of a long, slow process where he opened up to us and we learned about what was happening.

Andrew was Daniel’s best friend (his parents changed jobs and he moved away). We’re aware that he was targeted by Michael and Robert on at least one occasion, likely more. But Andrew also didn’t tell his parents anything. When Robert, who was a normal kid when not functioning as Michael’s sidekick, would come outside by himself and would ask to play with Andrew, Andrew would run away. His parents asked him why he was afraid of Robert, but he refused to say anything more than that he was scared of Robert, and just played quietly by himself inside his house. Interestingly, Robert was also confused and hurt that Andrew didn’t want to play with him, which is indicative of the level of emotional intelligence of most 6-year-old boys. Robert would go home crying and upset that Andrew, his victim, didn’t want to play.

They honestly have little idea what they’re doing and the fault lies with the parents.

Daniel is a fighter, Andew a flyer, but neither communicated what was happening to their parents, despite being victims of repeated attacks. This is not good, but it is normal. Just because they don’t say anything doesn’t mean kids are not being bullied, and it does not make them complicit in their own victimization.

 

Common Bullying Tactics

Tactics of the Crude

Crude bullies are direct and not very concerned with hiding their activities. They will often straight up attack kids they don’t like, both physically or verbally. They may pretend to be friends with their victim, but words and deeds very quickly diverge and even the least socially sophisticated kids can figure out they don’t want to be around them. Most bullying at this level takes the form of repetitive verbal harassment, and physical harassment ranging from minor (“accidentally” bumping into the victim, stepping on their heels in line at school) to severe (full on punching, shoving, biting attacks). Since concealment is not a priority for crude bullies, these attacks are likely to be witnessed by an adult or other kids at some point.

Crude bullies are not very discriminating in choosing their victims, and the main criteria they apply is in finding kids who won’t fight back. They may have enough sense to not attack more popular kids who could muster a defense against them, but they generally will have many victims, to the point where most kids can identify the crude bully as such, and some adults will know as well.

They may have siblings/cousins or a small gang of non-familial sidekicks to assist them and provide support in their activities. They are polarizing, you’re either in the gang or a potential victim. If they have a gang, they often lead it openly, from the front.

Finally, crude bullies are bad at code switching. This term refers to the ability to switch language syntax and communication style, so I’m abusing it a bit by extending it to overall behavior. They will undertake bullying activities even in the presence of adults or authorities who can stop them, or in situations that are more conducive to discovery. Their responses when caught are usually flat-out denials or transparent lies. Some do not care if they’re caught and will not even try to alter their behavior or deny their actions. Some may even be proud to be caught, but these cases veer quickly toward psychopathy and are outside our context here. They cannot navigate adult or peer expectations with enough sophistication to hide or create plausible deniability. They do not know how to mask their activities.

Tactics of the Careful

Careful bullies will choose their time and place, will conceal their activities. Their attacks can be physical and verbal, but are conducted with few or no witnesses, and none who would stop the bully.

Aside from concealment, the tactic where the careful stand head-and-shoulders above the crude is in conducting DARVO-style operations. This stands for “Deny, Accuse, Reverse Victim and Offender.” A cunning bully will cast his victim as “the real bully” in order to deflect blame. An example of how this works in practice: While adults aren’t looking, the bully lures his victim out of sight around a corner and starts poking the victim in the stomach and face and calling him names. The victim tells him to stop, and eventually gets upset, cries, screams, and chases the bully to try and get him to stop. The bully runs back into sight and to his parents, tells them that the victim is screaming at him and chasing him and that he (the bully) is scared, and he points to his upset, chasing victim for evidence. The victim may claim the bully was poking him, but the bully simply denies this and again points out that the victim was chasing and yelling at him, reiterates that he did nothing. Deny, accuse, reverse victim and offender.

A less sophisticated and less successful version would be the bully getting the victim out of sight, then hitting the victim without eliciting the screaming/chasing response, then telling his parents that the victim actually hit him. Without a clearly screaming/chasing victim to point to, it’ll be a harder sell, but this still fits the pattern. This is a younger careful bully, still learning to use DARVO.

Careful bullies may get very sophisticated with DARVO-like tactics and learn how to set their victims up. Examples include encouraging their victim to steal other children’s toys, planting evidence of wrongdoing (eg the bully steals another child’s toy, gives it to the victim as a gift, then accuses the victim of stealing it and tells other kids), or encouraging younger children to attack and harass the victim—it is taboo for a 7-year-old to fight back against a 3-year-old.

The careful are discerning and will have few victims, sometimes only one. Their criteria for picking victims are slightly different than crude bullies, for they want victims who are both good targets and won’t reveal the bully. They will choose even lower status kids, or kids with behavioral problems, who have fewer friends to rely on and are less likely to be believed by adults. If they have learned to use DARVO, they will attack “Fight” response kids. Concealment and misdirection are again paramount in picking targets.

They can be very popular, have a large group of friends, and be generally well-regarded or neutral with respect to most other children. Only their victims, a few of the victims’ friends, and perhaps one or two of the bully’s trusted friends and sidekicks, know. They don’t present as a gang leader and are not menacing to other children. From time to time, they may get other kids to do their dirty work for them, either by manipulating the young and naïve or sending a few trusted kids to harass a target. Doing that too often leads to detection by adults though, and most other kids are not careful enough.

They either do the work themselves when safe to do so, or lead from the back. The only adults who may know they are bullies are the parents of their victims.

Typical examples of getting friends to assist in their dirty work include using another child as bait to trap the victim, or sending other kids to verbally harass the victim without the bully being directly involved. They will also try and get random non-friend kids to do their work for them, e.g. suggesting that another child play a game where they throw a ball at the victim’s head repeatedly, or trying to get a group of children to call the victim a derogatory nickname as a “joke.”

Finally, careful bullies become adept at code switching, hiding their activities as soon as adults or non-trusted kids are nearby and waiting until they are certain the coast is clear to attack their victims. They have a better understanding of when they can lie and who they can lie to. The most sophisticated will even abstain from communicating with adults they know they cannot deceive (such as parents of their victims).

Case Study: Michael, the careful and cunning bully with inattentive, possibly abusive parents.

“There is definitely some kind of abuse in that household.” –A therapist friend, when we described Michael’s behaviors to him.

We came to know Michael when he and Daniel were both 5 years old. He was initially friendly with our son, and seemed very verbally advanced for his age. While playing with Daniel and other kids, he would sometimes come talk to me, always interested in learning more about Daniel. With the benefit of hindsight, he was gathering information. Other children have described him as always “getting in their business.”

He likely started off tattling before we met him, and to this day actively looks for behaviors in other kids to tattle on. While his mother constantly tells him not to do this, there is no real force behind her requests and she views it as more of an annoyance, and possibly as a sign that Michael is a “good” kid who wants to stop “bad” kids. He is extremely happy when a tattle succeeds and has displayed terrible, barely suppressed anger when his tattling fails. There’s clearly a feedback loop here, perhaps through his father, who remains a bit of a mystery at the time of writing.

At some point he learned to instigate conflicts to then tattle on. Daniel was in the same classroom as Michael in first grade and reported to us that Micheal would (eg) wait until the teacher was busy, then bump into another kid, then go tell on them if they bumped or shoved him back. There were other events in our neighborhood where Daniel was the target but was made out to be the aggressor. Early DARVO experiments.

Note that Michael provokes behavior to then tattle on. As far as I know, he rarely lies about what his victims have done, he simply omits his role in instigating or omits any larger context. If he says a kid was yelling at him, that kid was actually yelling at him, but maybe it was because Michael was shooting him in the face with a NERF gun. This makes detection far more difficult, as even adults have trouble keeping track of lies and coming up with plausible ones. Kids at young ages are usually terrible at coming up with plausible lies and tracking them for consistency. By operating under this constraint, Michael is more successful, because he is much less likely to slip up verbally. It’s impossible that he thought this through on his own given his age, but instead fell into the pattern at some point and kept with it. His family is extremely religious and I do wonder if “lying is a sin” played a role in his development here.

Michael grew more sophisticated over time, learning to use other children as bait for Daniel, learning to code switch in my presence (albeit imperfectly, since he’s still a kid and he now receives the wary attention of my wife and I when around), and learning to use younger children in his plots to prevent Daniel from fighting back or to embarrass him further. He has received little to no negative feedback for his behaviors—even after he tried to choke our son, his mother only told him to “try to be a better friend to Daniel.” He suffered no other consequences that I’m aware of.

Based on public observation of his family’s behavior and our knowledge of his bullying and other behavior, it is virtually certain that there is verbal and emotional abuse in Michael’s household, likely conducted by his father toward his mother and toward him. It is also likely that there has been physical abuse. Six-year-olds don’t lure other kids out of sight to choke and threaten them, and the nature of his threat (“Don’t tell anyone about this or I’ll post something embarrassing about you on the internet!”) is not something a six-year-old would understand. So that had to come from somewhere.

We’ve also witnessed Michael, at age 7, use humor to deflect another child’s anger from him, in such a way that we strongly suspect he has seen his mother do the same with his father in their home. His application of emotional persuasion was far too advanced and quick to not have experienced it on his own. He’s made verbal threats which display advanced knowledge of how to psychologically manipulate others. It’s doubtful he came up with these on his own, and is likely repeating and modifying what he’s seen or heard elsewhere. The behavior is simply too advanced for a 6- or 7-year-old to come up with independently.

Case Study: Robert, sidekick to Michael

Robert is the same age as Michael and Daniel. He and Michael have been very close friends since age 4, but it was only around age 6 that they started playing together regularly around Robert’s house and the open spaces nearby. For about a year prior to that, our son Daniel played with Robert outside with few issues.

Robert is generally a nice kid who gets along well with others and does not, to my knowledge, bully anyone on his own initiative. If he did, he would be a crude bully. But his best friend Michael does bully, and involves Robert in his plans, and Robert goes along. He has a guilty conscience about what he has done to Daniel, and used to routinely provide gifts in the form of toys, sports cards, and coins to apologize to him.

He is not cunning and cannot code switch, unlike Michael. Robert does not understand why the children he attacks with Michael are later afraid of him or run away. He is a born follower, as even his father has acknowledged. Michael tells him what to do and leads the bullying.

Robert’s parents, amazingly, know something of what Michael gets up to. When told some of the verbal threats made to Daniel, Robert’s father acknowledged that it sounded exactly like something Michael would say. In response to the choking, his father even stated that Michael’s parents don’t truly understand what their son is like. And yet, they want their son to remain good friends with Michael and have cut off contact with us, likely because Robert is “safe” from Michael and it’s inconvenient to have to deal with the parents of the victim.

This is justified by equating any slight against Robert on the part of Daniel as equivalent to anything that Michael and Robert have done to Daniel. But any problems caused by Daniel’s behavior (remember, we’re talking 1^st graders here) such as a rude name or accidentally injuring Robert during play, were taken care of by an apology and acceptance of said apology, and the problem never repeated. Any problems caused by Michael and Robert’s behavior, such as choking, threatening, and repeated verbal and physical attacks, have resulted in no apologies and have escalated over time, despite the attacks being severe enough to cause Daniel to emotionally regress, start wetting the bed routinely, and spiral into panic attacks for weeks to months after.

Each of these case studies have ended with a discussion of the parents of the bully because they are where the behaviors arise from, and they are where permission is continually given. The likely abusive household that Michael lives in is the source of his bullying behavior, while the victim blaming of Robert’s parents explicitly keeps their son in Michael’s orbit and allows the bullying to continue.

 

Parents of Bullies, and Talking to Them

“Oh no! Why did you talk to the parents? That never works! You’re not the first person to tell them this. They don’t want to know.” –My mother, after I told her I spoke with Michael’s parents

“The kids were bad, but the parents were so much worse.” –My father-in-law

At the youngest ages, talking to the parents of bullies can be productive. When kids are two, three, or four years old, they are still novices and your child may be the first victim, or at least the first victim whose parents have spoken out. The bully’s parents may respond positively, and voila! there is now a reformed bully, i.e. a normal kid, instead of a budding crude or careful bully.

But beyond these ages, the odds that you’re the first to contact the bully’s parents about his behavior starts to drop dramatically. There can still be novice bullies at late ages (more on that below), so it’s always worth trying, but you should expect failure, and be prepared for catastrophic failure at that. If they didn’t already fix their child’s behavior, then they’re not going to do it now, and the source of the bullying and the interpersonal dynamics that allow it to continue are almost certainly rooted in the bully’s parents or extended family.

Denial, Malignancy, Resignation

Some parents are resigned to their child’s behavior, because their own interventions do nothing or they are already overextended with work and other responsibilities and cannot control their child. Of the two crude bullies in our neighborhood, one has a resigned mother and father who have simply given up, both stating that they simply can’t control their kid (I’m sure that they just won’t). The other has resigned parents who hit him but otherwise do nothing. The latter parents, though they do take some kind of (unfortunate) action to stop their son, only provoke him further and do not adapt their tactics to something more humane that would work. I contend this is still a form of resignation, going through the motions of correcting their son’s behavior while producing nothing but more hurt.

The majority of parents of bullies are in denial, and don’t want to believe their child could be attacking and harassing other kids, because it reflects a failing on their part. Better to simply believe it isn’t true. Robert’s mother, when I explained to her that my wife overheard Michael and Robert taunting Daniel and calling him a “loser,” simply replied that her son would never say such a thing. And that was that. Michael’s mother, when I explained the choking, refused to believe it was possible because “we were watching them the whole time,” and admitting that she wasn’t watching the whole time would be admitting that she didn’t know what her son was up to, and would allow a crack of doubt into her wall of denial. In neither case did they take my complaint seriously or entertain the thought that their child could have done those things.

Malignant parents, that is, parents who actively encourage their children to be bullies, are rarer but still a problem. It most often takes the form of an intense pride and inflated egotism toward family that runs roughshod over others. For a popular but dated depiction, try the O’Doyle family from Billy Madison (“O’Doyle rules!”). Parents who directly encourage their kids to bully others are in the minority of this minority. I suspect that Michael’s father is somewhat malignant and may encourage his son to tattle on other kids and “get” kids who misbehave, though I have no direct evidence of this and am not sure if he understands the true scope of behavior he is encouraging, if so. But there must be a positive reinforcement for the bullying somewhere, and Micheal’s mother doesn’t provide much.

 

Case Study: Michael’s parents and DARVO

Michael’s parents practice DARVO themselves. After the choking incident, I approached them at the playground while out of earshot of others and opened with “I notice there’s been some tension between Michael and Daniel lately, and I was hoping to talk to you about it.” Yes, I was that politic about their son choking and threatening ours.

They immediately went on the offensive, blaming Daniel for harassing Michael, and had a laundry list of “problems” caused by Daniel, most of which I learned much later (when Daniel finally opened up) were DARVO tattling conducted by Michael. They accused me of being a bad parent and asked how I could let Daniel play outside unsupervised for any length of time. When I acknowledged that Daniel had some issues with emotional control, they renewed the offensive, stating any problems were “100%” on Daniel, and that Daniel was simply “jealous of Michael and Robert’s friendship.” When I described the choking incident, Michael’s mother (his father had by this point walked away, refusing to listen or discuss further) denied that it would even have happened, because “we were watching them the whole time.” We definitely were not. I wrapped up the conversation, such as it was, by telling Michael’s mother that I just didn’t want things to get worse and wanted to try and de-escalate whatever was going on between the boys.

So how was this DARVO? I opened politely, looking to start a conversation to solve a problem with them, and they immediately blamed me and my son for everything. I was a bad parent, my son was just jealous, and a terror that needed constant supervision. Their son had done nothing (remember, “100% the opposite,” a direct quote, was their stance, on what I was telling them). Of course, in reality, their son was a terror who had choked and threatened our son and had done many less serious but harmful things, which we didn’t know about at the time, and they were the ones that did not supervise him ever. They immediately put me on the defensive. They accused my son of being the perpetrator. They accused me of being a terrible parent. All the crazier because I saw Michael’s mother outside on a weekly basis and had amicable chats with her, and she never said anything. They were saving it up, making a list and waiting to use it at the right time, to try and cast me and my son as the offenders.

About one week later, Michael’s mother happened to see my wife outside and told her that she “asked Michael to be a better friend to Daniel” and told her that she “didn’t want us to think that they’re bad people.” And that was all. She just didn’t want us to think poorly of them.

Case Study: Robert’s parents, denial, and hostile friendliness

Robert’s father was very accommodating and apologetic after the choking incident, during which Robert was with Michael, did not lay hands on Daniel, but did not try to stop Michael. But after another major incident six months later when Robert and Michael reduced Daniel to tears and caused him enough trauma that he again wet the bed, cried himself to sleep, and emotionally regressed for months, both mother and father became hostile. Robert’s mother was in full denial, while his father, rather than executing a complete DARVO reversal, was angrily “reasonable” and adopted the tactic of equating Michael and Robert’s actions to those of Daniel (and Andrew), admitting that his son harassed and hurt my son while claiming it was tit-for-tat. It turns out that, like Michael’s parents, Robert’s were keeping a list of grievances to use against us. Forgive the excessive detail in what follows, but it may be illuminating.

The first was that Daniel once had a rude nickname for Robert, which I put a stop to the day it started and had Daniel write an apology letter. The boys reconciled. This was equated to two years’ plus of name calling directed at Daniel that has not ended and has had Daniel ask us to change his name (they have a nickname that’s a riff on his real name).

The next was that Daniel and Robert were playing with sticks when Daniel accidentally gave Robert a cut on the side of his face, but Daniel never apologized, which therefore meant that Daniel withheld this from me and lied. In fact, Daniel had told me immediately, but we decided to apologize the next day on the way to the bus stop (not the best call on my part, but it was getting dark and was a stressful day otherwise). And he did apologize. But neither of Robert’s parents were there to see it. This was equated to all the lies and withholding of events on the part of Michael and Robert, of which his father did not and does not know even a tenth of the full truth. The irony that Daniel was accused of withholding information by a grown man who withheld that same information to use as a “gotcha” six months later is not lost on me.

The last was that Daniel and Andrew used to gang up on Robert, because Robert would come outside and ask to play with them and they’d say “no,” and Robert would come inside crying. This went on for weeks to months before Robert’s father told me about it, at a time when I would see him or his wife on a daily basis. Apparently, it was such a grievous sin that it could be equated to Michael and Robert “ganging up” on my son for a year to the point that he was eventually afraid to go outside, would wet the bed, and begged us to move to another neighborhood. Also, note that Robert’s father was unaware of why the boys didn’t want to play with his son, and if he hadn’t been saving up these gotchas as ammunition he’d have learned that his son had bullied them and that Andrew, in particular, was scared and would run away when Robert came around. His son’s victim running away was “ganging up” on his son.

Denial can be maintained by simply not asking questions, not wanting to get to the bottom of something, and lazily blaming anyone who complains. It’s either “all your fault!” in the case of Michael’s parents or “hey, everyone’s done something bad, I’m not complaining about your kid, why are you complaining about mine you hypocrite!” in the case of Robert’s.

Friends don’t save up lists of grievances to throw at each other. They try to mend relationships. Michael and Robert’s parents were generally friendly for roughly a year plus of daily to weekly casual socializing, until I tried to talk to them about what their boys were doing. Then they unloaded with whatever ammunition they had at hand, apparently having saved up lists of grievances for just that moment. Smiles, polite conversations, and offers of beer suddenly became claims that our child was a liar and a terror and we were horrible, hypocritical parents. Virtually all the “bullets” in their arsenal were blanks, made up of Michael’s DARVO tattling or incidents for which they lacked most information, but they didn’t know that because they’re incurious and in denial.

Both Michael and Robert’s parents have ignored us for two years now, refusing to make eye contact, say “hello,” or otherwise acknowledge our existence despite seeing them outside on an almost daily basis.

 

Novice Bullies

Sometimes a kid or group of kids with no history of bullying start up at a later age, perhaps ages 8 or beyond, but they’re usually bad at it due to lack of experience and end up as extremely obvious crude bullies.

Why? The seeds of careful bullying behavior must be planted while young, and must take root in a household that allows the careful bully to grow. Careful bullies are a product of a particular home environment with a particular set of social dynamics. They adapt and are given time to grow. If an older kid was going to become a careful bully, he would have to start years prior, and probably have a different family. Crude bullying doesn’t require time and cultivation, just the resolve to be mean to someone else.

I admit there may be exceptions, but late-blooming child bullies are novices. They’re spectacularly bad at it—imagine a 10-year-old whose tactics are at the level of a 4-year-old just starting out. Every kid who starts bullying starts from scratch, starts with the same toolbox and then adapts it over time. This is why bullying patterns are so common and, once identified, easy to understand. There are some basic behavioral exploits in our species that are reproduced across all generations.

The exceptions to the “late-bloomer equals novice” rule are kids who themselves have been the targets of bullies, because they can copycat what their persecutor did to them. I fortunately have no experience with these, but it’s at least a possible path they may take.

Case Study: Benjamin and Peter

This happened to our son a few months ago when Benjamin, an on-again off-again friend who has personality clashes with Daniel, and Peter, a new kid in the neighborhood, started harassing Daniel both verbally and physically. They would call him names, try to bait him into chasing them (“nah nah you can’t get us”), throw stuff at him, try to trip him when walked by, and were generally mean.

Benjamin was 7, Daniel 8, and Peter 9.

And these novice crude bullies were so amazingly stupid and careless about it, it was almost a relief to see after dealing with Michael and Robert for so long. Obviously not a relief for our son, of course.

It only went on for about a week and a half. I’d be outside with Daniel and Peter would come by and say something rude in a leering voice and… I was standing right there, I could hear him and see him. I’d sit at the playground and see as they went to taunt Daniel and jeer at him, then throw something at him. They knew I was there, they knew I was Daniel’s father, they just didn’t think until I intervened. On two separate days they did this at the playground.

After the first incident I was willing to assume maybe someone had a bad day, after the second incident I decided to talk to their parents when I next saw them. Then, on a third day, I was at the playground with our daughter, and Peter asked her where Daniel was, then stated that he wanted to throw a ball at his head, and asked her if she could get Daniel to come outside. I was standing six feet away. No concealment, no thought whatsoever given to staying out of trouble. Amazing.

Not knowing Peter’s parents or where he lived, I immediately went and knocked on Benjamin’s door and explained what I’d witnessed to his mother, and also noted that if Daniel had done anything to aggravate Benjamin that I’d like to know so I could put a stop to it. We’ve known each other for about a decade as neighbors and loose friends. She was apologetic, and we discussed our kids’ clashing personalities and she mentioned that Benjamin had started new ADHD meds which maybe were giving him some behavioral problems in the late afternoon. Then we went over to Peter’s house and had a similar conversation with his parents. Everyone was apologetic, and I reiterated that if Daniel had upset the boys in some way to please let me know. The other parents resolved to stop the behavior and we’re all still on good terms. While Daniel doesn’t really play with Benjamin and Peter, they now leave him alone and are amicable enough around him.

As a quick aside, when I walked to Peter’s house with Benjamin and his mom, Peter went inside to get his own mother and Benjamin immediately threw Peter under the bus by telling us that Peter had been really mean to Daniel lately. Not only did he rat out his co-conspirator, he validated everything I’d just told his own mother by trying to cover for himself.

Absolute novice bullies, and they are now reformed.

 

Conclusion

While bullying as a general category of behavior in children is well-known, there are many nuances to it that go unremarked upon unless one directly encounters them. Our own experience has been with a particularly nasty careful bully, a type which, in the popular imagination, is not well understood at younger ages but which I believe translates directly into adult abusers and manipulators. Crude bullies are easier to understand, and there are yet other types not covered here—for example, a girl in our son’s school has a habit of fabricating rumors about kids she doesn’t like and uses a network of younger girls to spread them around the school.

With the possible exception of psychopaths, bullies are always a product of their home environment, or whatever environment they inhabit for the majority of their time and in which they form their strongest emotional bonds. In this essay, it’s generally assumed to be a household with one or two parents. Parental denial, resignation, or even encouragement is necessary for a bully to persist at younger ages. Without the parents, without the denial, neglect, or encouragement, bullying tends to fizzle out.

Finally, if your child is the victim of bullying, they (and you) are not alone. It’s a common experience, and there are many other people who have gone through it. You can find them and talk to them. Hopefully this document provides some guidance as to what’s going on and what to expect, especially in the case of the more sophisticated and less understood bullies.

Details of incidents involving Michael and Robert are catalogued here.