In article , Ericka Kammerer
says...

Banty wrote:
In article . com, Barbara
says...

To me, bullying is very, very serious. If we start to call every
little insult or tease *bullying* then the term loses its power and
becomes trivial.

Well, yes and no. A lot of true bullying flies under the radar. For example,
it took quite some time for the social-exclusion and rumor-mongering behavior of
girls that age to be identified as a form of bullying.

I can see both sides of that. It's true that there are
very serious instances of bullying that are hidden, sneaky, or
take forms other than physical threats or violence. On the other
hand, there are people who call behaviors bullying that are simply
normal situations getting out of hand, or someone losing their
temper, or someone being socially clueless or tactless or
whatever.

That's what I meant by "yes or no".

Pre-teen boys are often tactless and have a particularly
juvenile sense of humor.

They ARE??!? They DO??!? But my 14 year old has shown NONE of that!

Not. ;-)

They are sometimes rough and tumble--
usually starting out perfectly genially and on occasion accidentally
morphing into something more serious. Some kids are just impulsive
and don't think before they act. None of those things are *good*
behavior, but in my opinion, they aren't bullying. Bullying has
to do with deliberately excluding someone, or intending to demean
someone, or ganging up to coerce someone to do something, or
things like that. It's not uncommon for pre-teen boys to *like*
each other and get into tussles over one thing or another, and
it's also common for some boys to be very uncomfortable with
that sort of physicality or even to be overwhelmed by it. They
need to learn to be more sensitive and they need to learn to
behave in more appropriate ways, but I don't think that's
bullying.

True true. But, if a boy is picking up some nefarious intent, it's probably
there. It's an extremely socially intuned stage.

I don't know whether the boys in the OP's post are
bullies or if maybe they're just engaging in some inappropriate
behaviors that aren't bullying. I do think that hollering
"bully!" when it's not bullying *does* devalue actual
bullying that ought to get more attention and be taken
more seriously. I also think it's counter-productive,
as the steps one needs to take to deal with bullying are
often quite different from those one needs to take to
deal with kids being clueless or socially inept or impulsive.

Well, in the case of the party, it really doesn't matter.

So, it matters which it is. And, of course, it matters
because people feel differently about the kid and the
parents depending on which it is. Call someone a bully,
and all of a sudden the child is bad, the parents are
bad, and they need to get excluded from polite society.
That's a bit overkill if it's just the case that someone
needs to catch a clue, or a couple of temperamentally
mismatched kids maybe ought to choose not to spend too
much time together until maybe they mature a bit.

Yes and no ;-)

Cheers,
Banty