In article , Ericka Kammerer
says...

Banty wrote:
In article , Ericka Kammerer
says...

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. ;-)

;-) I knew *you* knew that, but I do run into a
whole lot of parents who don't seem to get that, especially
(to engage in a hideously broad generalization) parents who
only have younger kids or only have girls. It's always a
bit amazing how many get on their high horse about how
such behavior shouldn't be tolerated, and definitely
wouldn't be tolerated in their house. Well, if you've
got a couple of those boys and you figure out how to get
through the pre-teen years without the roughhousing or
the juvenile humor, do please let me know ;-)

Ya rides it out.



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.

You think so? I don't know about that. One of my boys
seems to have fairly reliable intuition about those sorts of
things. The other is completely and totally clueless. He is
*forever* attributing motives to people that simply don't exist--
and, not surprisingly, he's not erring on the side of leaping
to conclusions to people are being kind to him ;-) He's
lightning fast to assume that every offhand comment is somehow
a personal attack.

And it can go the other way as well. Both the people involved and onlookers
(and not both at the same time else it wouldn't be as much a problem!) can be
utterly about nefarious stuff going on. But I'm inclined to trust the person's
instinct given something like a party.


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.

At least from the OP's perspective. I think from
the hosts' perspective there's an obligation not to invite
a bully (the other kids shouldn't have to deal with that),
but deciding to invite all of a group of kids who don't
always get along is not only a viable strategy, but probably
the best one going in the ever-shifting landscape of pre-teen
social interactions.

Well, they may have invited bullies, thinking that THEIR son, being a bully
himself, or a go-along-to-get-along type (read the O.P. - this sounds like a
likely case), doesn't have a problem, so any OTHER kid that has a problem -
well, it's "their problem". There are parents who are perfectly fine with
either of these strategies, and don't recognize bullying behavior as a real
issue at all. Which sucks (and adds to the whole scenario), but, if they're
drawing up a party invite list, what would you expect?

Banty