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Amanda Baggs is an autistic adult who has very eloquently opened the door to her life at Ballstexistenz writes;
When I was very young, I didn’t perceive the world the same way other people do, but I did not have a terror of people. My terror of people emerged as bullying got worse and worse. The thing I most learned from school was to fear people and to think of myself as stupid and worthless. (High academic ability did not impact on that self-image at all, because it wasn’t about academics. It was about the fact that no matter what I did or how hard I tried I could not prevent these things from happening to me, but others were always acting like it was my fault whenever they did happen to me, so I developed pretty rapidly the idea that I was stupid and worthless because I could not prevent daily assault…
School smarts didn’t even make a blip on my personal radar… …That wasn’t because I was particularly mature, it was just that I didn’t know I had them, and on the occasions where I did compare myself to others, I seemed to come up very lacking…
So from these sort of incidents, I developed a fear of other people, a pretty extreme suppression of emotion and the possibility of connectedness to other people, a hair-trigger fight-flight response to being approached by other people, a large dose of self-hatred and resulting hatred of everyone who resembled me (and of life in general at times), and an ongoing depression that did not lift for almost two decades. And so did a lot of other people I know, in various forms. This is a totally preventable consequence of bullying and other abuse, and the attitudes that too frequently go along with them.
We have all been on one side or the other of bullying – many of us on both sides. That bullying is so commonplace should increase our vigilance in preventing it as Scoutmasters. There are no easy answers or formulas. Resolving the issue requires a lot of listening and talking – it is a complicated web to unravel.
One of the difficult aspects of bullying is the subtlety of which many are capable. Remember Eddie Haskell of the “Leave it to Beaver” show? He was the guy who was (almost) silky smooth when it came to adults but was an habitual bully to other kids. He would constantly get the others into trouble by suggesting that they do the bad stuff. I am learning to look for that. It’s hard. The red-flag that I am learning is to watch for guys who are constantly in the midst of turmoil but always protest they didn’t do anything. Some kids are just clumsy or ill-mannered, but some of them are bullies.
Our troop has made “safety” a permanent part of the agenda for a Scoutmaster conference. Anytime any one of the scouts come thru a conference, we ask about safety: physical safety as well as that feeling of security. I ask each scout if they feel safe – is anyone bullying them? I also ask if they are bullying anyone – I make it a bit of a joke so that I’m not creating paranoid people. Once a scout hits First Class or above, I ask them for their help to provide safety across the troop. I tell them that they will often be in scout-only groups, especially at the head of a line of hikers where the adults may lag behind. I ask for their help to stop the bullying before it starts, separate guys who are heading to a fight, and keep things calm. Physical safety, too – watch out that the little guys stay away from dangerous situations. It’s interesting to see the reaction of a 12-year-old who is being told he’s a “big guy” by his Scoutmaster. It grabs their attention and I hope they keep safety in mind on their next outing.