Is School Yard Bullying Common In Thai Schools?

[IanForbes]

Obesity (at least according to some random MSN article recently) is a leading factor in bullying. That's one thing you have some if not a lot of effect in your children's lives. IMO it's probably safe to say that athletes don't get bullied too much either.

I agree with that. Obese children DO get bullied, unless they are so big they can smack the other kids around in retaliation. That is why I think a lot of the problems start with the parents. Children don't come with a set of instructions and by the time the new parents have stumbled around screwing up their children's lives it is too late to do anything about it. My ex and I ran a daycare for children from 3 year olds to 7 year olds. It was amazing how poorly some parents raised their children. And, they were middle class parents who should have known better. I can never understand why some parents allow their children to be obese. If you start early enough it is easy to establish good eating habits.

[Heng]

For some newly middle class Thais who couldn't 'eat whatever they wanted' when they were growing up, it's understandable. It's also easier to take your kids to MK or Sizzler than to take them to hit tennis balls. The latter though (and dozens of other sports activities) would do them a world of better though. They don't even have to be good at it.

[robblok]

Heng, i think it can be education. Many times Thais ask me what I eat and when i tell them they are amazed because its not always "aroi" food but more health food (ok i make bad choices once in a while too as you cant stick to good food always). They just don't seem to know what is bad and good. Many foreigners also dont have a clue.

Anyway my sister in law who cleans in our house (the wife works a lot and i rather pay then to do it myself) sometimes brings her children. One of them is real fat but i never wonder why.. they bring whole packs of crisps and other snacks when they are here instead of making sure they get some normal food. Im not going to tell them what to do but its so obvious. Also the children hate vegetable (took them to a restaurant a few times). I can still remember i was taught to eat them when young.

I was bullied a bit when young because i always was a loner and got good grades. That quickly stopped after i got into a fight with some of the bullies and won. That did not get me in the IN crowd, but i did not care about that i was never much of a group person. Give me a few good friends then 100's of acquaintances. Things do seem to change as you get older cause later on there was never a problem.

[Ulysses G.]

Where I grew up, the "In-Crowd" were not hateful like they are in the movies. Actually, they were pretty nice, because everything came so easy to them. It was the second-rate social climbers who wanted to move up socially who could be vicious and sometimes bully the less popular kids.

In general, after we were about 10 years old, it was mostly the obnoxious kids who were always seeking attention - positive or negative - that got bullied and once in a while a nerd because they would not fight back. I would often help the nerds, but not the annoying kids who pretty much asked for to be picked on - that would have been a full time job.

As far as bullying in Thailand goes, I've never seen it, but the kids that I have been around were in their later teens going to commercial college or University, so maybe too old for that behavior.

Edited August 21, 2010 by Ulysses G.

[Chunky1]

I am sure things have changed quite a bit since the Woodrow Wilson Administration.

Edited August 21, 2010 by Chunky1

[Chunky1]

obesity is so common in the USA now that it is really losing its negative connotation. now calling someone fat is like calling them an Aquarius or claiming that they have brown hair.

[Ulysses G.]

I am sure things have changed quite a bit since the Woodrow Wilson Administration.

You would probably know better than I would. Ford was president when I was a senior in high school.

[slapout]

As a avid people watcher, here in Chiang Mai (moat/night bazaar area, school, etc) I have noticed the preteen bullies, seem to find business else where when they are stood up to. They will return in due time with a few mates to continue the confrontation. Over the years, these same kids, either get their butt whipped, and subsequently, grow up, or seem to hang with a gang.

I can remember school years when the new kid in school, new on the bus, physically disadvantaged (fat, slow. etc) were bullied in more subtle ways than physical, as the older "good guys" would kind of protect the little ones. Here again the bullies would follow a similar course as described above. The town kids vs farm kids, jocks vs academics, etc was there, but there were overlaps between all groups so it was not a prevalent thing. (some good can be said for small schools/communities)

Maybe that is the make up of the gangs we hear so much about, they were the bullies who never grew up, after they got their butt whipped.

I do remember quite well the boxing gloves that were kept in the one room school and the subsequent high school we attended. Person disagreement was settled and monitored by someone of authority. I will always remember a coach who observed a potential bully picking on a freshman kid (small skinny). When it came time to tie the gloves on the big boy was outfitted and the coach threw the gloves to me and said , 'warm him up good and then little can have a go'

[goatfarmer]

From my girlfriends stories of her school days it was not the other pupils

who bothered her or each other but the teachers who did the bullying.

Good point. I recently witnessed a teacher slapping two little todlers who had strolled out of the classroom. Dreadful behaviour!

[lovelomsak]

Bullying is very common here. Older students take lunch money from younger kids. Bigger students openly steal from weaker or smaller students. They will walk up to a student grab their packsack open it take what they want and walk away, smiling the whole time. This most prevalent in Mattyom 1,2 and 3.I read an in school qustionaire for foreign teachers on how they would deal with different situations in the classroom and one of the questions was (There is a lot of bullying and stealing in Thai schools if you see any of this happening how will you deal with it?) The school with this question admits there is a problem.

[nocturn]

How poor you were never had anything to do with it in any school i went to, and i'm really thinking hard to try and think of a kid that was ever picked on due to a physical defect.

I'm figuring your parents were comfortably off and you did not get to school on the short bus.

[Ulysses G.]

Maybe it depends on where you were brought up. Nobody picked on anyone for being poor at my school. They would not dare anyway as they were usually pretty tough.

Edited August 23, 2010 by Ulysses G.

[Heng]

Less well off kids at our school were 'picked on' in less overt ways. It was simply noticed and pointed out when they would wear the same clothes to school (nice shirt! didn't you wear that one on Monday?), rode the bus until they were seniors when everyone else was driving their own cars, etc.

[carmine]

How poor you were never had anything to do with it in any school i went to, and i'm really thinking hard to try and think of a kid that was ever picked on due to a physical defect.

I'm figuring your parents were comfortably off and you did not get to school on the short bus.

I don't really understand the relevence of being comfortably off but for the record, no they were not.

[carmine]

Less well off kids at our school were 'picked on' in less overt ways. It was simply noticed and pointed out when they would wear the same clothes to school (nice shirt! didn't you wear that one on Monday?), rode the bus until they were seniors when everyone else was driving their own cars, etc.

Good points Heng. I was thinking of bullying in terms of physical bullying but those points you made are very valid.

[Heng]

Kind of a tangent to this thread but sometimes parents can take it too far in terms of being overprotective. The kids (one of whom became famous in that Club 21 incident) of a famous politician supposedly weren't bullies in their younger grade school days, but grew to become so after learning that their father would protect them from just about everything.

If it doesn't seem to bother your kids, probably best not to get too upset (and possibly reactive) over it.

[IanForbes]

If it doesn't seem to bother your kids, probably best not to get too upset (and possibly reactive) over it.

Good point. My kids were more scared of what "I" might do to the other kids if they ever attacked mine, than they were about the bullies. There was a group of young thugs who used to terrorize the other kids for no other reason than they could get away with it. One of the young thugs (16 & 17 year old boys) was a police seargent's son. Word finally got around about a group of vigilantes who were going to take care of things if the parents of the thugs didn't do something first. I come from an area of rednecks who mean what they say... and the rest of the community knew it. I don't know who told whom, but after the threat of violence the hoodlums suddenly stopped harrassing other kids.

[bonobo]

I was watching a show on bullying in Japan.  It can get pretty rampant there, but the point was made that bullying is a common phenomenon in most cultures worldwide.

I can't say I ever bullied anyone, and an attempt was made on me only once (attempted mostly because I had rather long hair), but from my observations, bullying was rarely done by the "in crowd."  It was usually done by outsiders or those who desperately wanted to somehow wedge themselves into the in-crowd. 

Without trying to generalize too much, it also seemed to me that most bullies were actually pretty cowardly.  Stand up to them successfully, and they backed down (although, some kids do not have the physical ability to stand up to a bully.).  Just one example:  a guy who really detested me in high school but was afraid of me decided to go after my younger brother.  After several instances, my brother picked up a rock the size of a cantaloupe and went after they guy in an absolute craze.  As he was much smaller, the other guys my age thought it was funny.  When I found out about it, I asked my brother, and I think it was all an act, but the result was that this guy left him strictly alone after that, calling him insane.

[Heng]

If it doesn't seem to bother your kids, probably best not to get too upset (and possibly reactive) over it.

Good point. My kids were more scared of what "I" might do to the other kids if they ever attacked mine, than they were about the bullies. There was a group of young thugs who used to terrorize the other kids for no other reason than they could get away with it. One of the young thugs (16 & 17 year old boys) was a police seargent's son. Word finally got around about a group of vigilantes who were going to take care of things if the parents of the thugs didn't do something first. I come from an area of rednecks who mean what they say... and the rest of the community knew it. I don't know who told whom, but after the threat of violence the hoodlums suddenly stopped harrassing other kids.

Glad it worked out!

Plenty of situations where it could have easily been a lot messier though. IME a lot of bullies come from families where the heads of the household were (or worse, still are) bullies themselves. While many of them might be cowards at heart as per the 'traditional wisdom' IMO they are plenty who are trigger happy drunks who hold high military or police rank. Or worse yet heads of criminal enterprises who have no time or patience for a friendly 'chat about our children' PTA type meeting.

[Ulysses G.]

from my observations, bullying was rarely done by the "in crowd." It was usually done by outsiders or those who desperately wanted to somehow wedge themselves into the in-crowd.

The "in Crowd" often get a bum rap in movies and such. It seemed to me that it was the want-to-bes that were so hateful to the less popular kids.

[ThiagoBras]

Obesity (at least according to some random MSN article recently) is a leading factor in bullying. That's one thing you have some if not a lot of effect in your children's lives. IMO it's probably safe to say that athletes don't get bullied too much either.

I agree with you. The overweight kids always had a realyy tough time, but if you were good at sport generally speaking you were free of the bullying issues.

x2

[Darvil]

Old thread but since it got revived I thought I would give a few cents of my own.

I moved to bkk when I was in 2nd grade and initially things were ok even though I started off being quite different. By that I mean I was wearing thanaka on my face and wearing coconut oil in my hair which makes a distinct smell once you mix sweat into it. Those were the first things to go. I was in a Christian school with alot of diff nationalities but half was probably Thai. When I got a little older (grade 4-5?), some of the older Thai kids started picking on me. No idea how or when it started but I think it was because the head bully guy's mind was poisoned by his father. This is because I'm a Burmese (but not ethnically) and the dad really dislike Burmese for whatever his reasons. As a matter of fact, he even asked my mother why the Burmese invaded Thailand and steal all the gold. My mother who was a teacher in another school didn't know how to react to that question since that was a few hundred years ago and the fact that she wasn't ethnically a Burmese either (both my parents were Karen). But this kind of distinction wasn't good enough for these types of people.

The bullying wasn't physical for me; just alot of mental abuse which is probably worse then actual physical abuse. It got bad enough to the point I didn't went to go to school. I even got into a fist fight with one of them but of course being a smaller dude, I did get my ass wooped. Its hard to fight bullies if you can't speak English or Thai well. The sad thing is that my mother couldn't really do anything about this as she wasn't sure how and had a small face in the society. She just told me to toughen it out for now as we don't have much of a choice.

Later on things got better when I grew physically larger then the bullies themselves. The bullying stopped then. I actually became one of the biggest kid and ended up protecting a small new younger Burmese kid who ended up in the school. I don't think he fully knows what I did for him to this day. The ironic thing was that the head bully guy and I became decent friends later on in highschool. When he needed math tutoring, he ended up taking tutoring with my mother as she was an excellent math tutor. I also became a computer wiz and since we ended up being neighbors later on, he also hit me up for help with his computer. I think he finally just grew up mentally or realize that we had a place in Thailand.

Its hard for people like me who ended up with our foot in many different countries/societies without really ever feeling belonging to a certain place. And even if the general population dislike me due to ignorance or lack of education, I realized it doesn't matter because what is important is to have people around you who appreciate, respect and want you to be there with them. That is really all that matters in the grand scheme of things. Fortunately for me, that place happens to be in Thailand.

Edited February 22, 2011 by Darvil

[Sakeopete]

I wonder how Leuk Krung kids fair when it comes to fitting in? Are they accepted or is there some racism that leads to bullying? I'm guessing for the boys physical bullying may not be such a problems if they are Farang size.

[Darvil]

I've never seen luk kerung being bullied.. at least not on a really bad level.

I think if you speak well, dress well and gives off the money vibe, you should be good. And all the farang kids and luk kerung kids I grew up with were all that way.

Not to mention, generally speaking these kids have parents who were in positions of power.

Of course this is a tiny example. Perhaps outside bkk things might be a bit more different. Places where english might not be as accepted.