Kids react to stuff it's not a reasoned action. He was getting bullied and he reacted, I'm not as worried by his reaction as I am the stuff that preceded it.

There's an interview with the kid maybe take a look.

With the kids, if you're both cruel and stupid, you may put yourself in a situation where something bad will happen to you.

A kid is torturing kittens by putting them in a burlap sack and swinging them around. In an attempt to throw the kittens in front of a moving truck, the kid slips and falls into the path of the truck himself. He was being both cruel and stupid, and as a consequence of that he put himself in position to get seriously harmed. I don't really have a problem with that.

(I do think he could have been taught better about a lot of things, and it's tragic that it happened, but that's a different conversation.)

Grown-ups point guns at each other and pull the trigger because someone cut them off in traffic. Understanding what "excessive force" is not a uniformly understood concept at any age.

It's hard to take you seriously.

First you ask me "what do you think of this kid's action", then "what do you think of the consequence of what he did"... then suddenly you claim you are not interested in what the kid did, only that you are shocked by people's reactions to it... then suddenly you're back to commenting on the kid's action again.

It seems evident at this point that you are not really interested in the subject you have posed. Commenting therefore seems futile.

How can this be so difficult to understand. I think the victim's actions entailed excessive and dangerous use of force (the body slam). When I've said this, I've met a chorus of 'no, the bully deserved it'. I don't think the bully deserved it. No ten year old kid deserves to have their skull smashed open on concrete, no matter how much a of bullying little toerag they were being. How can anyone think that they do?

Simple.

My perspective on this has always been about people's reaction to the victim's actions.

He would if he existed so I would become a believer. And I was really, really, sincere when I prayed.

It's not mutually exclusive. The kid needs to have it explained that it's dangerous to slam other children into concrete, he shouldn't be punished though based purely on this vid. The bully should have it explained that it's bad to bully people and that also it's dangerous to create confrontations because you might get slammed into concrete.

I'm guessing he probably knows, it may also be relevant that his reaction wasn't to the initial slap but to the continued harassment.

That's not what bothers me about this. My problem is with all the adults who watched the video and then said 'bullly got what he deserved' even though what the victim did to the bully could have had serious, or even fatal, consequences.

I've somehow confused everyone with this, I'm not commenting on the incident, or the bully or the victim. I'm commenting on people's reaction's to the video. No one seems to think that slam was excessively harsh except me.

Reasonably the school and parents should take the line 'don't slam other people head-first into concrete', since you know, that's how people die. The fact that it appears to be triggered by repeated physical harassment is of course extremely relevant.

In fact I think the parents and school should take a different approach to each other.

A school needs to say 'Violence is not acceptable, if you're being hit, tell a teacher', because they can never be seen to condone pupil-on-pupil fighting.

A parent might say 'Fighting back when physically attacked is fine, however you need to understand that this particular method can kill another child and a different approach can be just as successful with less risk'. Explain consequences, suggest other ways to deal with the problem and then pay for martial arts classes for the child.

If I was the teacher or parent, both boys would be punished. Everyone knows what the scrawny kid did was wrong. But I agree with mightyboosh that the reaction from the big kid was dangerous and could well have resulted in a very serious injury. It is understandable that kid being picked on would fight back, and it is quite understandable that if in said fight he is not thinking very clearly. However, we need to make it clear that certain actions that are especially dangerous get special condemnation and that even when you are the victim and even when it is in the middle of a heated fight you didn't start, that you still have to respect these boundaries or suffer consequences. For instance, if the fat kid pulls a knife out or pushes the guy into traffic I think we would all agree that extra condemnation occurs. If the kid cracks his skull or is actually stabbed by the knife or run over by the car, I don't think anyone says he "deserves" that action. So we are lucky the potentially dangerous action didn't result in egrets harm. But it could have.

Am I the only one whose first reaction when I hear "my 11 year old atheist" or even "my 11 year old christian" is to automatically look suspiciously at the parent?

My gut feeling from his first post was that maybe he was the reason his daughter was being bullied. Now, after hearing more of him, I'm sure of it.

Most 11 year old girls are trading gossip and talking Justin Bieber and older boys. If you are going to raise your child up to be Jodi Foster-esque, you can expect these cliques to reject her. It's not right, but it happens.

When I was 11, I didn't know **** about anything.
When I was 21, I didn't know **** about anything.
When I was 31, I learned a thing or two.
Maybe when I'm 41, I'll know enough to pretend to know something.

But meh, 11 year old atheists and christians?

I'm sorry, but I'm eying the parents.

11 year olds can still believe or not believe in gods. Yes it is probably more a result of mimicry (of, say, her father) but it doesn't make it less real to them. For example, children have fights over santa clause. Some kids believe in santa and some don't at certain ages. And I am sure kids get bullied for it.

It is very common to blame the victim like you do here (albeit indirectly). The view that if the victim had just changed something - her hair, lost some weight, been less shy or held some other belief - then the bullying would never have occured in the first place.

This is the same error as someone did earlier when looking at the bully video "what happened was that the kid went to far." Like you have removed the bully and the environment from the equation, that poster removed the victim and the environment. However, harassment is social interaction, not monologue.

Such simplistic views of conflict and harassment are counter-productive. The biggest reason is that an extremely important party in these case always tends to be left out of the equation: The school.

Okay this is a fair point. It may be different if the video ended at the point that the kid gets body slammed but it doesn't and people who are going to empathise with the kid can say the bully got what he deserved based on the actual consequences not the possible consequences.

It doesn't make it right and the action can be judged based upon the potential consequences but that's not how people are speaking to it.

It's common for 11 year olds and 21 year olds and people in general to know phuck all, it's uncommon for them to realise that fact though.

Unfortunately we live in a world where the issue is forced by the religions. They know that they have more chance of recruiting people if they get them young so people who don't want their children to believe in gods have to teach them not to.

Children shouldn't be Atheist or Theist, they should be students until they're old enough to make an informed, mature decision.

Yeah, whatever. That's not the case. I think I'm seeing this pretty clearly.

#1 There will always be bullies in every school and neighborhood.
#2 Not everybody gets bullied.

What does that tell us?

Bullies discriminate. They harass someone who is different, most times, from everybody else.

They harass the kid with the curly hair or the overweight girl or the Indian kid who "smells like curry."

Therefore, if you are going to raise your child to "be different," then you shouldn't be surprised when your 11-year old-- who is spouting atheist dogma while the other kids are fiddling with their Ipads-- gets treated differently from others in the school.

I am not justifying bullying of said child.

I'm just saying that I think in this case the parent might be somewhat culpable, and perhaps feigning naivety, as well.

The attackers are 11 year old "theists." Not bullies, but theists.

That statement is a rather strange one to begin with, and should set off an alarm.

When do you think your children or children in general will be informed enough to make their own mature informed decision.

How do you reconcile this with people teaching their children not to believe in God.

An unwarranted assumption:

I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks it likely you're being disingenuous here. Certainly this is the first I've heard of any qualms you have about Christians raising their children as Christians.

When they're ready. They may never be ready. The point being it should be their decision and not forced on them one way or the other.

I think this is equally immoral. As I said, it's an unfortunate situation. I think one answer might be to do what they've done with Politics and make it illegal to urge religious views on children in the same way that it's illegal to urge political views on them.

Why would they never be ready?

You are saying that teaching kids to not believe in God is equally immoral yet you accept that because of churches targetting young people they have to.

You actually think teaching your kid there is or isn't a God is actually immoral? Why?

Statements like these make me fairly certain you have this story down, and facts will not be allowed to get in the way. This is an approach towards conflict management and towards dealing with harassment that is always doomed to fail.


And this is ofcourse the story in question. You have the reason ("she is different") and investigation is not necessary. It doesn't matter that you only have a few lines of description that you yourself even describe as "lacking" - heck, you got this.

I work with social psychology, and I have mapped out my fair share of conflicts and participated in numerous interventions. Your approach is fairly typical for most laymen. Those of us who actually work within this field knows that the parties involved never tell the same narrative, and they never share the same experience. The "one reason" does not exist. Factfinding in conflicts is a very delicate and difficult process - having strong preconceived notions makes it impossible.

Sometimes leaders, teacher or other with responsibility for handling people think like you. That does not mean they can't learn, but if they don't - they are as much to blame as any bully.

Richard Dawkins certainly agrees with you.

Oh dear.

You don't know what you're talking about. Reread the part where I try but fail to get her to defend her position more actively -- because she's afraid of attracting more needling. Or the part where I let her go get religion with her grandmother, but it doesn't take.

Yo, headlines inherently lack nuance. I made it relevant to this board. You want to know what she's about, read the next story which I'll tell later today.

How can I answer that? Some kids just grow up without the wherewithal to make such decisions.

I don't accept it. I simply said that's why I think it happens.

Yes. Because you're urging a belief on a mind too young to understand what it's being taught simply because that's what you believe. Where this argument gets muddy is in deciding what meets that criteria (I think it's anything that might be described as 'metaphysical'), and what is essential that be taught to children, like how to cross a road safely or make mathematical calculations.

It's hard to draw comparisons or make use analogies because there really isn't anything quite like religion and it touches on the rights of parents i how they behave with their children, another very sticky area. There are people who believe I have the right to tell my children that the FSM is real because they're my children, others would be aghast at that.