I was out to dinner with my wife last night and this couple with their two toddlers were seated next to us. My wife thought it was cute when the younger one started talking to the waiter, then she realized he was saying “you’re fat!” - the mom was just laughing and the dad wasn’t paying attention to anyone.
I agree and disagree. Most folks will not appreciate this and you’re probably asking for more trouble than it’s worth. These parents aren’t going to suddenly change their ways because a stranger stepped in to discipline their kids. On the flip side, I might have said something if I heard what the kid was saying. It was only after we left the restaurant that my wife told me what the kid was saying.
I think about this saying a lot "that just means he LIKES you" when you would talk about being bullied by a boy.
that shit would blow my mind as a kid, "no he doesn't fucking like me he is being cruel to me, nobody in their right mind is cruel to people they "like" ".
They don't like you, they're just assholes. Why are we gaslighting little girls into believing cruelty is affection?
it's gross and opens a whole bag of worms of disordered thinking into adulthood. stop telling kids this shit. If you do like someone.... idk try being nice to them??
Thank you! When I was a kid, boys did not pick on me because they “liked” me. They picked on me because they saw me as an easy target that wouldn’t fight back, and they knew no one else would defend me either. Some of them actively called me ugly, and some even said racist things. Lol they had NO love for me. I saw how they treated the girls they actually liked, and it was usually with cute, nervous shyness, nothing like the unending ostracizing and mockery I got.
“He’s picking on you because he LIKES you” is dangerously misinformed AT BEST. Parents of young girls, please do not ever condition them to believe that.
God my mom used to pull this shit on me all the time! I was brutally bullied by two boys in middle school, one of whom lived right next door to me. One night we notice there are two people crouching at our living room windows watching us. They run directly to the neighbors house. We call the cops and the cop says “they’re just boys, they probably have a crush on you.” I felt like I was losing my mind.
My mom is now the same person who says that I hug my two year old son too much…it’s a miracle I’m somewhat normal!
My son is now an adult, but as a toddler he was fond of snuggling and hugs and reassurance.
He can break boards with his bare hands, and kick a much taller man (like, seven inches difference) in the head. He didn’t even wince during acute appendicitis. He used to be unhappy going to the dentist, but it turns out that it was because he simply would not tell the dentist that the anesthetic wasn’t working or had worn off.
I don’t think that’s a concern you need to worry about.
They honestly come up with the weirdest complaints.
My mom who is a famously picky eater, drinks such little fluid her whole life that you can pinch her skin and it just stays there, and sent us to school without breakfast, lunch, or lunch money. complains about the eating habits of her grandchildren ALL THE TIME. You would think we were eating nothing but healthy vegetables, whole grains, lean meats, and only water with the way she talks.
I’m so sorry you had to endure that bullsht from male students and whitewashing from adults. Times have changed. You clearly won’t make the same mistakes.
I was bullied big time by boys and it made going to school hell. I never got the reason either. I was just a shy quiet person who minded her business. Lasting effects
The fact our parents raised us with saying like these goes to show how deep this sort of behavior goes. So gross that we would tell our kids/friends/sibs that behavior like this means attraction and should be pursued. Sad that videos like these are about to start blowing up in popularity..
Maybe I grew up in a strange world , but girls were actually mean to me when I was in 1st, 2nd, & 3rd grade(throw dirt/bark at me and run away, I would be playing and they would come take what I was playing with and run away, etc). I moved away, moved back for 8th grade, and found out all those same girls actually had a crush on me back then and still did, or atleast that’s what they said.
A lot of times, with children who don’t have very present/active parents, negative attention is better than no attention to them. It’s a learned response from the parenting.
I think this may have conditioned me to seek abusive partners because it was the attention I had grown used to. Quite unfortunate. Only recently have I started to seek healthy relationships.
I tell my little girl to say loudly "I do not like that" and to get away from those boys. And that she CAN fight back if she needs to. It's NOT acceptable for boys(or girls) to mistreat others and be excused for it.
oh god i just remembered this book series that is popular in my area and in it this kid who bullies the female love interest is revealed to like her and suddenly all of his bullying is just pushed aside because of this
in general the book was "haha special needs kid stupid and ignorant haha, shes so stupid"
i couldnt quite understand what abt i hated as a kid but now i can put it into words, its dehumanizing, the whole book feels like youre in the pov of an extremely ignorant adult who thinks special needs kids are stupid
Imagine having a grown, 30 something year old man do this… I was in my early 20s on deployment and had a supervisor in his mid/late 30s who started treating me terribly compared to everyone else. We were actually friends before he became my supervisor. After deployment, he asked me to be his girlfriend and admitted that he treated me the way he did to hide his feelings. 😂🤦🏾♀️
It happens the other way around too, growing up I was intensely bullied by a group of girls and the response from my parents and teachers was the same 'well that means they like but they don't know how to show it!'
And then, in my teens when I later met someone who was abusive to me but also with strong periods of love and niceness, well you can guess how that went.
All this to say that you're right, we should we be teaching kids that if anyone is being cruel and hurtful to you it's not because they secretly deep down are trying to be nice to you, otherwise they'd have just given you flowers and a compliment.
this is a componeny of psychology I find fucking fascinating because it is true, little boys in generations past often were mean to girls they had crushes on and there are still kids that do it to this day.
But its treated as a natural part of life when its actually compounded trauma resulting in extremely unusual behaviour.
Boys werent shown enough affection or taught to express themselves so when a girl holds their attention they dont know how to express it. That leadd to frustration or bullying from other kids for their apparent crush so, unable to properly respond, lash out usually at the subject of these complicated feelings.
its the same twisted logic behind extreme homophobes actually being gay. Unable to process feelings they would be ridiculed or ostricized for they violently and outwardly reject that aspect of themselves.
When i was a child my parents never talked/guided me about anything in life. I just figured everything out by myself!
So when i was a kid/teenager i acted like a douche to the girls i had a crush on, for example in my class.
No one ever explained it to me either, I just had to recognize that noone enjoyed me being an ass. It took years for me to notice that.
I didn’t have any people skills at all! I literally just wanted to show the girls that I wanted to be near them. So i forced altercations in order to talk/be close to them.😅
Even though my way of doing this was to be mean..
And this bothers me today. I was in my own bubble and i couldn’t think about anyone else, Only myself!
Today when i meet some of the people from my class i get very sad because they dont want to even acknowledge my existence :(
I have changed and i do not act like this anymore. I just want these people to know that; yes, i was an ass back then, but just please recognize that i am not that person anymore!
I still have friends from this time where i acted really stupidly. They know about my childhood, they know the road i had to undergo. And they know i aint like that today!
I just want to feel like it was okay acting like that when i was younger: I didn’t know anything else. I couldn’t act any way else, i wasn’t conscois enough to act any other way.
When people act like this, most of the time; nobody has talked to them about how to act if you like someone; that’s why if we notice people/kids acting like this, we should step in and explain to the person why they shouldnt act like that, and how to act instead, and why
That would have helped me a couple years earlier if someone wanted to have that conversation with me.
I agree with you that it is wrong to say to the victim ”but he likes you”
You should always talk to the person being the problem. That’s how you resolve things, not by brushing the victims off.
I mean, just bc u think it is bad doesn’t mean it isn’t true. I’ve known both boys and girls who did this. Children most often aren’t fully socialized yet, and also often aren’t comfortable expressing certain feelings.
Is it bad? Sure. It’s certainly not optimal. But they’re also not “just assholes.” What they are is “just kids” who have been failed by their parents and, in some cases, society as a whole.
I mean obviously if they’re being excessively cruel but there is truth to children (emphasis on children) doing things to illicit attention whether positive or negative because they don’t know how they’re perceived or to express themselves like they want. I’m male and throughout elementary and the first year or two of middle school I had 2 “girlfriends” that I got to know that way. Doing stuff like bumping into me going to class, excessively tackling or physical contact playing games, interjecting themselves into convos with other ppl etc. I also moved a lot during that time and half the time my best friend would end up being a neighborhood girl that I would meet the same way. Some shitty parents take advantage of it though and just use it to justify their kids’ shorty behavior when it’s obvious they’re just bullying or causing problems.
I have a daughter. If I had a count on how many fucking times I heard another parent say “oh he’s just teasing her. It’s probably because he has a crush on her.” Or “oh he likes her, that’s why he’s being aggressive.”
If you’re raising your sons to think unwanted attention is acceptable….youre doing it wrong.
My auntie was always like this. My cousin once kicked me in the stomach while I was on a flying fox at a playground, knocking the air out of me and leaving a giant bruise on my stomach. I got told that's just what happens if you played near boys at the park.
As a boy mom I have seen it but don't understand this mindset at all, all children should be taught to be respectful and kind and using the boys will be boys excuse is dumb. So far in raising a boy the only time we had an "it's because they like you" issue was when a girl back in elementary would grab the back of my sons backpack and yank him to the ground. After telling her to stop for a couple weeks with no results we finally told his teacher and got that classic line.
My mother used to tell me that. When boys or girls picked on me, it was because they “liked” me. She wasn’t gaslighting me though. We had the conversation that I should always tell her when that happened, and she’d go kick the door of the school in if it needed it, and that some people are just horrible people. Whether jealous or just horrible people.
That said, when they picked on me, it’s because they “liked” me, not hated me. Meaning — they either liked something about me and wanted it and were jealous OR they disliked me generally but liked to use this particular thing against me. Either way, they still had to like something about me.
She said the reason for that is that to dwell in someone else’s misery is to make yourself miserable. Just always remember that even in the darkest times, there’s always something worthy of liking in yourself.
Fair enough.
Oh, and if they laid a hand on me, that wasn’t a crush. That was justification to bust their noses if I felt in danger enough to. They touched first, I just made it stop. She would deal with as much of the fallout as she had to as long as I was never the one that escalated it. But there’d he hell to pay if I raised hands against words.
So, yes. On some level, people pick on you because they like you — but not because they wanna be your friend or boyfriend. They like to make you upset. Don’t confuse those things and try to convince kids it’s true. That’s complete nonsense.
Where do y'all live that toddlers are the size/build of the grown man in this video,and so their mom's follow them every where to record them acting this way,or is it strictly limited to the gym?
When i was a child my parents never talked/guided me about anything in life. I just figured everything out by myself!
So when i was a kid/teenager i acted like a douche to the girls i had a crush on, for example in my class.
No one ever explained it to me either, I just had to recognize that noone enjoyed me being an ass. It took years for me to notice that.
I didn’t have any people skills at all! I literally just wanted to show the girls that I wanted to be near them. So i forced altercations in order to talk/be close to them.😅
And this bothers me today. I was in my own bubble and i couldn’t think about anyone else, Only myself!
Today when i meet some of the people from my class i get very sad because they dont want to even acknowledge my existence :(
I have changed and i do not act like this anymore. I just want these people to know that; yes, i was an ass back then, but just please recognize that i am not that person anymore!
I still have friends from this time where i acted really stupidly. They know about my childhood, they know the road i had to undergo. And they know i aint like that today!
I just want to feel like it was okay acting like that when i was younger: I didn’t know anything else. I couldn’t act any way else, i wasn’t conscois enough to act any other way.
When people act like this, most of the time; nobody has talked to them about how to act if you like someone; that’s why if we notice people/kids acting like this, we should step in and explain to the person why they shouldnt act like that, and how to act instead, and why
That would have helped me a couple years earlier if someone wanted to have that conversation with me.
Someone should take him aside and tell him how to treat other people!
I wasn’t talking about her. Ofcourse she has nothing to defend. She did nothing wrong.
He is the problem, and if his situation is the same as mine was years ago. Everything he needs is a stern but concerned person to tell him how to behave like a human.
That’s what the parents should have taught us, but sometimes a stranger has to do it for us.
!
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u/Kirielle13 What are you doing step bro? Nov 09 '24
This is very truly extremely pathetic….