I couldn’t believe my eyes seeing this advice to teach young boys to hit girls so as to restore the boys’ self esteem and pride.
This is the kind of toxic belief that shouldn’t be allowed to proliferate here and yet is embraced with open arms by other users.
That boys can only regain their pride and self esteem by hitting girls leads directly to more violence against women and girls.
To me it’s clear that the little kid is being bullied and the adults aren’t helping. It is a shitty situation. Kids do need to learn conflict resolution. Kids also need to learn about violence – not to perpetrate it, but to recognize it, respond to it, stay safe from it. Violence is an option in the world and kids need to learn to be protected from it and choose better options.
How do you teach kids to stand up to bullies? Somewhere in there has to be what to do in the case of violence, aka self defense, or pushing back if all else fails.
This kid does need to overcome this problem, although “restore his pride” sounds pretty gross.
Poor little boy didn’t want to go to school anymore. I don’t think we should teach boys that self esteem comes from violence against girls, but the real villain here is the school enabling the bully.