That was a blooper, sorry, I was wanting to reply. Hi Seeker, your post sparked a thought, a memory of something I read recently about why the abused become abusers.
It was so simple yet profound. Wish I could remember where I read it. It went like this.
Children who are living in a househild with aggression and violence are constantly observing their environment and learning from it. All children are, even children in healthy homes.
But children in violent environments, more so. So where there is a more violent or aggressive parent they see these people as stronger, superior in some way, and somewhere in the child's mind, it then becomes replaced with 'right.' The aggressive parent always wins, so the agressive parent must be RIGHT.
And in attempt to survive they bond with the aggressive parent being the strong and the right one. The kids see the abuse, but they also see the power it holds, and unfortunately they get confused and think the aggressive one's formula is successful and take on this as a survival technique or a life technique themselves.
Strong opinionated personalities attract followers for the same reason. It provides an element of safety and protection for the follower. "If I identify with a strong opinionated person, I am vicariously strong and opinionated too."
It's like the beautiful people syndrome. Everyone wants to be around associated with the beautiful people. If we are friends with the beautiful people, maybe we are beautiful too.
One author I read wrote about seeing his hysterical mother always winning through and by her hysteria. Father would back down once mother got hysterical. The child saw father as weak, and mother as strong. It then translated to mother is right, and father is wrong. This was such powerful weapon the author observed in his mother, that she weilded her hysteria with such skill. The author too became an hysterical in the face of conflict later as an adult.
So kids in the playground are seeing 'strength' in the bullies and snooty ones. And seeing 'weakness' in your child. To align with your child they are misbelieve they are aligning with weakness.
There are some simple strategies I was helped with to overcome this. I had to deal with this situation with one of my children. The school counsellor suggested I do some very basic things for my child in helping him estblish his own social network. And he really did need my help. Like a really cool party, and it wasn't even his birthday. We didn't invite the problem kids, but did invite some of their (the problem kids) friends. This had a positive effect, both on my child and the other kids. Then I arranged another litle get together shortly after and it was sealed. He had a few more friends to play with in the playgound.
A couple of times on cold days I took out time at lunchtime and went to the school playground at lunchtime with a big bag of hot chips/fries and sat on the seat with the playground teacher on duty an had a chat. You reckon I wasn't mobbed by all these little kids, and was my son no longer Mr Invisible or what. A few other simple things like that and it turned around his situation slowly for the better. My situation was probably different, my son was very shy initially in making friends. That's changed now, and I can see that I really had to get involved to help him assimilate. It just wan't working for him on his own. I think our little ones need us to get involved at this level sometimes. Thank goodness for our school counsellor though, I didn't have a clue. She is so wise.
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