Everyone needs a little bullying sometimes

I knew that title would catch people's attention since bullying has been such a hot topic these last few years. I think the term "bullying" has been used a little too loosely, though. According to Merriam-Webster, bullying is defined as "to frighten, hurt, or threaten (a smaller or weaker person)" or "to cause (someone) to do something by making threats or insults or by using force". According to most school systems and many parents, I think the definition is probably more along the lines of this: "to hurt the feelings of or potentially upset any person, no matter how immature or weak-minded the bully or 'victim' is and no matter the intention or result of the statement(s) or action(s)".
Now don't get me wrong, I don't support physical bullying or even a threat of physical violence. No child, or adult, should be physically attacked in any manner, nor should anyone be threatening anyone else with that, or other behavior that could cause harm, to get what they want from that person (take note, Chris Christie). Parents and the family unit should be teaching children to get what they want by working for it and using good etiquette and manners through life, not by forcing other people to do things for them. The golden rule, which is not just a christian biblical rule, is present in some form in nearly all religious texts' as well as the teachings of non-religious people and should be taught as an overall rule for anyone to follow.
Also don't get me wrong that I'm saying its okay for kids to go around picking on other kids at will and for just anything, Children should be taught more tolerance and to care for their fellow citizens (that's the parents' job), but as most parents don't hold those traits, it becomes nearly impossible for the offspring to learn them. I do, however, fully support the positive influence that peer pressure can have that cannot be matched by any amount of good or bad parenting. Peer pressure, as we all know, thanks to decades of Saturday morning commercials about it, can lead kids to drugs, alcohol and criminal behavior. It can also push kids to study more, stay in school, eat right, excercise and go to college.
Peer pressure has such a bad connotation, it seems, but people forget that when my generation, and those before me, were children, peer pressure (the positive kind) tended to be what people nowadays refer to as bullying. When I was a kid, if you were too lazy to shower at least every other day, and you began to stink, your classmates didn't get in trouble for saying, "you stink" and not wanting to sit near you at lunch. It only took one or two times of that kind of teasing before you started showering every day and wearing deodorant.
Years ago, at a much younger age, my stepson went through a phase where, when he went to the bathroom, at home or in public, he stood at the urinal, or toilet, and pulled his pants completely down to pee. He never seemed to have a good reason, but my husband and I often thought maybe it was because he wasn't holding himself well and if he only pulled his pants down a little, he'd pee on them. No matter how many times my husband tried to teach him how to "pee like a man" so to speak, he didn't take any tips to heart until, when he went to middle school, kids began to tease him for wearing "tighty whities". We never could understand the problem these youngsters had with white underwear, but for whatever reason, they teased my stepson for this and when he told us about it, among other things we discussed, we pointed out to him that the boys would never know he was wearing white underwear if he didn't pull his pants all the way down to his ankles at the urinal. Suddenly, he stopped that behavior, Nothing we had done previously had gotten him to use the urinal like everyone else was, in a way that didn't creep people out when they walked in to see his bare ass in the public bathroom, but "bullying" did.
There are a great number of personal experiences I can name for me, and those of my children, where behavior that's often seen as bullying, has caused hurt feelings and been a negative experience, but I can name just as many that resulted in a positive behavior change. Additionally, as a depressed teen and young adult, I went through some really dark times, but none of them were ever related to being teased about my weight or my clothes, or anything else. The way I felt about myself back then was poor, but it wasn't because of the negative experiences I'd had with some kids my own age. However, many of the positive changes I made in those years, had very much to do with pressure I felt from or words directed at me by friends, my peers and society in general.
Unfortunately, for lazy parents everywhere, it takes a lot more effort to talk to your child about their feelings if they've been teased, to tell them to take it with a grain of salt, remind them to think of all the wonderful qualities they do have and that they don't need to change for anyone but themselves.
The easy way out is to blame another child, whose parents probably didn't teach him or her that picking on other kids isn't nice and who may or may not have a crappier life than your kid that is causing the "bully" to take it out on others. Instead of making sure that kid "pays for" making your child feel like dirt for five minutes, make it your job to make sure your child feels good about themselves for the other one thousand, four hundred and thirty five minutes of the day. And rather than calling your child's principal and asking for some kind of disciplinary action to be taken against the so called bully, contact your school's counselor to ask if they can help the other child and yours learn to get along or, at the very least, tolerate each other. Remember, tolerance-it's what's for dinner, and breakfast and lunch and snack and ....well, you get the point. Next time your child comes home complaining that someone "bullied" them because they didn't like the adrogenous colored shirt they were wearing to school that day, read to them the definition of bullying and then go out and buy them four more shirts of the same color. Eventually, even bullies get tired of making the same joke.
As competely the opposite of uplifting this may sound, make sure your kids know that the actions of people who don't know better or don't care, will continue into adulthood and that they better get used to not being able to please everyone all the time or they won't make it to middle age with their sanity. That, I think, is the other great disservice to children caused by schools and parents trying to prevent so much of this teasing by referring to it as the more aggressive sounding "bullying". Children are basically taught that everyone should like each other all the time, no matter what and you should never say anything that might possibly offend anyone. Then they grow up and enter the real world, where college professors, bosses and other adults, critcize them and these now grown up children aren't emotionally prepared to handle it all. This is one of the same reasons I detest the uniform policy that many schools have adopted in the last ten years, but that's a blog for another day.
Finally, what ever happened to it being okay that everyone isn't exactly alike and what happened to it being okay that not everyone likes the same things? Turning bullying into a catch-all term to cover anything that any kid doesn't like at any time, that's what.