Parents defending their kids poor behavior seems to be a problem. You're guilty of that. Had "was/were kid" smacked your kid for being a dick you'd be rambling about how "those people" are violent.I think the demise of America came some time in the 2k era. I as a early 90's graduate grew up with fights at school every week, fights at parties nearly every weekend. We played with jarts and guns.
My generation knew running your mouth meant running your hands or stitches and sometimes both. We knew not to stand under a lawn dart or it'll hurt, we never considered making the game use washers or god forbid bean bags.
We suffered from testosterone overload and tried to fix it by driving too fast, beating the snot out of something or humping the neighbors sister, daughter or even her mom if luck was with us. We had male teachers who pinned us like a pretzel in PE because we were disrespectful and my English teacher touched my heart. With his fingernail. Through my sternum....because I was disrespectful.
Getting sued only happened in California on TV and we weren't having that.
It's hard to keep my kids deprogrammed from what society norms are today. We've had the cops show up because the kids stood up for themselves. I stood at the school for my kid when he was disciplined for telling a freak who wanted him to use was /were as it's pronouns and my kid told it those aren't even pronouns and perhaps it should figure out English before messing with biology (I'm still proud of him for that piece of work).
All of this happened in a school district with 600 kids in a 40x60 mile area....I can't imagine what it is like in urban areas.
My advice is to teach your kids to go hard at everything. Fight hard for yourself if that means in sports practice, English class or the parking lot. Love hard. Show them you love them. Tell them you love them. Make them know that when you are neutral emotionally it's not a good thing, it means they are slipping from their baseline. Make sure they understand that the opportunity to run your mouth may be a protected right, but with that comes risk, but that right alone with the rest of the constitution is their's and they better be willing to protect it. All of it.
And for the record, bullies were the kid who could buy beer in 7th grade but we all caught up to by our sophomore year and recognized the pecking order with.... not some username in the comments section hunting for likes by calling you something snarky......and try a game of mumbly peg instead of cornhole. If you are afraid of knives maybe Indian leg wrestling, yeah we still call it that you pussy.
