A Mother Is Under Fire for Teaching Her Kids to Fight Back, Showing Society Still Doesn't Get It

RedState 

I'm not sure how often I was told this as a kid, but I know I heard it a lot. 

"Don't hit. Tell a teacher if anyone ever hits you." 

A horrid piece of advice adopted by too many Americans. I can attest to it personally. The advice doesn't work. It only makes the bullying worse, and moreover, it teaches the kids who obeyed that command that they weren't worth much. 

That's the sad reality of nature. Appealing to a higher authority about something might help you temporarily, but the long-term effects of handing over your well-being to someone else never pays off in the long run. Best to understand that you yourself worth enough getting violent over. 

That's what one mom posted in a TikTok. She said she wasn't about to tell her kids to just tell a teacher if they were being bullied. Her advice was to fight back and "hit back harder." 

This caused something of a war on the internet, with many taking her side, but many others denouncing this as an awful way to look at things, according to the New York Post: 

“This teaches kids to solve problems with violence instead of seeking help or resolution. It also undermines trust in teachers and makes schools harder to manage,” one user blasted.

“This energy is gross. Hitting people isn’t OK,” scolded another.

One elementary school teacher even weighed in from the front lines of the classroom.

“As an elementary teacher, this is the mindset of nearly every parent and fighting is out of control. We won’t even know students are having problems with one another because they won’t tell us about it. They will just fight … I’m not saying kids can’t learn to defend … or advocate for themselves but they need to communicate with the adults in charge of keeping them safe before it gets to that point.”

The Today Show even weighed in on the conversation, bringing in a child expert who warned that what also needs to be taught is that hitting in response may come with consequences from the school or the opposing kid's family. 

The thing is, all this resorting to referring to a higher authority can actually reprogram the brain, and if you're a child, that programming can run pretty deep. 

Firstly, bullying results in low-self esteem, which can trigger all sorts of issues. This isn't exactly news, but according to a study published in the National Library of Medicine, bullied children tend to internalize the wrongs done to them, resulting in anxiety, self-harm, and suicidal behavior. 

According to another study by Carol Dweck and N. Dickon Reppucci at Yale University found that teaching children to not fight back results in learned helplessness and a lack of control over their personal life. It introduces failure into the psyche which causes them to have a negative view about their own personal ability, and give up on tasks even when they're solvable. 

In other words, learned helplessness. 

One may teach the child to give warnings and try to solve conflicts peacefully, but the line has to be quick to cross. The child can't go on trying to reason with another child forever, and too often children are unreasonable. This means that it's important for your child's development to hit back. Even if the child doesn't necessarily win the fight, it was better that he fought back and developed that sense of self-worth and gave the other kid something to think about the next time they decide they want to bully your child. 

Self-defense is tied to self-worth, and telling your child to abandon any idea of it is going to leave more lasting damage on the mind than the bullies' fists will physically. 

While it's definitely a good thing to teach children not to start fights or physical confrontations, which can come with its own set of psychological issues, "fight back" is an important reaction to have in any situation where self-worth is on the line. 

Those who are kept from that will experience a much harder life and grow up to become incapable of protecting themselves or their family members. They'll be more prone to flight than fight, and that doesn't exactly make for a good protector of the home.