When they said "Just ignore them"

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Remember how when you were being made fun of in elementary school and middle school (maybe high school too..) how adults would say "just ignore them and they'll stop"? What, exactly, did that mean? I don't think that they actually meant to ignore them, that always seemed to encourage it. What was it that they adults expected me to do when they told me that if I ignored the people who were making fun of me, it would stop?
Like interact with them as though they weren't tormenting me? How would one go about interacting with a torturer as though they were not a torturer?
When I ignored them, they seemed to find that totally fascinating, and stepped it up more, invited more people to torment me and try to get me to react.. so that couldn't have been what was meant when I was told that they'd stop if I ignored them.. or was it?

I've pondered that. You can't "kill with silence" in most cases. I was teased, bullied, harassed, and beaten up in school, and only a couple of years ago, stalked by a delusional woman (the police were very helpful with that one, since she tried to break into my home while I was inside).

I'm very systematic, analytical, and thorough, plus fortunate to have a good memory. As a kid, I tested the advice and ideas my parents and others gave me, and found that most of it does not work. Some of the failure may be due to my AS. In other words, it's possible that if an NT ignores bullies, the bullies get some sort of body language or nonverbal signal that motivates them to find another target. If any NTs read this, please contribute your experiences.

Most advice I got from adults when I was a kid seemed designed to get me to stop asking questions, demanding thorough, complete, and logically consistent answers, or otherwise disappointing them with my behavior in school (sleeping through class and getting good scores was not deemed acceptable for reasons that I was never able to understand).

I am not a parent. If any parents (NT or ASD) have thoughts, please contribute. I'd be very interested to understand more about parental behavior, since both of mine are still alive and I'd like to make the most of the relationships I'm able to have with them, tenuous though they are.

This always boggled me as a kid.

Part of the problem was that the concept of "ignoring" people was like putting on an act by pretending you don't care about what the tormentors are saying or doing to you. Doing things like avoiding eye contact, having a blank expression, pretending not to care and walking away from the negative situation were impossible for me as I got very emotionally affected by even minor teasing.

As well, no one told me what the concept of ignoring entailed or how to carry it out. It definitely would have helped if a teacher or peer concretely taught me this skill (using role playing, step by step instructions, etc.) instead of expecting me to figure it out on my own.

I think people are often quite limited by their personal experiences. When people say "just ignore them" they're imagining some situation they were in, where a person was annoying to them, they ignored them, and the person stopped.

They don't realize they didn't have enough 'bully magnet' qualities to draw trouble to effect their social status, and with that unfettered social standing had buffers against the bullying they were (and still are) unaware of. I guess that could be called "privilege."

So, I think they're just talking about a non-applicable situation without realizing it.

Tony Attwood tells a story about a man that was relating the difference between how he was told to deal with bullies in his life. As a boy in school he was told to 'just ignore them, and they will go away.' but as an adult, and in VietNam, his Sargent didn't tell him to ignore the bullies, he put a weapon in his hands and told him to do what he had to do to get through the day.

so often we are in a war zone and the 'polite' thing to do is protect the bullies.

And just that experience makes it so much harder to ignore stuff now, even, I think.
There's this overwhelming anger at bullies in general, because I know, KNOW that they'll always get their way anyways.
They can be completely wrong, completely asinine, and it won't matter. Someone can say something so totally false and utterly stupid, and they'll still bully me into letting them win an argument, they'll always just win. They'll always be like a rabid animal going after their completely stupid point, no matter how totally wrong it is. And somehow, they not only don't feel stupid for being such an idiot, they make me feel stupid for knowing that they're wrong. When they ARE wrong.
Which is why I usually just hide, I guess.
The more I have contact with people, really, I guess I just hate them. *sigh* I really hate mean, nasty, arrogant people.

It means... "I can't really be bothered to stop those kids from bullying you myself, because it would involve talking to lots of parents. Lots of parents who would more than likely protest their kids innocence and then cause me problems. Alternatively, i can't tell you how to really make them stop (Break their nose and they'll never do it again!) because if you use me saying this as justification when you get in trouble for carrying out this advice, i'll lose my job"


What they expect you to do is to figure out how to really make people stop, yet conceal what you have done so you cannot get into trouble.

I remember in secondary school, every day i'd be told off to f**k off back to ireland, and be told "It's shame you didn't starve in the famine" (Where the hell do people come up with this crap?). People would throw mud at me, tell me to commit suicide and generally treat me like a piece of crap.

One of my teacher's one day said to me "You know, i can't actually tell you exactly what you should do, just make sure i'm not looking". The next class i had in that teachers room, i smashed the door into one of the bullies as hard as possible when we were walking in when the teacher wasn't looking and broke his nose. My action was clearly intentional, yet i said "Omg i'm so sorry! i didn't see you there". When i was walking out of class at the end of the lesson, my teacher put his thumbs up LOL!! !

I've since learnt you don't actually have to hit people, the threat of violence is enough to stop most people in their tracks and the body-language/facial expressions behind that are pretty easy to mimic.

Yes, and if a person can't manage those expressions, I've found that an icy, blank-faced stare can also work wonders. People don't like to be looked at like objects; I think it makes them feel like prey. Also, subtle, calmly/coldly delivered threats can be even more credible and frightening sometimes.

In the end it is all a game, mostly bluster, but unfortunately with potentially very high stakes (employment --> shelter --> food --> jail --> etc). That people play it so glibly makes it that much more infuriating & disappointing.

They mean ignore them when they are being mean to you. That method doesn't work with all bullies though because they can still find ways such as taking your things or grabbing you because that is something that no one can ignore. Ignoring a bully is the worst thing that can happen to them. They make fun of people to provoke them, get to them, get their attention and if they don't get it from their victim because he or she is acting like they aren't there and not showing any effect, they hate it. Then after a while they stop because they know they can't get to you. But like I said, this method won't work on all bullies.

They always thought it was funny when I ignored them; I pretended they weren't there, and that seemed to make it worse. I guess they could tell it bothered me anyways.

Last edited by Maggiedoll on 03 Aug 2009, 10:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

What are the "social skills" of a bully? They are less than human or animals.

The advice that I "ignore them" was given maliciously. I was forced into a situation by a student and teacher in which I could not possibly ignore the bully and the teacher punished me for not ignoring him. He actually physically injured me to make me cry and the teacher punished me for crying. Then the damned principal came along and did something to me because the teacher did something to me.

I could s**t on both of their graves.

"Authority" isn't something that makes us safe and makes great things happen. Authority degrades us, makes us much less than we could be, and continually destroys us and what we love.

The only time ignoring someone helped me was when this kid kept sticking a large safety pin into my back on the school bus. I knew he just wanted to hear me yelp and it didn't really hurt, so I just sat still and continued reading my book. He and his friends decided I was "weird" and left to find someone else to torment.

You could find a way to ruin the teacher and principals life and career albeit publicizing their names and what they did.You could also do the same to the bully.

Next time they do that....go to the POLICE...to hell with thte school.

In elementary, some teachers told me to ignore the bullies, others defended me.In grade 4, i was bullied by some eighth graders.They cornered me, but luckily I found a dead tree branch---one of the bullies ended up going to the hospital and getting stitches.One of the teachers scolded me, BUT in the end I was not punished.The principal at the time said I was acting in self defence, and closed that case

In high school, the vice principal said, if a bully harasses you, you have every right to give em a good arse kickin and if they complain, I will tell them they deserved it.She said she didnt care if she loses her job, because nobody deserves to be bullied and that she knows how it feels because she was bullied as a kid.She is in her seventies and she says if she loses her job, she has a good pension and retirement to look forward to.

That was a very cool principal you had.

The dirty little secret about bullying is that authority figures often see people who commit acts of agression as powerful and the victims of that agression as weak and worthless.

In psychology, this is called the "just world phenomenon." People tend to believe that those who get attacked deserve to be attacked. This phenomenon was notably demonstrated after the Holocaust of WWII when a reporter visiting a concentration camp mused that the people interned in the camp must have been vicious criminals to have been treated in such an abominable fashion.

The phrase "just ignore them" is meant to convey to the victim that, "I cannot be bothered to do anything to protect you because you are not worthy of protection."

What authority figures need to do is to recognize that they are trapped in the "just world phenomenon" and take measures to stop the bullies' behavior, since it is damaging and often life threatening to the victim (I and many aspies I know have contemplated or attempted suicide on multiple occasions as a result of bullying).

The thing that people victimized by bullies must understand is that the only way to effectively combat a bully is to fight back. Ignoring a bully is rarely if ever an effective way to get them to stop. As in the example cited by Michjo, authority figures must "turn a blind eye" and allow victims of bullying to fight back without the fear of being punished themselves. What too often happens is the authority figure takes the side of the bully when the victim attempts to defend themselves, effectively rewarding the bully for their behavior. This is damaging to both the victim and the bully, since it teaches the victim that they are worthless and have no means of protecting themselves, and it teaches the bully that there are no repercussions for attacking other people (which there often are later in life, such as being fired from a job or being sent to jail -- karma does eventually catch up with people who remain bullies, although it sometimes takes years).

My $0.02

~ Caterina