Games Students Play -- The Kick Me Kid

(Be sure you have read the introduction to these "games":Games Students Play)

"Why does everything always happen to me"

Youth game. This is the youth that seems to wear a "kick me" sign. They expect everyone to pick on them and many oblige them. Their reward for playing this game is the freedom to whine, complain, get attention, even retribution. This is not a matter of blaming the victim and does not justify the bullying. However, it doesn't help the situation if the victim works at being victimized. (It might be surmised that the victim is abused at home, but I've not seen any correlation. This might be an interesting study...)

Breaking this game is almost impossible because it is usually ingrained in the person and probably in the family as a whole. Some hints when encountering a “kick me kid:”

• React in as low key fashion as possible.
• If the whine can be ignored do so.
• If it has to be acted on (“John just hit me!”) do so with little drama and outside the view of the victim or anyone else. Bullying can't be tolerated, but inverse bullying by the victim is not good either. You can't always know what led up to the attack.
• Find ways of giving positive attention to the person playing this game.
• Resist the temptation to just tell the person to “toughen up,” “life is hard and then you die” or other natural reactions. But you can, through your gentle lack of sympathy, show that you expect them to endure.
• This is an issue that might benefit from ideas and suggestions from others.