My mom is both a ditz and has mental disorders untreated for decades as nobody wanted to admit she was weird and so would attack me as a "problem child" when *I* pointed out she was weird. Dealing with seeming nonsense I was expected to somehow follow anyway on pain of punishment was my childhood.
Combined with being a bullying victim with teachers who protected the bullies, nothing* adults did or said made sense to me, heh. I would be drummed out of the military in like all of two seconds as a result, the first moment I tried to stand up for myself or question any seemingly illogical thing.
Yep, that's pretty much where I would have been at. Drummed out the second I questioned, which would have been about 2 seconds into my service, lol. I never would have considered myself a bullying victim because the other kids didn't do it to me, I'd have hurt them, but teachers bullied me.
It took me a long time to realize that adults around me were bullying me, I was an adult myself before I came to that realization. I did everything I could to make sure my own kid didn't get bullied by the system or other kids. He didn't hit as often or as early, he waited for them to get real mean.
I don't have kids and likely never will, but I would have been a terror for teachers and other parents (because ultimately it's parents who failed to teach their kids not to bully) if my kid ever got bullied lol. And of course no way in hell my kid would hear the end of it if *they* bullied anyone.
My son's high school principal (big guy, over 6ft, weighed at least 250lbs) thought he could get loud with me, once. He thought he could use his size to back me up, once. Then looked astonished when I didn't move a muscle and just got louder (all 5'3" 130lbs of me). He retired the next year.
Incidentally, after I wrote a legalese letter threatening to sue, not just the school district, or the school, but everyone who had ever laid eyes on my son in their individual capacities, when my kid was in elementary and bullied & no one had stopped it. That principal retired the next year too. 🤗
My kind of parent. 💙
The legalese was really helped by years of working as a paralegal and the fact that I was in law school part time at that point. It was a scary letter that didn't directly ever even say I would sue, but implied it so heavily that it made it even more terrifying. All bullying ceased, the next day.