[b]@Shon Harris:[/b] As I said. The vast majority come out of it okay. Some don't. Some do get long lasting scars and that's unfortunate. Some do become bullies because of it and that's unfortunate. However, we cannot then even pretend that it's comparable to a parent abusing their child with physical means. It's not. One of these things is hugely more detrimental than the other. We're talking on the level of tuna fish versus blue whale in size difference here, if you get what I'm trying to say.

I'm not saying that verbal abuse is right, or that it's something we should totally ignore. It's something that needs to be addressed, but with an entirely different set of instruments than physical abuse towards a child. Because the latter pretty much guarantees physical and psychological scars that will last the rest of their lives and often does translate into further child abuse later on down the line. It's a vicious cycle that usually requires outside interference to resolve.

On the other hand, verbal abuse is something every child goes through at least once in their lives. Especially now that we all have the Internet at our disposal. Everyone gets hurt and it services an actual purpose: Burst the special snowflake self-image if the parents can't will themselves to do it. Believe it or not, verbal abuse can be used to help a child grow more confident in themselves, not less confident--[i]"The bully has to make you feel bad to feel better about himself, that means you're stronger than him simply by knowing he isn't anything without you!"[/i] You use the experience in a constructive manner to help your child deal with the fact that, in the real world, there will be a lot of hateful, spiteful people, and they can let it get to them, eat them away every day, or they can move on and grow up, became responsible people with courageous hearts.

Will it stop them from getting hurt? No, but some amount of pain is good pain. It's life pain, growing pain. It helps transition children into becoming adults: That is, how they deal with their pain helps define who it is they will be when they [i]are[/i] adults.

Now, constant verbal abuse that lasts for months? Shit needs to get done, and there are avenues one can take, methods one can use, all of which avoid physical contact. [b]However[/b], Gwazi (intentionally or not) drew the comparison line at physical abuse of a child and bullying. Thus bullying by association gained the physical abuse attribute. The only logical response to someone trying to beat you, possible to severe injury or death, is to fight back physically. Hit them back. If you don't, they will hurt you and possible kill you.

That's all I'm trying to get at here, is the comparison is rather ludicrous on the face of it because the two problems are inherently completely different. The only tangential link they share is causing pain to the victim.

[b]@Gwazi:[/b] And I'm not going to bother responding to everything Gwazi spewed because he entirely missed the point of everything I was saying, so that he could respond to something that I didn't say at all. :gray Example: Hitler was used as an example of all of human history, and that [i]if nobody fought him he would have kept doing his thing until the whole world was waving Nazi flags[/i]. Or until he went insane, as he did go insane when he was losing the defending war against the Allies and killed himself and his wife.

However, you somehow misconstrued this to mean that Hitler would have totally run away if America got involved, but instead they didn't and fought to the end--once again making it an argument about third party interventionism--something I've already, repeatedly stated, doesn't work.

The point of the example Gwazi is that malevolent predators--hunters--bullies, like Hitler, will continue to do what they do until someone stops them. Until someone hits them so fucking hard they give up. Hitler gave up in the end, he killed himself. A bully will give up in the end, either because you're too hard a mark to bully, or because they're sociopaths and you were forced to defend yourself until they were hospitalized. Pacifism doesn't work against a bully, it never has, it never will. You [b]have[/b] to fight when physical confrontation occurs. All of human history has shown this. Time, and time, and time again. To ignore it is to literally ignore the war songs of mankind for the past ten thousand years.