Reply to Daughter got in a fight at school - how to help her defend herself next time?

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[quote=Anonymous]OP I'm really sad to see all of the armchair tough guys on this thread giving you impractical and useless advice.  I was in a situation not unlike your daughter's in middle school. My parents moved, and I changed from a nice suburban school to an awful urban rustbelt school in the middle of seventh grade.  I was physically bullied a lot.  Here are some thoughts:

Learning to defend yourself against bullies is hard, but what you may not know is that it can cause as many problems as it solves.  When I was in your daughter's place, I spent a couple of years teaching myself to fight at the slightest provocation (developing the "will" that PPs talk about).  I practiced hitting and getting hit by my older brother every day (getting loose teeth, bloody noses, bruises and the occasional black eye), and I lifted weights daily from 7th grade through high school.

This worked to some extent --- I got left alone more than my best friend (who was also bullied), but after I fought back against one bully, I was attacked the next time by two.  When this happened, they were caught and kicked out of the school building.  The teacher who caught them urged me to call the police.  Instead,  I went outside to meet them to continue the fight because I was so screwed up by the environment that I thought I had to.  My willingness to take a beating (and I got one) only meant that I was no longer attacked or casually punched one on one, but this group of kids would still bully me as a group.

In high school things were better because I was an athlete and friends with the football, basketball and wrestling team members, but those experiences never really left me.  Years later, a buddy and I were randomly attacked in a college bar by a group of guys who were looking for a fight, and after bouncers threw them out, I followed my attackers to another bar to continue fighting.  Today that seems insane to me.  Immediately after that attack, I started studying martial arts and spent the next 6 years working out at MA 3 times a day every day (to the detriment of my social life and studies/career).  I ended up in a crazy full-contact mixed martial arts dojo full of cops and prison guards where I was the only guy who did not carry a gun in my gym bag.  I retrospect, I needed therapy, not  all that craziness, but I was afraid and I felt like I somehow needed to prove that I was tough.

I also spent many years hating myself for every time that I did _not_ physically fight in the wake of every perceived slight -- at a company picnic when an acquaintance teased me for missing a volleyball spike, against a couple of teenagers who almost hit my toddler with a football, against a girlfriend when she punched me in anger.  I always needed to prove to myself that I was tough and would not be a victim again, and that was a really unhappy way to live.

Get your daughter out of that school now.  Homeschool if you have to.  Get her therapy or at least get some books on this.

Wrestling with your daughter will not help.  Aikido will not help.  Boxing will not help (most people break bones in their hand when they hit without gloves).  Karate will not help, nor will tae kwon do.  "Self defense" classes are a joke. Most people who teach them have never been in a fight.  You need to be an adult and confront this, not do unproductive things like wrestling with your daughter.

If she must stay at this school, find an IMPACT course --- short term self defense classes primarily directed toward rape survivors.  Students are attacked by a large man in full pads who is screaming at the top of his voice and learn to whale on him with everything they've got.  Students have broken bones and had other injuries, but that's how you learn to fight -- any training that is not full contact is nothing.  
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