Mom warns parents not to teach kids that being bullied means the bully ‘likes them’

When I was a kid, I was bullied quite a bit—particularly by boys. And I still remember whenever I told a grownup that I was being treated this way, their immediate response was, “Oh, it’s because he likes you,” or “He just has a crush on you.” The 90s were a wild time. Perhaps your own children have been fed this narrative by well-meaning grandparents and older adults. This mom’s now viral TikTok video shows how she’s taking a stand against this incredibly harmful narrative.  “Jfab” shared how she stood up to her own mom and put a hard stop on her telling her granddaughter she was being bullied because the boy “liked her.”

“Be careful what nonsense you’re conditioning your children to accept about abuse,” her video was captioned. 

In the video, she shared that there was a boy in her 8-year-old daughter’s art camp that picked on her a lot, and the last incident that occurred involved the boy smearing paint into her daughter’s hair. “He then gave her the ‘loser’ sign and stuck his tongue out at her,” she explained.

“She told me this and we talked about her feelings and worked it out, but when we got to my mom’s house she wanted to share the story with my mom,” she continued.

“So my mom says, ‘Do you know why he did that?’ And when my daughter asked ‘why?’ she responds with a big smile, ‘Because he likes you!’”

Mom said she immediately cut off grandma. “I said no. We are not teaching my 8-year-old daughter that when a boy treats you like sh*t, it means he likes you.”

“She’s not learning that garbage,” she told grandma. Then mom said that she launched into the real reason why kids bully—and it’s not because they like you, it’s because they don’t like themselves.

“He feels unseen at home in some capacity, and he’s internalized that. He doesn’t like himself very much. So he needs to make other people feel bad about themselves so he feels better,” mom said.

She added that this is the same reason grownups are abusive. “They don’t like themselves, and they feel entitled to take it out on you. It’s not because they like you. In fact it has nothing to do with you,” she concluded. 

By telling our children that when they’re bullied it’s because someone likes them, it’s teaching them that abuse is affection, and they’ll internalize this. Not only is it damaging for how they’ll respond to bullying in the future, but it shapes what they’ll look for in potential relationships as they grow. It’s also incredibly dismissive to be given this as a reason for being bullied.

Many people in the comment section dealt with bullying and were fed this narrative as well—and most of them—if not all—were from women basically being told that boys bully you and abuse you because they ‘like’ you, further perpetuating another toxic narrative…”boys will be boys.”

“My mom said the same thing about a boy bully when I was little until I came home with bruises, then she finally realized it wasn’t a crush he’s just mean,” one woman said.

Another woman shared, “That’s exactly what I got told when I was bullied by two boys. It stopped after I snuck a handwritten note about not judging others into his backpack, addressed to his mom.”

This narrative also brings up a learning opportunity about boundaries. One woman very aptly explained in the comments, “Yes! Great job mom! I heard the other day, if we don’t teach them boundaries now, when they are older they won’t know how to hold their own boundaries around people!”