In K-12 in the US? Yeah. I’ve been bullied past that too, but K-12 was the worst of it.
I had to leave my kindergarten class due to someone who was acting out. We became good friends in school bc we ended up being into the same nerdy things, but he had bullied me a ton until about 6th grade when it became just joking instead of bullying. He credibly threatened to kill his wife a few couple years ago, whom we both grew up with. I’m still processing this in therapy.
I remember once one of the people who hated my guts growing up, I accidentally walked into him because our class was crowding and I mistook how much space I had. He pushed me to the ground and said, “stay away from me, faggot”. I’ve brought this up in therapy more than once.
Everyone in my class picked up I was gay before I did. I had to fight it a lot, because when I wasn’t fighting against the bullying from it, it was worse. I even went as far as starting a rumor that the guy I was sleeping with was sexually assaulting me, because he was a giant piece of shit to me & bullied me a lot too and it was socially convenient. He wasn’t really affected because he’s mostly straight and was just using me to get his dick sucked, while I thought I had romantic feelings for him (and didn’t realize they were that). I’m still processing this in therapy.
At some point someone started a rumor that I was a pedophile in 10th grade. Being a minor myself, I didn’t understand this, but I think it was a rumor from my work with middle schoolers cub scout group. I haven’t discussed this in therapy.
In college, I had my ability to trust people on the basis of religion shattered in a Bible study. I got brought into a group that I thought was good, but as I started developing relationships, we had a session where the leader of the group singled me out during a “share your favorite passages” section and just completely railed into me, saying things that invalidated my choice and trying to put me in my place by arguing against my interpretation of its meaning. I’m agnostic now, even though I have a great relationship with my childhood church. I’m still processing this in therapy, it comes up quite often.
This is all just top of my mind, and there’s a lot more, but hopefully it gets across - being bullied is something that can affect you for your whole life. I’m in my mid 30s now. I’ve been treated for depression, and gone in and out of therapy since I was 20. It’s pretty easy to say being bullied fucked me up a lot.
At least I’m better than I was before starting therapy. That’s all I can really say.
Lasted for a year and a half till I finally fought back, of course I got the worst of the punishments and called names like ‘psycho’ and ‘spaz’ for the rest of my time at that school but FUCKING NO ONE tried to step to me again.
That is how you deal with bullies, you hurt them publicly, in front of their friends.
You hurt them bad enough they know never to fuck with you.
I spent a year and a half listening to my mother, being compliant, walking away, turning the other cheek.
Then when I couldn’t deal with it any more I took my father’s advice and smashed my bullies nose flat at lunch.
So much could have been avoided if they had just left me the fuck alone but no they had to push and push and push and push until they had to bleed.
I hated doing it, I hate violence and think it is the worst solution in every case, and in a rational world there are always alternatives.
But this isn’t a rational world.
Told this to my nieces and nephew: The moment they start bulling you, even if you are outnumbered and might get the worst of it, fight back and aim for the face and nuts.
I was bullied a little, but frankly kids are not nearly as horrible as people say. The adults were far worse.
When I hit high school I may has well have sent up a flare to all the pathetic little fascists who became a teacher not to teach, but because it was the only meager bit of power they could grab. I came from a different city, my uniform was all off-brand, I didn’t have any money, my fees weren’t being paid on time, I didn’t have all the books, I spoke differently, and my commute was long and prone to delays. I was an easy target, and it would only get worse as the clothes began to wear and my stationary began to dwindle without replacements.
I’d get pulled out of class randomly, not by my teacher but by someone else on staff who had taken on some admin work. They’d look me over trying to find something to punish me for. I got done once because the hem of my shirt wasn’t thick enough. No, that wasn’t specified in the dress code.
I once spent months being locked alone in a detention room and not allowed to attend classes.
The longer this went on for the more things there were to find. My grades obviously went down, as did my attendance. I had been an A student in gifted classes at the beginning.
I knew about a dozen people who were constantly being harassed this way. More than half of them dropped out of school.
Also one of my regular harassers was fired a few years after I left for being a pedophile.
Yeah, here to say, as bad as my childhood bullying was, the adults are worse.
They’re the ones who, in the background, were creating the circumstances for this by talking shit about you or instilling within their kids a bloodthirsty competitiveness that only lets them see others as targets.
And in the foreground, letting the kids who instigate the bullying, especially when it gets physical, get away as the victims - by equally enforcing punishment & loudly saying that you’re both at fault, or just punishing the kid being bullied only for fighting back.
I was bullied in middle school. Multiple assaults, general torment and the like, but after I got even, everyone left me alone. He probably wouldn’t work these days and it probably only work to then because it was at a Catholic school where they let that sort of thing fly.
I learned how to bully the bully and got him to throw the first punch. From there it was all downhill because I was in control. I was not angry, he was.
Since I was thinking clearly I was able to easily best him, physically, and after that he feared me enough to leave me alone. Everyone did. In retrospect, I’m lucky I didn’t do permanent damage to him.
This is definitely not advice. It’s also definitely not something but I am proud of.
My takeaway from this is that you should never send your kids to Catholic School. That shit went way too far and nobody should be pushed to the breaking point like that. (neither of us)
That’s pretty shitty to hear. Interestingly enough, I went to a (very small) Catholic middle school after being expelled from our public school, and it was completely chill. I got along with my peers and the staff were all super supportive. There was a small amount of religious BS, of course, but overall it was probably my best school experience until I started college.
I was bullied relentlessly through much of preschool, elementary, and middle school. Being an autistic kid with few friends and even fewer resources to help acclimate to proper socialization did me no favors whatsoever. Things got a lot better as I got closer to high school. All was well and good until I got bullied out of my last job; I failed upwards into a better position with a facility that actually appreciates me, so fuck them. :)
To be honest, I have no wisdom for other people, as my main coping mechanism is just crying. Probably the best habit I ever adopted was removing myself from situations that aren’t comfortable for me. If my work, school, or anywhere else can’t foster a healthy environment for me, then I’ll happily walk away with a metaphorical (or literal) middle finger right back at them.
Yes, but I’m going to start with what I took away from it, which is that living well is the best revenge.
I was going into fourth grade when my family moved, which took me out of an advanced curriculum and landed me in a parochial school. That school year was a repetition of everything I had done scholastically the previous year - my experience and boredom with the topics instantly made me persona non grata to the teachers and the other students. The school’s solution, after I completed and turned in all the coursework for the year, was to give me the next year’s work to do but all that did was compound the problem. Each parent teacher conference my parents would hear the teachers say that they hated me, and during classes they would join the classmates complaining about my participation or lack thereof.
In sixth grade I broke the growth plate in my hip which put me on bed rest for four months before starting physical therapy. During that time I completed all the book work for seventh and eighth grade as well, but another person was also industrious; someone had created and emailed a “hit list” around (only a few years after Columbine), and all the students in my class and others named me as the most likely suspect to the police. I hadn’t done it, but that didn’t prevent me from being questioned by federal and state agents, nor did it stop them from seizing my family’s computer or the apple II e I had rebuilt. After that I was an even greater pariah in school. The police eventually found the person, but because they were a minor their name was never released and no authority ever officially cleared my name - even to school administration.
The last two and a half years were hell. Projects were assigned but I had nothing to do besides self isolate during class. Teachers who disliked me before now treated me as an aspiring killer. Groups outside of school didn’t want to have “the death threat kid” involved with them. I started borrowing high school and college textbooks from the library.
When my class was set to graduate from eighth grade to move on to high school, I had received and turned down four separate full ride scholarships to several of the private high schools in the area and asked that they disburse the money between other students who had needed assistance to attend. During commencement they had some award they wanted to present me for all the acceptances I had gotten, and I used the time I was given to say “thank you” to instead list how much money was newly available as financial aid (knowing full well that most of them had received some). I went to a different school than all of them, then a different college, and I almost never think about them at all.
Yes. I moved in third grade and I was the only Asian boy in a public school system in the American south, in a very small town of less than 250.
I got picked on relentlessly. I never had friends. Every slur imaginable from everyone. People ganged up and fought me on the playground. At least once a week. I got a reputation for always getting into fights in third grade and so I was always in timeout because I was new and obviously the problem. I gave up on teachers because they always favored the white kids.
At one point, they spray painted swastikas and KKK on our house. Then the sheriff deputy showed up, they said it must have been me, because I had a bad reputation. A black lady cop and a white guy cop. The lady cop took the lead and insisted because nobody had any motive to vandalize our house like that, we were not black. It must have just been me, the twelve year old who was in school when it happened. Case closed boys, pack it up and let’s head home.
I ended up associating with the kids who also got bullied for things far behind their control. Being poor, having bad teeth, ill-fitting clothes, for example. My best friend had a physical disability. Although eventually, he decided to pick on my ancestry when he thought it would make him friends, and so I stopped hanging out with him.
In high school, I was vocally mean to bullies because they picked on my friends. Bullies also had significant overlap with the “Young Life” crowd, and so I associated it with their religion. I did very well with grades so the teachers did not intervene. I bullied the bullies. People were scared of me. I was kind of like a stick of dynamite, I could go off on anybody. I did not care because getting in trouble was no better than not being in trouble. I was also very physically fit and played basketball, but I was not friends with anyone on the team and had no social life with them. They were greedy with the ball and when we lost in the tournament, I laughed because I thought they deserved it.
I do not talk to any of those people, except my girlfriend who is now my wife. She had a similar treatment being Hispanic, until she had her glow up and everybody who had picked on her started chasing after her. That is gross because guys thought they were entitled to her as a brown girl. That is her story to tell.
I never felt accepted anywhere until I moved to California and suddenly I was not always conscious of being the only brown guy, I was just another person, and I was like is this how other people live?
Our kids go to a very accepting school now and it’s different for them.
I actually just read your other comment to a young friend of mine. About that you feel that young people are way more accepting. I feel the same way.
I was wondering if you know of any movies or series that can make it a bit easier for me to understand what it’s like to grow up with fewer privileges. I mean your story is just so much to take in.
We got to pick our seats in class so I sat near the teacher. I loved learning, especially together, and adults were always fun for me. I knew everybody living in my street!
For some reason nobody else thought it was particularly cool and so they all sat further back, and so I was alone.
So the teacher asked why nobody would sit at the table with me. Well an old friend of mine looked angrily at me and loudly said: Nobody likes Ellie! It really caught me off guard and was painful.
I’ve learned to always listen to my feelings and those told me that some people just feel like pissing down on others, so they can feel big. Honestly I can’t think of anything sadder.
Yeah, I’ve never been officially diagnosed but I have all the symptoms of Bipoloar II.
The fear thing is kind of a superpower, except when I’m in a place I definitely shouldn’t be, like the one time I ended up on the wrong block in Chicago trying to find the DuSable Museum.
That’s what I mean. I’d wandered on to a block controlled by a gang without knowing it, but I ran into a postman who told me it wasn’t safe and gave me directions to the nearest bus stop, and I figured it out from there.
Early growth spurt plus a lot of time working on my uncle’s little pig farm had me big before the end of middle school and for some fuckdamn reason it was part of what made me a target.
I think that mainly came from my mom raising me to be a complete pacifist (possibly out of fear, that’s a long story), so when the bullies realized I wasn’t going to hit back they tripled down because it made them look good to harass a much bigger person.
It lasted a year and a half till I hit back and then it never happened again.
I was on both sides of the coin growing up - Often the bullied but sometimes getting my chance to be the asshole kid.
It wasn’t until high school when a kid was insulting one of my friends that really turned it. The kid decided, because I “stuck my nose in their business” that he wanted to fight me. The fight was one-sided because I didn’t want to fight but the result was me getting myself into boxing and wrestling. Most people didn’t know I had gotten fight training but people largely left me alone after that simply because I didn’t back down or go passive anymore. It’s not worth it for a bully to go after someone who could hurt them when they have so many targets who won’t bother or don’t know how to defend themselves.
I’d say, my best advice, learn how to protect yourself. Having the confidence to stand in-front of a bully and let them know that you won’t take their shit anymore is often enough to deter them. Should they choose to “fuck around and find out”, defend yourself. Try not to embarrass them, especially if you are in the US, but showing them that not only can you defend yourself but can fight, they are more likely to leave you alone in the future.
Before I got fight training I suffered multiple trips to the hospital for stitches and concussions. Afterwards, I never had to defend myself. Violence is not a great answer but when faced with violence, we must know how to and be willing to protect ourselves.
I was bullied extensively for my entire time at school.
Supposedly it’s all changed now, and reporting bullies to teachers means they’ll actually do something about it, but back when I was in school, the main lesson I learned is that bullies only stop if they actually fear the consequences of continuing. Since the teachers never impose any real consequences, I had to do it myself. The trouble is, you have to give an awful lot of bullies concussions to really get the problem to end, because it only works on the bully who is actually hurt due to their actions. It doesn’t stop their friends until they, too, fear pain.
Interestingly, when I started A-levels at the local college, a bunch of the kids from my previous school were there as well. One of them decided to continue bullying me, so I did the thing I was supposed to do: report it. I was fully expecting nothing to be done, and it would follow the same routine as it always did: empty platitudes, promises to deal with it that ultimately went no where, ending in the inevitability of me snapping one day… However, the college had a rather different attitude to bullies than the school had. The first report was the last one, and the nasty little bitch got expelled that afternoon. Never saw her again. I hope getting expelled screwed up her life.
All the other kids from my previous school started being very, very nice to me. Turns out they can treat others with respect after all!
Children are assholes. Empathy is not innate. It’s something they have to be taught, and if their parents can’t be bothered to do that, they will be cruel, vicious little dicks who only care about themselves and who only respect others if there are meaningful consequences for not doing so.
The ideal outcome is that the school imposes those consequences before you have to take matters into your own hands. In some countries, if the school doesn’t do anything, the police are a good option after that - in my country, the police don’t like dealing with it, so they tend to come down like a ton of bricks on the school with major “why has this gone on so long that it has come to us, sort it out now” energy. Sometimes the school has to feel like fobbing you off is more effort than kicking the bullies out before they take it seriously.
I guess in short my advice is that to stop bullies, you’ve got to be willing to stand up for yourself. Bullies cannot be reasoned with, they can only be compelled to behave by the fear of what will happen if they don’t. Sometimes the school also needs to fear the consequences of not taking reports seriously.
Yeah, giving colleagues concussions sadly is not an option. But if the bullying is taking place in the workplace, there are other options - although it does still come down to making yourself more of a hassle to ignore than to listen to. HR exist to protect the company, so making the point that the company has to provide a safe and harassment-free environment for employees, and therefore have to deal with bullies, can be a good strategy - basically implying that failing to deal with the bullies can get them sued. And depending on what country you’re in (ie, whether you have good worker protections), if you’ve reported bullying, they haven’t done anything, and you’re left with no option but to quit in order to escape the bullying… the employment tribunals will be brutal for the company.
Yea, but because I was a weird kid at middle school and bullies took advantage of that. To my advantage everyone hated them anyway (they were just two spesific people)
Yeah. As a small child I was quite outgoing and confident, but I was also super nerdy and as far as being boyish as a boy can be. School happened and I quickly became an introvert and stayed one. It’s complicated to consult those memories: it’s all jumbled, mixed with harsh internal discourse and emotional fog. It left me with a negative charge. Even though I was always unable to violence, I could understand victims lashing out destructively. I’m glad my kid’s school takes bullying way more seriously than in my time. I think rampant bullying can leave reservoirs of darkness all over a community.
it’s all jumbled, mixed with harsh internal discourse and emotional fog
I suspect this is common in people who have been bullied a lot? My family think it’s weird that I have very few clear memories of my childhood. A few events are very, very clear, but the rest is just a jumbled fog. For ages, I thought it was normal for people to not really remember 99% of their childhood.
Hello, yes. All eleven years. Yelling, picking, fighting, name-calling, stealing, stalking - never understood why, until I was diagnosed with ASD not long ago. I guess I really was that different.
At one point in middle school I remember being so sick of one guy in particular, - he always kicked and pushed me during PE. Sometimes he would steal my things and throw them in the girls changing room to lock me there when I go to get them (I am a man). One time he pulled my pants down so the other guy could snap a photo of my bare behind on his phone. When I asked them to delete the photo, he punched me in the face.
I had a crush on a girl once. Came clean about it, we even went on a small date. This one time she waited for me after school with two girl friends - they pushed me to the ground, kicked me in my stomach, my back and between my legs, laughed at my pain and threw snow at my head. We were 10 at the time, and I was a lot smaller than the girls. I never told anyone, didnt want them to laugh at a boy who is being picked on by girls.
In middle school I got in a fight with one of my bullies during PE. He kicked me, I caught his foot with my hands and lifted it up - he fell on his wrist and broke it. The entire school started treating me like a plague. No one talked to me for several days, aside from the occasional “maniac” or “break my arm too, I wanna stay home”.
There were several kids like me in our school. Teachers did nothing - for them I was a weird quiet kid, and quiet kid always get picked on. Parents did nothing, because nobody knew I’m autistic - they thought I’m just “lazy and weird”.
I don’t know what is there to learn besides “don’t raise bullies”.
My god I’m so sorry. I wish I could’ve been there for you. Especially the part about the girls is horrifying. Can you imagine what it must be like to be that small? They may well have leveled up to become Karens.
Do you want to say anything about ASD? I have a friend that might have it and it’s challenging for me to communicate with her at times.
Do you think bullying might be due to incompetent parenting?
I was only recently diagnosed, and I am into my thirties now, which means I am a “high masking” individual. I am learning very slowly how to communicate what I actually feel and think, instead of saying what “would be appropriate to hear from someone who fits in”. It can be very challenging.
I have family and friends now who are supportive, and they do a lot of things that help: we normalized non-verbal communication (texts, gestures, etc, - I have read about communication cards as well). Also, it is ok to be unable to say anything at all sometimes, especially during an intense moment.
Something I have noticed about myself which is also fairly typical (AFAIK) for people with ASD is that our attention and focus work differently than in most people. I seem to be unable to divide my attention up between things: I am either hyper-focused on something singular, or relaxed. So when I am focused, and something distracts me, it is distressing. Imagine someone you know suddenly startling you as you exit your home bathroom as a prank - getting pulled out of the focus feels sorta like that, minus the fear. When that happens, the frustration can be tough to control. If I suddenly snap at someone when they’re trying to reach out - that is the reason most of the time.
I wish I could help you more - but I am only learning these things myself now. I used to really struggle with communication as a kid, and it turns out I just didn’t have access to the support I needed.
When it comes to bullying, I think the most effective way to get rid of it is to start deliberately calling it out. This may be tougher than it sounds: sometimes we have to overcome a lot of bias and fear to call out a bully. Once I nail that, I’ll think about a way to teach it to a kid.
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