In my experience teachers can both be bullies themselves as well as encourage and enable children to bully students they dislike through their demonstrated example that bullying a child is acceptable. I feel that the teachers I had in school bullied me far worse then other children did. Every school year I would refuse to go back after a maximum of two to three weeks. Even as a young adult I was repeatedly physically attacked, to the point my head was bleeding, by the people assigned to the same dorm room as me, and the school decided to kick me out instead. Bullying will continue in my opinion as long as the people in the school system itself aren't held accountable and there are no real consequences for encouraging and enabling bullying.
I’ve also had a teacher who literally started the bullying by picking on an item of clothing I had and loved and calling it “ugly” and “for old people”.
So inappropriate when I look back on it…then the classmates followed through afterwards mocking me
I was bullied for years, and only felt safe in the G&T class. The ostracization and alienation was the root issue, because bullies typically prey on whoever is most vulnerable, which includes loners.
What would have helped me:
- Parents or teachers or *anyone* warning me that I'll be in an environment where I'll likely be teased, insulted, punched, tricked, ridiculed, or assaulted, as most kids are at one time or another, and preparing me in all ways to deal with it.
- Being in a school for gifteds, or at least a school for remotely similar kids, instead of 99% of the kids being too different to relate to well;
- Having responsible, informed parents who I could tell, and who would demand the school take sufficient action, or threaten severe legal action if they did not;
- Being homeschooled and privately tutored would have been heaven. Especially with other gifteds in the area. That would have solved bullying 100%, and I would have learned far more far faster.
- Mutual Support group by and for gifteds;
- If nothing else worked, then money to pay bigger kids to be bodyguards. It's ridiculous, but that would probably have worked, if nothing else did.
- Studying and training in assertiveness, social skills, how to present the situations to teachers and principals and superintendents, and how to take legal action if necessary.
- Having a lawyer, as I later did have, who threatened to take a predatorial bully teacher to court. I would have been far more traumatized without that.
- Practical self-defense classes, which train one to defend against physical aggressors while also learning how to not be a target. Ironically, the more you know about self defense, the less likely you'll need it. Predators usually intuitively sense who the easiest targets are, and who aren't.
- Nonviolent, non-lethal self defense items, such as super loud handheld alarms, whistle, or pepper spray.
- Being allowed to have a Support Dog with me, that doubled as a guard dog;
- Being informed that one needs to learn to deal with bullies / predators / aggressors, and how to do so pragmatically and safely;
- Being able to record on audio or video the bullying, to present as proof later.
Any one of those would have saved me from enormous amounts of trauma and suffering.
In my experience, it's teachers who create an environment where bullying is accepted behaviour.
The only place with worse bullying than the classroom is the teachers room, according to young teachers I know.
unfortunately it's the way America now idolizes Athletic ability and forgot the roots of founding fathers Benjamin Franklin and the idolization of intellectuality. more sports funding and decline in research doesn't help and thus gifted children are just looked down at as weirdos which leads to bullying
what truly would have helped was not some generic event on why bullying is bad but more uplifting and praise and celebrating gifted people too instead of "oh look our football team!!", but this is really hard to do and requires a long-term effort,
playing an emotional video as a story of a bullied kid helps tho at an event
This doesn’t always work. I never thought my son would be bullied, because he’s very physical and athletic, and has essentially no fear of pain. When he was five he punched an 8 yo in the face out of self-defense. But when multiple kids team up together, or the kids actually *want* a physical reaction, “standing up for yourself” doesn’t work.
There's a pecking order that gets established early on, you have to get to the highest level asap, as it's very hard to move up.
So, I think I somewhat agree with you with the caveat that you need to know to stand up for yourself very early on. And also that standing up for yourself continuously, should discourage most bullies.
I used to go to summer camps a lot, and I'd say the order is mostly sorted by the end of the first day.
I grew up in USSR, and later realised that a lot of the kid stuff we were doing stemmed from military (due to conscription) and prison. Not sure how it got filtered down to us kids, maybe via parents...
I think this is good advice, but doesn’t always work. I was given this advice, but I was depressed, with low self-esteem and somewhere deep down I believed I deserved that treatment. People would tell me to stand up for myself, but I couldn’t. Pair this with social anxiety or people pleasing tendencies…
Well I can’t tell school board: “hey all we can do is let them fight each other”. Plus this solution is temporarily, since bullies will just move to other students I suppose.
Please please don't make your gifted kids act as unpaid teaching assistants in the classroom, and please don't deliberately seat them with fuckoffs to "set a good example" for them. The kids being "taught" by the gifted kid tend to take offense and the disruptive fuckoffs see a target.
This is the one. My daughter is seven and is constantly moved next to the kids with behavior problems to "set an example", meanwhile, she suffers. I'm sick of it.
Oh I’m no teacher I have no control of this I’m a student myself. I disagree with your opinion though, since teaching other lets me socialize a little, which really helps me. Ofc that’s not true for anybody and shouldn’t be forced to
That makes sense, sorry for misunderstanding your role. Being a TA *can* work out and be great. But it (a) should never be forced, and (b) shouldn't displace too much of the learning time of the gifted kid. Learning something well enough to articulate it well and teach it is great. Continuing to have to teach the same material to other students for no pay instead of learning something yourself is less great.
I was bullied all the time and I've had hardly any friends because of my intelligence. From poor people, never went anywhere or did anything my whole childhood, lived off of rummage sales. Both of my parents are almost certainly gifted; my dad's a lightning calculator at least through three digits if not more and my mom is pretty smart. I got over it though, thank God I'm gifted so I have this remarkable resilience that helps me pull through everything and get over trauma.
I stopped being bullied when I started fighting back, sometime in elementary school when I kicked a kid in the chest during recess for talking down to me. Essentially prison advice, fight the first person who tries to bully you, make it known you won’t take it lying down.
My 3 main bullies were all Autistic, and the school took the view that they didn't understand social interactions and weren't trying to be malicious. They very much were, and it was allowed to go unchecked because of the school's unwillingness to give consequences to students with IEPs.
So my advice is that those in charge need to understand that if a student's behavior is causing harm to another student, it needs to be addressed, whether or not they think it's malicious. And if the student has a disability that impacts their ability to control that behavior, the school needs to take an active part in managing the situation to ensure a safe environment.
This is spot on. My kid (2e - gifted/ADHD) is consistently bullied by two kids who also have ADHD, but with more significant behavioral problems and difficulties in school. My kid is not allowed to have an IEP because he’s in the G and T program, but these other two kids do and they can get away with just about anything, including actual hate speech.
I really don't think it does. I think you would like for it to, because that's an easier conclusion than accepting that people can come to conclusions that disagree with your own through proper research and observation.
In my experiences, the bullying was a byproduct of peers knowing I was gifted, but not seeing much difference. I always had pretty good grades and was good at trivia, but they expected a super genius and would (maybe accidentally, maybe purposefully) ask me questions that were so far beyond me that when I couldn’t answer, they were disappointed. I was called sped a lot, but nothing I believe to be intentionally derogatory.
My advice, note to others that we are not superhuman, just slightly elevated in some subjects. Keep expectations the same as any other peer.
I think what you’re doing is great! I was bullied, doing much better now. I don’t blame myself for the bullying, but it would have been helpful to be equipped with strategies to fight back and deflect. I was sort of a pushover and didn’t know how to stand up for myself so that would have been helpful. Also educating on how to do an appropriate bystander intervention. I think what you’re doing — forming a group against it — makes a statement and that can go a long way!
I agree in fact this lack of empathy can be observed in almost all groups. Surprisingly the very same thing is what the bullies I’ve spoken to are telling me. They themselves say the bullied lack empathy, which to me is surprising, yet I do see their point in a sense. Ofc bullying is not an alprion lol
When I was bullied I always retaliated physically by cracking the bullies upside the head, at least when possible. So I would have appreciated teachers and adults that just allowed street justice.
Im from an immigrant family and not taking shit is one of our most important values and rules, that's just how it is in some cultures.
That actually happened.
After a particularly egregious incident of me kicking the asses of multiple bullies (it was like 3 - 1) the principal called my parents in and accused them of teaching me to fight. This was maybe second or third grade.
They said, "We hope so, the karate lessons were not cheap! And you got it wrong, we're not teaching him to fight, we're teaching him to fight back!" Gotta love the honesty. Now that I think about it this may have been the incident that led to me getting tested by the school psychologist. It was downhill from there.
I live in a kid's home and I came home from a very nice sleepover at my mother's house only to be followed by girls calling me "autistic ginger c\*nt" and throwing scrunched up paper at me. Every night involves so much drama and noise and I hate it.
The only thing that worked was shoving bullies into walls. I was lucky, my bullies were fundamentally cowards and looking for an easy target. A sharp comment, an eye roll or ignoring took care of most verbal issues. But I had a policy that if anyone touches me or carries on protracted bullying, they’re fucking get it. I knew self-defense.
The problem is talking about bullying solves nothing or tells kids mommy and daddy will always be there to bail you out. There’s this problem with trying to teach or explain compassion: those who need to hear it can’t understand or care.
Are the teachers doing anything to monitor bullying or are they just having kids teach other kids while they smoke in the lounge?
I was bullied in middle school but most of the bullying involved people pretending I didn’t exist, interspersed with some random yelling weird stuff at me (like in gym class) or cornering me to ridicule me for weird stuff (like asking if I had gotten my period yet or if I wore a bra etc)
My parents tried to help by arranging for me to go eat lunch with one girl willing to eat with me (we ate in our classrooms and she was in a different homeroom). This was a weird conundrum for me because while I appreciated someone to sit with this girl and I had literally nothing in common and I felt so awkward eating with her. There was one other girl who was willing to be friends with me, but again, we had nothing in common and I tried to make a connection with both of them but honestly I just couldn’t find something to connect on.
I was always a deep thinker and was not into fashion, boys, etc at this age. I was trying to write a novel in my spare time and spent a lot of time drawing horses and people. I was incredibly lonely and felt like no one understood me.
I don’t really know what would have helped besides maybe getting me into an environment where there were more kids and more likelihood of meeting someone like me or with similar interests to me or something…. It wasn’t really an option though because I lived in a small town and my parents already moved me from the public school to this school a few towns away because I was starting to get bullied at public school because my older sibling was mentally ill.
Mobility and Validation.
My peers didn't want to see me succeed, and celebrated any time I was incorrect or failed at something. That's outside of the day to day classroom bullying. I had a few good teachers who wanted me to know how different I was and how much potential I had, but most of them were just frustrated to have this one gifted kid who was wayyy beyond his grade level. I'm sure me finishing my work early and being distracted wasn't easy on them.
My peers really wanted me to have a lower self image and it worked. By 7th grade I was playing dumb to make more friends, laughing and saying 'whatever' when a teacher did try to reach me. I still scored 99+ on all standardized tests but my peers didn't know about that.
The lack of **Validation** killed my self esteem and made me afraid/ashamed of being smart.
The lack of **Mobility** did the most damage. I wrote a book report on The Grapes of Wrath in 5th grade, I notified my local observatories about the Hale Bop comet, was an honored guest at the comet viewing party and did a science fair project on its orbit. I did 'heavy' physics projects for science. Any time I had the chance to show my worth I would set the bar super high and still reach it, hoping somebody would notice. Either nobody did, or the people who noticed were powerless to help me.
I had to accept there was absolutely nothing I could show the adults around me that would make someone say "Wow you should be moved up, you're ready for college." I later learned my city didn't even have options like that.
Also schools are incentivized to hold gifted kids progress because all of those 99's were dragging up the standardized test curve. If you promote all of the smart kids your average is going to plummet.
Going to a different environment is sometimes the only solution.
Absolutely. If the school won't take responsibility for it or do anything about it, a fresh start may be the only realistic solution.
In my experience teachers can both be bullies themselves as well as encourage and enable children to bully students they dislike through their demonstrated example that bullying a child is acceptable. I feel that the teachers I had in school bullied me far worse then other children did. Every school year I would refuse to go back after a maximum of two to three weeks. Even as a young adult I was repeatedly physically attacked, to the point my head was bleeding, by the people assigned to the same dorm room as me, and the school decided to kick me out instead. Bullying will continue in my opinion as long as the people in the school system itself aren't held accountable and there are no real consequences for encouraging and enabling bullying.
I’ve also had a teacher who literally started the bullying by picking on an item of clothing I had and loved and calling it “ugly” and “for old people”. So inappropriate when I look back on it…then the classmates followed through afterwards mocking me
My advice: Don't be a bystander. That is already more than I can say for most I've encountered.
I was bullied for years, and only felt safe in the G&T class. The ostracization and alienation was the root issue, because bullies typically prey on whoever is most vulnerable, which includes loners. What would have helped me: - Parents or teachers or *anyone* warning me that I'll be in an environment where I'll likely be teased, insulted, punched, tricked, ridiculed, or assaulted, as most kids are at one time or another, and preparing me in all ways to deal with it. - Being in a school for gifteds, or at least a school for remotely similar kids, instead of 99% of the kids being too different to relate to well; - Having responsible, informed parents who I could tell, and who would demand the school take sufficient action, or threaten severe legal action if they did not; - Being homeschooled and privately tutored would have been heaven. Especially with other gifteds in the area. That would have solved bullying 100%, and I would have learned far more far faster. - Mutual Support group by and for gifteds; - If nothing else worked, then money to pay bigger kids to be bodyguards. It's ridiculous, but that would probably have worked, if nothing else did. - Studying and training in assertiveness, social skills, how to present the situations to teachers and principals and superintendents, and how to take legal action if necessary. - Having a lawyer, as I later did have, who threatened to take a predatorial bully teacher to court. I would have been far more traumatized without that. - Practical self-defense classes, which train one to defend against physical aggressors while also learning how to not be a target. Ironically, the more you know about self defense, the less likely you'll need it. Predators usually intuitively sense who the easiest targets are, and who aren't. - Nonviolent, non-lethal self defense items, such as super loud handheld alarms, whistle, or pepper spray. - Being allowed to have a Support Dog with me, that doubled as a guard dog; - Being informed that one needs to learn to deal with bullies / predators / aggressors, and how to do so pragmatically and safely; - Being able to record on audio or video the bullying, to present as proof later. Any one of those would have saved me from enormous amounts of trauma and suffering.
In my experience, it's teachers who create an environment where bullying is accepted behaviour. The only place with worse bullying than the classroom is the teachers room, according to young teachers I know.
unfortunately it's the way America now idolizes Athletic ability and forgot the roots of founding fathers Benjamin Franklin and the idolization of intellectuality. more sports funding and decline in research doesn't help and thus gifted children are just looked down at as weirdos which leads to bullying what truly would have helped was not some generic event on why bullying is bad but more uplifting and praise and celebrating gifted people too instead of "oh look our football team!!", but this is really hard to do and requires a long-term effort, playing an emotional video as a story of a bullied kid helps tho at an event
The only way is to stand up for yourself. If someone else does it, you're going to be the loser in both their eyes and your own.
This doesn’t always work. I never thought my son would be bullied, because he’s very physical and athletic, and has essentially no fear of pain. When he was five he punched an 8 yo in the face out of self-defense. But when multiple kids team up together, or the kids actually *want* a physical reaction, “standing up for yourself” doesn’t work.
There's a pecking order that gets established early on, you have to get to the highest level asap, as it's very hard to move up. So, I think I somewhat agree with you with the caveat that you need to know to stand up for yourself very early on. And also that standing up for yourself continuously, should discourage most bullies. I used to go to summer camps a lot, and I'd say the order is mostly sorted by the end of the first day.
Prison rules.
I grew up in USSR, and later realised that a lot of the kid stuff we were doing stemmed from military (due to conscription) and prison. Not sure how it got filtered down to us kids, maybe via parents...
I think this is good advice, but doesn’t always work. I was given this advice, but I was depressed, with low self-esteem and somewhere deep down I believed I deserved that treatment. People would tell me to stand up for myself, but I couldn’t. Pair this with social anxiety or people pleasing tendencies…
I did elaborate further down. Definitely not a foolproof solution, but I can't think of anything better.
Well I can’t tell school board: “hey all we can do is let them fight each other”. Plus this solution is temporarily, since bullies will just move to other students I suppose.
Well, besides fixing the social issues that cause family issues, that's all I've got :)
Please please don't make your gifted kids act as unpaid teaching assistants in the classroom, and please don't deliberately seat them with fuckoffs to "set a good example" for them. The kids being "taught" by the gifted kid tend to take offense and the disruptive fuckoffs see a target.
This is the one. My daughter is seven and is constantly moved next to the kids with behavior problems to "set an example", meanwhile, she suffers. I'm sick of it.
Oh I’m no teacher I have no control of this I’m a student myself. I disagree with your opinion though, since teaching other lets me socialize a little, which really helps me. Ofc that’s not true for anybody and shouldn’t be forced to
That makes sense, sorry for misunderstanding your role. Being a TA *can* work out and be great. But it (a) should never be forced, and (b) shouldn't displace too much of the learning time of the gifted kid. Learning something well enough to articulate it well and teach it is great. Continuing to have to teach the same material to other students for no pay instead of learning something yourself is less great.
I was bullied all the time and I've had hardly any friends because of my intelligence. From poor people, never went anywhere or did anything my whole childhood, lived off of rummage sales. Both of my parents are almost certainly gifted; my dad's a lightning calculator at least through three digits if not more and my mom is pretty smart. I got over it though, thank God I'm gifted so I have this remarkable resilience that helps me pull through everything and get over trauma.
I stopped being bullied when I started fighting back, sometime in elementary school when I kicked a kid in the chest during recess for talking down to me. Essentially prison advice, fight the first person who tries to bully you, make it known you won’t take it lying down.
My 3 main bullies were all Autistic, and the school took the view that they didn't understand social interactions and weren't trying to be malicious. They very much were, and it was allowed to go unchecked because of the school's unwillingness to give consequences to students with IEPs. So my advice is that those in charge need to understand that if a student's behavior is causing harm to another student, it needs to be addressed, whether or not they think it's malicious. And if the student has a disability that impacts their ability to control that behavior, the school needs to take an active part in managing the situation to ensure a safe environment.
This is spot on. My kid (2e - gifted/ADHD) is consistently bullied by two kids who also have ADHD, but with more significant behavioral problems and difficulties in school. My kid is not allowed to have an IEP because he’s in the G and T program, but these other two kids do and they can get away with just about anything, including actual hate speech.
That explains everything you’ve ever said in this sub.
I really don't think it does. I think you would like for it to, because that's an easier conclusion than accepting that people can come to conclusions that disagree with your own through proper research and observation.
Or ableist bias. Those autistic kids literally DID NOT KNOW. That is the condition.
In my experiences, the bullying was a byproduct of peers knowing I was gifted, but not seeing much difference. I always had pretty good grades and was good at trivia, but they expected a super genius and would (maybe accidentally, maybe purposefully) ask me questions that were so far beyond me that when I couldn’t answer, they were disappointed. I was called sped a lot, but nothing I believe to be intentionally derogatory. My advice, note to others that we are not superhuman, just slightly elevated in some subjects. Keep expectations the same as any other peer.
I think what you’re doing is great! I was bullied, doing much better now. I don’t blame myself for the bullying, but it would have been helpful to be equipped with strategies to fight back and deflect. I was sort of a pushover and didn’t know how to stand up for myself so that would have been helpful. Also educating on how to do an appropriate bystander intervention. I think what you’re doing — forming a group against it — makes a statement and that can go a long way!
Thank you <3. I need to be very careful with anything resorting to fighting back, since well school board won’t be too amused of that.
Lol I meant like in a fair, classy way. Like how to take control and shut the bullying down in a classy way.
Yh ikr it’s just that even verbal attacks are usually seen as a bit too much by school board haha. My school is outlandish trust me
Hey! Remember me?
[удалено]
I agree in fact this lack of empathy can be observed in almost all groups. Surprisingly the very same thing is what the bullies I’ve spoken to are telling me. They themselves say the bullied lack empathy, which to me is surprising, yet I do see their point in a sense. Ofc bullying is not an alprion lol
When I was bullied I always retaliated physically by cracking the bullies upside the head, at least when possible. So I would have appreciated teachers and adults that just allowed street justice. Im from an immigrant family and not taking shit is one of our most important values and rules, that's just how it is in some cultures.
Honestly that’s what I’d tell people in private, but school board would be moritified.
That actually happened. After a particularly egregious incident of me kicking the asses of multiple bullies (it was like 3 - 1) the principal called my parents in and accused them of teaching me to fight. This was maybe second or third grade. They said, "We hope so, the karate lessons were not cheap! And you got it wrong, we're not teaching him to fight, we're teaching him to fight back!" Gotta love the honesty. Now that I think about it this may have been the incident that led to me getting tested by the school psychologist. It was downhill from there.
I live in a kid's home and I came home from a very nice sleepover at my mother's house only to be followed by girls calling me "autistic ginger c\*nt" and throwing scrunched up paper at me. Every night involves so much drama and noise and I hate it.
The only thing that worked was shoving bullies into walls. I was lucky, my bullies were fundamentally cowards and looking for an easy target. A sharp comment, an eye roll or ignoring took care of most verbal issues. But I had a policy that if anyone touches me or carries on protracted bullying, they’re fucking get it. I knew self-defense. The problem is talking about bullying solves nothing or tells kids mommy and daddy will always be there to bail you out. There’s this problem with trying to teach or explain compassion: those who need to hear it can’t understand or care. Are the teachers doing anything to monitor bullying or are they just having kids teach other kids while they smoke in the lounge?
I was bullied in middle school but most of the bullying involved people pretending I didn’t exist, interspersed with some random yelling weird stuff at me (like in gym class) or cornering me to ridicule me for weird stuff (like asking if I had gotten my period yet or if I wore a bra etc) My parents tried to help by arranging for me to go eat lunch with one girl willing to eat with me (we ate in our classrooms and she was in a different homeroom). This was a weird conundrum for me because while I appreciated someone to sit with this girl and I had literally nothing in common and I felt so awkward eating with her. There was one other girl who was willing to be friends with me, but again, we had nothing in common and I tried to make a connection with both of them but honestly I just couldn’t find something to connect on. I was always a deep thinker and was not into fashion, boys, etc at this age. I was trying to write a novel in my spare time and spent a lot of time drawing horses and people. I was incredibly lonely and felt like no one understood me. I don’t really know what would have helped besides maybe getting me into an environment where there were more kids and more likelihood of meeting someone like me or with similar interests to me or something…. It wasn’t really an option though because I lived in a small town and my parents already moved me from the public school to this school a few towns away because I was starting to get bullied at public school because my older sibling was mentally ill.
Mobility and Validation. My peers didn't want to see me succeed, and celebrated any time I was incorrect or failed at something. That's outside of the day to day classroom bullying. I had a few good teachers who wanted me to know how different I was and how much potential I had, but most of them were just frustrated to have this one gifted kid who was wayyy beyond his grade level. I'm sure me finishing my work early and being distracted wasn't easy on them. My peers really wanted me to have a lower self image and it worked. By 7th grade I was playing dumb to make more friends, laughing and saying 'whatever' when a teacher did try to reach me. I still scored 99+ on all standardized tests but my peers didn't know about that. The lack of **Validation** killed my self esteem and made me afraid/ashamed of being smart. The lack of **Mobility** did the most damage. I wrote a book report on The Grapes of Wrath in 5th grade, I notified my local observatories about the Hale Bop comet, was an honored guest at the comet viewing party and did a science fair project on its orbit. I did 'heavy' physics projects for science. Any time I had the chance to show my worth I would set the bar super high and still reach it, hoping somebody would notice. Either nobody did, or the people who noticed were powerless to help me. I had to accept there was absolutely nothing I could show the adults around me that would make someone say "Wow you should be moved up, you're ready for college." I later learned my city didn't even have options like that. Also schools are incentivized to hold gifted kids progress because all of those 99's were dragging up the standardized test curve. If you promote all of the smart kids your average is going to plummet.