did you get bullied?

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Heehee No. I won't ever see that group of kids again. I graduated this year and they are gone. Actually. Though I remember what she looks like, and I can pick her out... I don't remember her name. I don't know the names of most the people in my school.

If I had a chance though- it would be a really good question to ask I guess. Since then I would hear people's reasons straight from their mouths. Well I will probably get picked on in college. So I will just ask them. It will be a similiar effect.

Like you i dont remember the name of the people who went to school with me. Except the one i knew from 2 years old to 16.


I hope you wont get picked on in college.

I remember once, an adult told me "they are picking on you, because they are jealous" well that makes me laugh, because.. jealous of what???

I was bullied for all of these reasons. It was very painful, to put it mildly. There was no help. "Ignore it" or "change" is monumentally unhelpful. My niece was also bullied. When she was 12 she attempted suicide by three different methods simultaneously, any one of which could have worked. Bullying is serious.

My 7 yo is probably on the spectrum. She's certainly not NT, just not sure which type(s) of non-NT yet. Already in kinder she was a bully magnet. I'm not sure yet what's going on in first grade. She hasn't really opened up yet. I am going to share the link above with Kayli's teacher and vice principal. I've already noticed that Kayli doesn't always say anything to her teachers when she's bullied.

Schools (at least in the US) are starting to take bullying seriously as a problem. I've read lots of anti-bullying programs on the internet. It's a start, but I think they need to know that ignoring it doesn't work.

Magique, in the uk they are starting aswell to talk more about bullying.

In france i dont know. It doesnt even exist a word for bully...

You hear of those kids who are killing their bully... I felt like that many times.

I got mostly teased and some bullying as well but I also bullied back.

i was always bullied at school & occasionally college, but not now thank goodness. i think i'm much more of a stronger person in myself than to take rubbish from people. school was the worst thing in my life and hated every minute. i was of course bullied just for being different.

I guess I was lucky because I didn't experience bullying other than in grades 6 to 9, and by grade 10... well I was still ignored (which may be a form of bullying anyway) but made a few friends as well so from grade 10 onward I didn't really experience any real bullying (a few minor incidents back then which really was nothing compared to what I experienced during my junior high years). But by college it never happened and I actually enjoyed my life back then for the most part.

Yes, but I never bullied others. Victims of bullying is one of the groups I'm able to feel empathy for, rather than just sympathy.

I see that I am not the only one who still has issues with being bullied even after a long time. I don't think my self esteem has ever made much recovery since then. I can't even remember many of the things that happened or the names of most of the kids that did it but when I go somewhere, especially around a lot of people about my age I still get the exact same feelings I had back then. Up until just a few years ago I would frequently dream about being back in school and going through the same stuff, like if I would make it to the bus fast enough after school to be able to get a seat. I occasionally have one still but they are more abstract now.

It isn't even that I have any hatred towards anyone from back then, it is just that I still see myself the same way as all the bullying made me feel about myself back then. Anyone else have that problem? For the people who have gotten over it, how did you get over it?

Why Are Children With AS More Likely to be Targeted?

* They are naive, trusting and eager to be part of a group

i was naive, yes. then i became conscious of my naivete, and tried suspicion to compensate. then my suspicion worried me. i am still there, between those poles. i've decided that unless someone gives me reason not to trust them i will...but only with as much as i can afford to lose of myself or my resources or whatever. it's taken me-well, i'm 38-some time to even reach this accommodation. as a child i would swing from suspicion to trust and back again, and no matter which, feeling stupid. (this was exploited...)

* Physically weaker
no. smaller, but not weaker. i was the rare "athletic" aspie-i was quite a talented gymnast. it was my pediatrician's idea, a place for my energy to go so i wouldn't be spinning around or making weird movements, and it would improve my coordination.
wellll...it of course had no impact on my "weird movements". coordination? eh, not really. i was great as long as i was performing a routine...but once i stepped off the mat i was just as likely to bump into someone or trip over something as i was before i ever started. i once truly startled my gymnastics coach at a meet by tripping over the leading edge of a piece of tape holding down a corner of the large floor mat-just after performing a floor routine that earned me a blue ribbon. (you don't lose any points for klutziness once you've stuck the landing...and i was actually off the mat and headed to my place...sigh)

* Show signs of anxiety
ohhh, yes...
* Low self-esteem
ohhh, indeed.
* Insecure, shy
insecure, yes. shy? i've never been sure if i was shy...don't you have to really, really want to be good in company to be called shy? i just wanted to know how to connect with SOMEBODY...preferably in quiet places, i've never done the mob scene...whatever.

* Engage in solitary pursuits (predators are more likely to target those who are alone)

yes. the only group activity i ever got into was playing spades...and now that i can do it on computer i'm happier, it was awkward back when i was so obsessed with it and had to beg and plead and negotiate to get three other people to play...i don't even know anybody who plays here...don't need them, i have pogo!

* Not successful at sports

i tried out for volleyball & (weirdly, i'm very short) basketball because my mother insisted. the basketball coach benched me halfway through TRYOUTS because she said i was dangerous, and not in a good way. LOL. so for the rest of the tryout period my brother and i would go to a cemetery and smoke weed until it was time for me to be home...mother would have blown a gasket (at ME) if she'd known i hadn't even made it through tryouts. gymnastics i was good at, but that was me sort of solving in vivo physics equations with my body...or living geometry, or living Newton's Laws. if you introduced others into the mix whose actions i could not predict...well, i WAS dangerous.

No extensive network of friends
for a couple of years i had some friends...but pretty much the whole lot of us were picked on, so we could offer each other commiseration but no social protection

* Less likely to retaliate with anger
hmmm...until the chickens came home to roost and i massacred them, yes.

* Less likely to be supported by peers.
except for those couple of years, yes.


* Poor social skills. May be perceived as intrusive and irritating by peers and adults
oh, i'm quite sure.

* Socially clumsy, attention seeking or dominating
socially clumsy, yes. dominating, no. was sometimes labeled as attention-seeking because they couldn't figure out why else i was acting that strange. answer: i just WAS that strange. (shrug)

* Child with AS doesn't recognize when to stop.
yes. still don't. sigh. i wish to god there was some way to fix that trait...

* Child with AS may be perceived as eccentric, not ‘cool’
yep.
* Not good at characterization skills (eg People with AS cannot judge whether someone is of good character, or a predator).
this goes back to the first one, doesn't it? about naivete? i'm still, as i said, struggling with this.


somewhere in here the "blank face" thing was mentioned. my blankness drove my mother crazy, who vacillated between trying to teach me to smile and slapping me repeatedly to make me stop "making that face" (that face apparently being showing no expression.)
one of my schoolmates thought they were really clever (and it is good wordplay) when she observed that even a rock showed more expression than me, because if you threw a rock hard enough it would crack a smile. good lord, what did they want from me?

I was occasionally mean to my sister, and I think I used to chase this little boy around the playground in the third grade (until he pushed me and I fell and sprained my ankle)... I don't think I had the social ability to bully anybody, and by the time I did, I had the morals not to.

I think the real question here is 'who wasn't bullied'.

I was bullied in elementary school and then we moved to Montana and the hell was over. I did fight back at the bullies. I would ignore them first and then it would get too much to handle, so I would lash out at them. I did tell them to leave me alone and go away and they would say "Make us." I would. My mom says I did what I was told and had no right to be punished for it.

But thank god kids didn't bully in my school in Montana.

Arbie - your comments resonate here. I still have great anger forty years later to the village hicks that thought they could judge me. I've never wanted kids tho married thirty years. I would not want them to have to endure what i did. My solution then and now is to get involved with what interests me, read, study, create MY world. To the extent that theirs doesn't exist. Luckily I have some talents.

I never encounter any age group near my own, or in fact any group apart from one or two occasional kids nearby. Yet I sympathise and instantly recognise how being with my own age group (50yrs) would spook me. I actually cannot stand being among groups of people. I'm close to telling my wifes friends who never speak to me directly to f8ck off if we ever encounter agn. If she dies before me once she's underground I promise that will happen. To be cold shouldered when among a group is very hurtfull, we go back thirty years.

I wonder how much of my social difficulties emenate from my Dad. He was socially not very able at all, not too familiar with soap water or the bath - which as you might guess hygiene wise I am the opposite. I inherit his technical abilities and have built on them, yet he was an abysmal judge of character, the worlds worst teacher and I think not really parent material. I could go on for days, when I get into that groove I rant, can make me ill. I have to drop it.

I wish I'd grown up in a city, access to facilities, then agn I would be scared stiff to enter any building. I still have that fear.

I agree with someone else here, teachers couldn't care less abt the timid quiet ones. At thirteen fourteen I was seriously depressed, couldn't connect anywhere. Dumb parents. I have one remaining auntie at ninety, I couldn't care less abt her, yet once or twice she has mentioned my school days and its an emotive subject. She hasn't a bloody clue how I suffered or the difficulties I had. She still lives in the village I lived seven to seventeen and its a very difficult for me to visit every three months. I hope I never think abt this agn. I would love to go back with an axe or a hammer. Perhaps all this is an indication of the helplessness and lack of influence I felt. Its coupled with being movedaround too much as my Dad renovated houses. Yet silly buerk after he died thirty years ago my sh***y other parent blew the lot - the value of two good houses.