Were you bullied at school?

[charliecat]

I was, for being english in a scottish school, for being vegetarian, for not having the right clothes (in fact when i did wear the right clothes I had them ripped off me to prove they were fakes, they werent) for going out with someone that everyone else fancied but he wanted me, so I got my head kicked in...the list goes on...were you and what for?

i was bullied for being a jehovah witness, for being slightly larger than the norm, for not having the right clothes, for being quiet, for coming from a larger than average family (there was only 4 of us!), and when i was a teenager for having breast grow big over the summer holidays so was accused of stuffing my bra and was bullied for that too.

i hated my school years.

I was bullied at secondary school.I had gone from a tiny village school & had been very happy there,to a huge comprehensive in a nearby town.

I don't know why I was singled out-maybe because I was quiet,well behaved & relatively clever?My clothes were 'wrong' & even the group of girls who I thought were my friends bullied me.It was mostly verbal,but I was physically attacked a couple of times.

When my parents expressed their concern about it,they were fobbed off & eventually I got sent to an Educational Psychologist to 'see why I had a problem with school & didn't want to go'.Durrrr-possibly because everyday was a nightmare perhaps?Nothing was ever done about the bullies & I have no happy memories of that school.In fact my teachers asked me to stay on & take A levels,but I left as soon as I could-I hated the place.

Where we live now is still in the catchment area for it,& although I have heard it has improved no end-the thought of DD going there fills me with dread.

i was bulied in my first few years at secondary school by a girl who was once my friend tehn turned on me adn started an 'antilittelweed' club. al the girls ahd to wear macrame braceltes to show they belonged, adn tehy used to ahve a big piece of aper where tehy'd write on what they'd thought of my behaviour that day - and tehn show me obviuosly so I could learn from it! no-one was allowed to sit next to me. can't rememebr what exactly strtes it off - i think I changed my schol bag on the same day as someone lost thier pencil case , and it was 'obviuos' that changing my bag made me teh guilty one. i can't rememerb how long it went on for but has had lasting effects. made me desperate to be liked adn have friends, and terminally insecure .this girl is on friends reunited and I'm so tempted sometimes to eamil her adn say 'remember me?' but what good would that do?

I was bullied at primary school and secondary school, in both instances it took something big to happen before the teachers would listen to me & my parents. (coat got put down the toilet & forced to get off the bus for fear of "getting head kicked in!"
Still not really sure why I got bullied, I had lots of friends and a very sociable person but the older girls obviously took a real dislike to me.
When I go back to my home town I still see the bullies and even now they make my blood run cold.
I think girls can be quite evil to each other and the verbal abuse is much worse than the physical - would have preferred them to have given me a good kicking just the once rather than 5+ years of torture.

Not sure why that appeared?!

Was bullied when I was five by twins who were six and seemed huge. Then by a gang, mainly girls, when I changed schools at 10. They said it was for being Scottish (in an English school), for being Jewish (I wasn't) and for being too clever. The worst bully in that class was the teacher, who wouldn't be allowed to teach today.

At high school there was a gang of kids from the county modern who would lie in wait and take my shoes & clothes, tease, mock, spit etc. My mother was no help - her only advice was 'don't let them see that they're upsetting you, then they'll get bored and stop doing it'. She was so wrong. They just tried harder to get a reaction.

The lesson I learned was that if people abuse me I shouldn't stick up for myself and no-one else will stick up for me. I'm still trying to unlearn it now, well into my forties.

It will make me very protective of my daughter if she ever finds herself in that situation.

You should e-mail the woman littleweed. It might help you to have your say, even belatedly, and tell her that what she did was wrong.

Yes, for being posh/bright/foreign.

Eemie I really relate to what you said about your mums response and how it didnt show you how to stick up for yourself , but I have realised through therapy that she didnt know any better as she had the same done to her as a young child.

I started this thread here , in the hope that we can discuss and come up with ways of helping our next generation. I dont think it will ever go away as a porblem , but i think the way a child can deal with it can be transformed.

yes, at middle school, used to get teased as we owned our own house and didn't live in a council house?? can remember 2 girls in particular who used to snatch things from me and not give them back like smelly pencils, a badge I had...was far too meek to stand up for myself as very quiet...used to dread seeing them....and at secondary school as was shy we'd be in class and the girls on the row behind would say "What's a prostitute and things like that" I'd be all embarrased and say nothing (now would start big debate and lock eyes with them), (still remeber their names too)

I was, for being 'odd' (poor social skills when I first went to school), glasses and bright. I was hit over the head with an iron bar once. (that was in 2dary school).

In primary it was more psychological and I would go days and weeks without anyone talking to me. My mother did nothing to help me and said I should 'ignore it' Ironicaly the girl who orcestrated it is nor the head of a very well thought of Primary school. I hope they have a good bullying policy!

I was too, verbally and physically (at home and school). According to them it was for everything, every reason imaginable. Though of course, it wasn't really anything to do with me. It was them, their problems and their inadequacies that made them act like this, if it wasn't me it would have been the next person. I can at least enjoy looking back with a clear conscience - can they?

not ever been sure why i was bullied but i was....primary school, secondary school...and three workplaces. strangely enough, always by teachers or bosses pets, so i was never believed anywhere. im frightened of my own shadow now!

teachers pets/bosses pets i mean!

I was teased mercilessly because my name rhymed (what were my parents thinking of??) . The result of this is that I'm very shy and hate using the phone or situations where I have to introduce myself. Even though it doesn't rhyme anymore!

A group of in-crowd kids bullied most of our school year. They used a very subtle form of psychological bullying that led us all to believe that we were nothing compared to them. In lessons they would only take notice if the teacher or one of their number were talking - if anyone else contributed they would talk over the top of us or ignore what we said. There was so much more as well, but all the time, day after day, it made everyone who wasn't one of their number feel like we were useless, boring and nothing. I would rather have had my head flushed down the toilet as at least I could have something concrete to fight against. If we tackled them they just said that we were obviously insecure and jealous of their superiority! FFS!
This happened every day for 7 years and made all of the rest of us suffer from low self-esteem for years afterwards. In fact it was only after I left the school and went to university that I realised I was not pathetic, insignificant and lacking in personality, but actually someone who made friends easily and was quite popular.
Whenever I meet up with anyone I knew at school we all have the same view of how these in crowd children have affected us.
Sometimes I think that there is a danger in making your child feel too special, clever, aware of their self-worth etc, as they can get the wrong end of the stick and think that they are better than everyone else. I'm trying to make sure that my kids know that they are every bit as special, unique and brilliant as every other child, and not in a superior kind of way.

I like what you said at the end badhair, thats kind of the stuff Im talking of on the other thread.

Its interesting how some poeple have talked about beig bullied as they were clever or good at something. I was treated very badly by girls who thought I was the art teachers pet. I didnt think I was special or in fact acted that way at all, if anything I was just unassuming and quiet about it. At a work conferance year ago our chairmen brought a long a guest speaker called Jack black , he talked about how we dumbed ourselves down as children as no one wanted to feel out if the ordinary or not part of the crowd. We learnt at a young age to be overly modest and cover up any talents of gifts as it was seen in poor light not too. How terrible that we should grow up feeling this, as Im sure it holds people back from being their best selves.

It was this guy jack black , very inspiring and interesting motivational speaker.

I was bullied by a group of girls who lived near me when I was about 3 or 4. They all had sisters and I 'only' had 3 brothers so they picked on me for that. Even at that age girls can be horrible to each other. One of my earlies memories is of playing in one of their gardens and being told I wasn't good enough to walk on their wall and that I had to walk on the dirt beside it. I did this and walked into a metal fence post, which got stuck into my leg and I ended up needing stitches.
I was never bullied at school. I think I'd learnt from my pre-school experiences to stick up for myself. I did get into loads of fights for it especially at Secondary as I went to a pretty rough school and anyone with half a brain was picked on for being 'posh' or a 'swot'.
To this day I hate and detest bullies and think that schools often deal very badly with bullying - pushing it underground as it looks bad for the school. I've heard many awful stories of kids being beaten up on a regular basis with teachers either refusing to accept that it's happening or saying that 'it's just what kids do'. How would they the teacher, or any adult, like to be assaulted every day.
Luckily (touch wood) none of my kids have been bullied and I hope they never are.

I was bullied quite badly in 4th grade by someone who was my "best" friend in 3rd. It got very bad, and I was quite alone and scared, because she turned everyone against me. In 5th grade, I had a teacher who was on to her right away, and she had bullied most of her other friends, so it was much better. She tried to bully others in 6th grade, but I had the same teacher, so she didn't get very far. She only was in school for about a month, though, because her mother hit her over the head with a frying pan and she had to be taken away from her mother due to ongoing child abuse. Explains a lot, doesn't it?

littleweed (& anyone else who has thought of confronting a past bully): there was this reality show on in the USI don't know if it survived the ratingsbut I saw a snippet of it about a year ago.. .basically it was an opportunity for adults to confront a bully from school, or confess their love to someone from school they used to fancy.

What I found staggering & deeply upsetting was that the bullies had managed to erase their behaviour from their memories. Either the bullying was so insignifant to the bullies themselves that they had no recollection of it OR they had managed to rewrite the scenes in their head so that they came up the hero. None felt any guilt andsadlythey were often having a lot happier & more confident lives than the people they'd bullied, who'd been stewing in bitterness for years. There weren't the satisfying "revenge" moments as I'd hoped.

did she reply to you batters? you have just given me the only reason to contact friends reunited!

becuase of my bullying at school i dont take crap from anyone (who doesnt employ me!)

and i always tell my kids to fight back. my mum always used to say "your better than that" or" ignore them" or " they are jealous of you" etc etc. i wish instead of being encouraged to be aloof, i was encouraged to get a bloody nose in year one. if they think you will fight - even if they think they can beat you - they rarely try. that alone may have saved me 12 years of torture.

consequently. my three children are not bullied. they understand a little of what i went through and so know to bully isnot acceptable either. in fact my 14year old came home and told me a lad was pushing him in the corridor and if i didnt phone the school to sort it out he was "gonna knock him out" - its sorted now, but just to illustrate