Comment by ravenstine
Comment by ravenstine 4 days ago
Wow, that is tremendously messed up! I'm sorry you had to experience that. Kind of makes my young adult life sound like a cake walk.
Ironically, it was the jocks and the gang affiliated kids who always left me alone. I don't know exactly why, though I figured the jocks were popular enough to not waste their energy tormenting someone socially beneath them.
Anyway, I completely agree with what you've said. Whenever I experienced bullying, it was in close correlation to how callously indifferent the overall system was. The couple of schools I went to where I didn't experience trouble had empathetic teachers and administrators whom actually built trust with the students. The earlier schools I went to were mostly run by selfish teachers (whom I later learned were even more selfish than I realized at the time!) and administrators who would punish the bully and the victim equally out of laziness/callousness/stupidity; or look the other way entirely! Guess which ones I suffered under and which ones I didn't.
> If you're being bullied in elementary school you don't get friends. It could be that the bullying drives away friends, or if you had friends you wouldn't get bullied, or the same deficits that cause you to get bullied also cause you not to get friends. Just being in a safe environment is a basic human right.
I know you're referring to elementary school here, but I think this dynamic you're describing also explains why so many kids have a rotten time in middle school. Usually, middle school lasts only a few years, and can easily mean being separated from any sort of peer group you have for multiple reasons. If your friends are even slightly older or younger than you are, then one will have to face a year of middle school without them. Depending on where your friends live, they might end up in a different middle school even though you both went to the same elementary school.
Even though I did have one good friend in elementary school (we are still best friends today), he is a year older than I am, and even though we went to the same middle school I had to spend at least 1 year in elementary school without him and then another during my second year in middle school. And I know he had the same problem in reverse. When you're seen as having "no friends", even though you actually do, everyone treats you like you have the stink of death. Those were some of the worst years of my life.
I hate the stereotype in movies that jocks are bad.
There must be some bad apples but mostly they are focused on their sport and the team and don't have time or energy to make trouble, and if they do make trouble, they are off the team.
The time some people attacked me at my dorm I ducked into the room of the captain of the rugby team and that was the last time they came to my dorm. The captain of the football team at my high school was popular because he treated everybody well, I'd say the same about kids who were stars in youth soccer. In fact, even though I didn't feel terribly engaged with it at the time, youth soccer is a precious memory to me because it was one place where I was never mistreated (a group photo shows me standing next to the coach who probably gave me just a little extra attention because of my neurodivergence.)