Reply #5: My older son was being bullied [View All]

[SheilaT]

in elementary school. It was absolutely nothing on the order of what you're describing (more on the order of social isolation), mainly because the teachers at the school did a pretty good job of keeping a lid on the bullying.

But in the fall of his 6th grade year, I got a phone call from another mom at that school whose older son had experienced much of the same social isolation at that school. She reminded me that I'd occasionally mentioned that sending our son to a private school was an option for us. She said I could not even begin to consider to send my son on to the middle school the next year. In that school district middle school is 7th and 8th grades, and there's just incredible bullying all around. Her son was experiencing a lot of what you described, especially on the bus. (The elementary school was walking distance.)

So we did it. The next year we sent him to the private school, where my son's differences -- he was small for his age, very bright and academically inclined which of course didn't sit well with a lot of the other kids, totally bald including no eyebrows and eyelashes because of an auto-immune disorder called alopecia areata. What we didn't know at the time that he also was mildly autistic, had Asperger's Syndrome.

Long story short, bullying was not as well tolerated at the private school, although I did hear from some other parents who felt their children were being bullied. My son did not experience it at all. Being smart was respected there, and he even went to National Science Bowl both junior and senior years. He eventually grew from being the smallest kid at the end of 8th grade (smaller even than any of the girls to a respectable 5'11"). Had we not been able to get him out of the public school, I'm certain he would have been suicidal by the end of 8th grade.

As for the friend's son, things were so bad for him they finally transferred him to a different middle school in the same district, and then attended the high school that middle school fed into, rather than the one he should have attended, based on where they lived. God bless parents who pay attention to what's going on and do what they can for the kids.

I am utterly appalled that bullying is tolerated at any level, anywhere.