How many Aspies weren't/aren't bullied and...
...how have you managed to escape that fate?
I know this is a rare creature that I'm asking about, but I'm just curious about anyone who has managed to avoid bullying and how.
- Was/is your environment a particularly friendly bully-free one?
- Is your natural persona less attractive to bullies? And if so, why?
- Did you develop effective deflecting strategies early on?
- Are you too impervious to have noticed?
Or any other type of reason you might come up with.
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AQ: 32 (up to 37 when answering instinctively); EQ: 21 - 24; SQ: 31
Reading the Mind in the Eyes: 32
RAADS-R: 85
RDOS Aspie score: 115/200; NT score: 79/200
- Yes, my primary school was one of the most peaceful and well performing schools of my city.
- Yes it was, among peers I always ranked at the top in every sports. Later I realized this was mostly due to being an avg 10 months older than my peers. But it helped significantly to have a nickname of "superman" based on your sports performances.
- I lived very close to both primary and high school and close to the city center. As such, friends would always come over at my place to play. I never ever went to somebody else and it didnt seem weird at the time, because well.. the proximity & the equipment we had at home (born in'86 so just at start of computer age). I'm sure the ratios are at least 25:1 even with my best friends, some only visited a few times in 6 years.
- Going from primary to highschool was a rather easy transition aswell. I participated in a 'special' education form for high performers, and fit really well in the group mainly because I had build up rapport with a few girls on primary school... who happened to be in that group aswell and were the bullies (so they left me alone).
- Yes I was too impervious (as were my parents&teachers) to have noticed and I'm still Very thankfull for having gone through this period relatively unharmed.
In short: My sports performance, intelligence and proximity to school in a nice house & location... were factors that caused others to 'cling' to me, so that I didnt have to do anything at all to maintain relationships.
I was fairly lucky for the most part, there was some of the mick-taking of my oddities and also the usual bit of picking on the short clumsy girl, and I did have the school bully try to beat me up once, but if there was much bullying and teasing going on I wasn't aware of it really.
btbnnyr
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AardvarkGoodSwimmer
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It's not just the presence or absence of bullies.
It's whether the home environment is reality oriented and supportive, or not.
Many parents (most?) end up in one way or another blame their child for being bullied.
Some parents know in their gut the world is unfair, provide both a home that's a refuge and strategic advice, skill teaching, and good, decent backup. (frankly, this is just beyond the skill level of many parents)
The bullying stopped when we moved. In the small town we lived in, kids didn't pick on me really and they didn't harass me. I didn't start to get bullied until I was six and it was with kids in my neighborhood and then it was at school when I was eight. When I was six and seven, very few kids would be mean to me at school but I hardly ever consider that bullying. If there were any kids mean to me, I was not aware of it then. I have found out years later what a kid did t me was mean like the time we got this new girl in my school and she had Down's syndrome. In my class before going to lunch, these girls were talking and one of them told me there is this new girl who is in Mrs. L's class, and she has the same name as me and talks like me. I had just gotten out of 6th grade when I realized that girl was just being mean. I think me being in special ed is what made kids leave me be and then when I was in regular ed, kids could get away with picking on me because I looked normal and I was easy to provoke and I hated being touched. I also took things the wrong way when they do friendly teasing. I suspect I took things the wrong way then because I didn't understand the difference between meanness and playful teasing. Then moving to a small town, the school was so small, they would stand out more picking on me and I was in special ed.
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Son: Diagnosed w/anxiety and ADHD. Also academic delayed and ASD lv 1.
Daughter: NT, no diagnoses. Possibly OCD. Is very private about herself.
No. Pretty much the opposite.
I am, because I scare people.
Yes. Beating people every time they bother me, both in a verbal or in a physical way (though I've received a fist only once; all the other "bullism" was isolation and teasing).
No, not impervious. I noticed it, and solved the problem with kicks and fists.
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Tyri0n
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I've always been a big guy, so I was never the object of physical bullying. In fact, in certain settings, as a young child I was a sort of bully.
I was also homeschooled most of the way through. So yeah, the worst I've ever experienced was silent exclusion, which I didn't notice/didn't bother me till I got much much older because I was almost always hostile to other kids.
I was never bullied at primary school, and I wasn't exactly bullied at high school either. I am very surprised about not being bullied at high school because the high school that I went to had a bad reputation with bullying, and so you very easily got bullied if you were just a teeny bit different.
I did get teased or picked on a few times, which I suppose could be considered a form of bullying, but I've never been bullied as bad as some Aspies here say they have, like being punched and kicked, et cetera. I've just got picked on by some boys when I walked home from school a few times, but that kind of fizzled out. Also when I was about 14 I got called ''Japanese'' by some random boys that were older than me, which I don't know why because a) I had blonde hair and looked nothing like a Japanese person in facial features, and b) I would have thought they'd say that to one of the girls I sometimes hung around with because she WAS part Japanese. But they only said it to me when I was on my own, and it was nothing to do with what I was wearing either because we all wore school uniform.
I think I didn't get bullied because I didn't show any Aspies traits to make me stand out. I must have been good at hiding it, because usually teenagers are the worst of all people to notice small differences in other people, and would bully if they could, especially at the school where I was at where bullying was rife. I never hung about in the library, I wasn't an ''A-student'', I hung about with other kids who weren't very bright either, and I went around with a trendy bag for all my books and stuff, and I kept my top button undone (the only kids that kept their top button done up all the time were the ''boffs'' (geeks)). So I didn't show many visible Aspie traits to attract bullies.
This is why I get confused when I get funny looks or laughed at by adults in the street, because I've improved even more than I did when I was at school with my self-awareness and other social skills.
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Female
- Was/is your environment a particularly friendly bully-free one?
I can honestly say I have grown up never encountering anything called bullying. I've never been bullied and have never witnessed it besides on tv.
I've only had one instance where I could maybe call it bullying. During indoor recess a group of kids in my class said something hurtful to me (something like "you can't play with us". I burst into tears and the people that said that to me came running and they all apologized.
- Is your natural persona less attractive to bullies? And if so, why?
Yes I believe so. Everywhere I go, everyone I encounter is nice to me. For some reason people see me and they instantly know I am a kind and gentle person. I have come to the conclusion that something about me renders people to pity me...
- Did you develop effective deflecting strategies early on?
Yes, my incredible observation skills have helped avoid possibly sticky situations.
- Are you too impervious to have noticed?
I'm sure I've been indirectly bullied a lot in my life, I have just learned to ignore it. Then again I always have the feeling that someone somewhere is making fun of me.
IDK
It depends on how broad your definition of 'bullying' is. I certainly wasn't treated well, I was a hyperactive kid when I was younger. However, it was difficult to pick on me because I was rather aggressive, and by the time I grew fairly meek, people around me grew up so they treated my avoidant behaviour with indifference.
AardvarkGoodSwimmer
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I remember driving through Pennsylvania. At a gas station/food store, around three separate people were looking at me weird. The only thing I could later think of is that I was strolling through trying to regain my equalibrium and refresh myself. That is, what would entirely normal behavior in a university library was somehow perceived as "weird" in this context. Plus, I might have been wearing khaki slacks with gray tennis shoes and maybe that was enough to be perceived as "gay." It is that person's loss if he so classifies another human being in such a small, limited, and condemnatory number of categories. But it's kind of my loss, too. And part of neurotypical thinking is that if there are two things, that's viewed as almost a lock. Plus, maybe one neurotypical person say another looking at me in a disapproving or weird way. NT people do take their lead from other NT people in kind of a catagion effect. Again, their loss.
Same as Kairi and TheValk: I fought back. I had some great senseis in the form of my older cousins, who taught me how to stand up for myself in a skirmish. In school, nobody dared touch me or mine. I was the watchdog of the nerd table.
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