The transition to high school

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OK I don't know the US school system, but in the UK we went to primary school from ages 4-11 then transitioned to high school at 11 and were there until 16 (sometimes 17-18 if you choose to stay on).

But anyway, before I went to high school my mum and my teacher were worried in case I might not cope, because high school is a lot different from primary school and can be stressful even for NTs. But I actually liked the change. Changing classrooms was OK and didn't bother me. I wasn't the type of Aspie to crave sameness. The only thing I was afraid of was the teachers being strict, but that was because of the stories I was told about math teachers being really horrible, but I found out for myself that they weren't horrible, they were just people doing their job and earning a living.
I did get overwhelmed by all the homework and some of the teachers did make a fuss if you didn't do your homework or forgot to bring it to school and I was terrified of detention but I managed somehow to not get any detentions until I was in my third of forth year at high school (because by then I didn't care).

I wasn't keen on having to wear shirts and ties at high school but I soon got used to it and felt quite smart and grown-up. I was fine - I copied much better than what was expected of me. I even surprised my teacher when I told her that I PREFERRED changing classrooms several times a day, unlike primary school where you were just in the same classroom for a year. It got boring.

The only thing was the bullying started at high school. Well, not severe bullying, but I got targeted a lot by kids I didn't know (which has caused me to have trust issues with strangers today). But this usually happened on my way home from school because I had no friends that wanted to walk home with me, sadly. My mum couldn't walk with me because for some reason it was a huge taboo to walk to or from high school with your parents and would result in severe bullying, sometimes you'd even get beaten up for it. But walking on your own all the time meant you were an easy target for bullies.

Other than that, I copied well with high school. What were your experiences with your transition to high school?

I was bullied and ostracised from my peer group the summer before high school.
I had no one to walk with and I hid in the library for lunch to avoid the dining hall.
It was a little better when I moved schools / countries and had to start a new school.
By then I could drive to school and avoid walking alone.

I didn't handle middle school (ages 12/13 to 14/15 in the U.S., depending on the district) well, and I handled high school (ages 15 to 18) even worse. Transitioning between classes was disorienting and stressful, and I did poorly in a group setting my whole life, so getting no help from teachers, and then scolded as if I was being lazy for not being able to pay attention while half the kids were noisy during lessons, was upsetting.

The stress from middle and high school also made my digestive problems so bad that I had so many ulcers I would puke blood and miss school most of the time, so I ended up going to online school at 15 which was much better for me, and is how I managed to get good grades for the first time in my life and graduate high school.

I did get assessed for ASD again at 16 because of my continued issues in public school, and I think if I had gotten diagnosed and finally gotten accommodations that maybe I could have handled high school a lot better.

T.W. Violent bullying.

A couple of things stayed the same. There was a spoilt kid who I had to be friends with even though I didn't like her. She had a controlling coddling mother, who had previously held power over the primary school, due to the donations she contributed. As a result, the school had financial incentive to let the mother have her way. My attempts at standing up to her daughter failed miserably. Plus it was difficult to prove any wrongdoing as the bullying was psychological in nature.

Her mother was ever present with the threat that if I ever stopped hanging out with her, she'd get the school involved. I was stuck with this girl even in secondary. So I learnt how to fake it fairly early on. I was able to put on a smile and pretend that we were friends. This wasn't great, but being in a new school meant that I could make new friends to hang out with, so long as I kept up this pretence enough to keep her mother off my back.

The school decided to stick me in a social skills class. It had no official name, but that's essentially what it was based on what we were taught. The class was for the kids dubbed as shy, the ones they were worried might not adjust to secondary school all that smoothly. We had to talk about ourselves in front of the class, fill out workbooks and do team-building exercises. I found it a tad embarrassing, but we did get to skip out on one of our PE sessions for it which was a bonus. The teacher also offered to speak to our other teachers if we were struggling with the amount of homework.

I didn't struggle to make friends though, I definitely wasn't popular by any stretch of the imagination, but I had a couple of friends. Genuine ones. It was great to finally have friends that I could be myself around and not have to follow a script. Unfortunately, the bullying became worse. Not from that girl, but I was bullied by a lot of people. Sometimes physically, other times verbally.

The bullying was quite violent. I am fortunate that I wasn't hospitalised because I came close to serious injury. Usually the incidents involved being forced into small spaces or being beaten. Not all of my bullies were intimidating, I remember one guy tried to pick a fight with me by punching me in the stomach repeatedly and I just picked him up then moved him to the side. Quite a short skinny guy. Terrible fighting stance. I get the feeling he was probably holding back until I retaliated, but I didn't want to fight him - I was just trying to walk home and he started attacking me because he had beef with a friend of mine but said that she wasn't enough of challenge for him to fight. Guess he was insecure and wanted to prove his strength by taking me down or something. My school was quite rough.

I adjusted pretty well. It was all the same to me. It was "school." The "smell" of school was a stench. Both the transition from elementary school to junior high---then junior high to high school---went relatively smoothly.

I didn't like being in the same classroom, with the same teacher, all the time. My 6th grade teacher didn't really care for me all that much; she didn't think I'd make it beyond junior high.

The bullying was similar in all types of schools. Garden variety based on me being fat, wearing glasses, braces, and being socially inept. I was hit----but I was never really beaten up. It depressed me. I shoplifted a couple of times partially because of this depression. I had very few friends in school, though I had a "best friend" who didn't go to my school. I didn't like the lunches in my junior high; I used to eat ring dings for lunch instead. In high school, I used to go to the pizza place every day. It was about 75 cents for a slice and a coke.

There are times when I had to not "seem so smart," too. It's a pain in the tushey, frankly.

After repeating grades 8 and 9 and going to summer school at the end of the second year of grade 9 I finally made it into high school, but left when it was barely October because of the constant harassment and the awful anxiety. And I was once told high school students were more mature. Ha! I wonder what other filthy lies did they tell me? About a year later I started going to an alternative learning school and everything there was really different. In a good way. It's just too bad I still had awful anxiety problems, was on medication that only made it worse, and wasn't diagnosed with Asperger's, which barely anyone knew about at the time, until years later when I had left that school too.

I found it hard and i did change schools as i was very unhappy in the first comp i went too, changed school and loved it! Sometimes a school is just not the right fit my mum tells me, so glad i did move.

High school was actually a lot better for me than middle school. Or undergrad, for that matter. Which isn't to say it was great (it wasn't), but it was tolerable.

From where I came from, back when I was just a kid, there's only 6 elementary grades and 4 years of highschool.
So highschool here then would be typically at age 13.

It's not high school itself I had a hard time with.
Academics, schedules, rules, etc. I never cared about those. Those are not my problems.
It was even better -- having shorter school periods...

And the social setting? Same old. So no, I do not have a "better" school experience at elementary.
The bullying was still the same, and I'm still this weird kid who chose vigilantism.

So it's not the transition between schools I got issues with -- because changing schools happened twice already for me by my own insistence.

It's puberty and my body that's been giving me a harder time.

If I weren't so sensitive, if I weren't coping with stupid hormones and other sources of unknown aches, if people in my house weren't so ignorant that they'd give me some medical interventions that I had just received so recently at that age, I wouldn't be quitting school for 2 years.

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We had a 3 tier school system whilst in my old county, it has now adapted to the usual 2 tier, so i did lower the middle school at 9. I hated my first middle school though. It was horrible and my parents transfered after the autumn term to my 2nd middle school. At this time we converted from church of England to Catholic so was a Catholic school. This was so much better for me. Same with the change to upper school in y9. Yes I still had bullies in these schools but compared to my 1st it wasn't that bad.

My seconday school for y11 only wasn't really special tbh. But at this point changing school was pretty normal for me.

With my son he's fine with the change of school. As long as you tell him as close to the time and no visits and chuck him in, he's happy. My daughter on the other hand.... I'm not looking forward to it.