Bullying

[firecat]

This article discusses why children who are bullied sometimes don't discuss it with adults.

http://www.livescience.com/8994-bully-victims-suffer-silence.html

I did mention to my parents sometimes that other kids bullied me. Their response was "Ignore it, and they'll get bored and stop." I figured that this meant "We don't want to hear about it, because we don't know what to do to stop it." (This reason isn't on the list of reasons in the article.)

So I stopped talking to them about it and I pretended to ignore the bullying and to some extent I think this strategy prevented the bullying from escalating past name-calling, although it didn't stop it.

I also developed another strategy, which was essentially to be quiet and hide in plain sight. This got so ingrained that I find it difficult to turn off, which causes me problems at times.

Comments

[eggcrack]

I never told my parents about being bullied, but I tried to get other adults involved and it just didn't get nowhere. A lot of adults were also right there when I was being bullied and I can only remember one teacher actively interfering. One. So all I can say about this article is 'well, duh'.

I learned to hide in plain sight too, and frankly just the idea of not doing so makes me feel scared and vulnerable. I'm sorry you had to learn this strategy.

[firecat]

I'm sorry you did too.