High School Bullying

When I was in Year 8 aged 12 I experienced first hand what it felt like to be bullied. I was part of a group of girls who seemed to enjoy regularly ganging up on an individual. The person being chosen to be bullied was always within the group. There were always two girls in the group who instigated the bullying but who were never bullied themselves. By starting an attack and then hiding in the background but fuelling the attacks they always seemed to escape being targeted themselves. When it came to my turn to being targeted I refused to let them use me in this way. I stood up to them and confronted them but that made them involve even more people outside our group and I was completely outnumbered. My good friends were too afraid to stand by me though they told me secretly that they supported me. I was left alone to face an angry mob and that was exactly what eventually happened.

I went to the teachers in charge of bullying in the school because my parents naively believed that the school would not stand for such outrageous behaviour.Little did they know what was going to happen. I had seen others do the same and reporting a bullying incident always made it worse. You were then called a snitch and just walking down the corridors you could feel the evil stares on you. The school would not deal with the problem and months went by until one day I called my parents from the toilets to come and get me as I was surrounded by an angry mob of girls and boys from the whole year not just the group. I broke down and cried for the first time as I could no longer bear it. I had kept my pride and my dignity up until this point. When my parents arrived at the school they were furious but still nothing was done. They said they would investigate but never once was any one of those girls punished for what they had done to me over a period of four months. They eventually did go back to focussing their attacks on other girls in their group once they realised I was never going back into their group. They hurt me and they destroyed my confidence and it wasn't for a long time after that I regained some of my composure.

Interesting to note is that my parents actually rang the parents of these children who bullied me because they believed that the parents would put a stop to the bullying. They imagined that the parents would be ashamed or emabarrassed that their children would do such horrible things. This was not the case. The parents of those girls turned on my parents and told them I was a liar and that I was the bully.

If you are a parent here are some of the things to look out for if you think your child is being bullied:

• Your child suddenly stops talking about a friend who up to that point they had been spoken about on a daily basis.
• A sudden change of friends and you don't see certain people with your child anymore.
• Suddenly becoming ill and finding excuses not to go to school when once they looked forward to going to school and meeting their friends.
• Loss of appetite.
• Loss of interest in activities they once found enjoyable.

If you are a young person being bullied at school here are a few things you might do:

• Do not involve teachers. They make it worse for you.
• Tell your parents they deserve to know what you are going through and they can give you emotional and moral support.
• The bully needs someone to control so the bully wants you in her group in order to have power over you. This is what happened to me. So under no circumstances must you ever return to the bully's group. Keep ignoring them and eventually they surrender. You are the winner by not going back for more.
• Sometimes the bully attacks people outside her group but in every case the person being attacked is in some way different, stands out from the crowd and is vulnerable because she may not fit in with most people. The only way to counter this kind of bullying is to stand up to the bully the very first time she even looks at you. Remember she is looking for a certain kind of person to pick on and being confident and showing you are not afraid does not fit the bill.

I hope my blog has been of  help to some of you. I feel that getting a bad experience off your chest is a sure way to heal your heart so I would encourage you to write your experiences down as I have done. I would love to hear your comments. I will go through all your comments and write a further blog to incorporate all the suggestions you send to me.

Agony Aunt