Although I started life as a child prodigy (& a black market baby,) I was bullied relentlessly as a kid (& abused horribly at home, as well.) Most kids left school with a diploma. I left completely non-functional, with major depression & PTSD. Despite my attempts to repair my poor social skills (resulting from the childhood experiences,) things have only gotten worse since then. Now I also have agoraphobia & dissociative personality disorder, as well. Although my IQ is 187 (among the highest in recorded history,) I can barely function outside of my house, which makes pursuing my art career relatively impossible (I can't "shmooze.") I manage to work part-time at a local library only because I'm forced to. When I go home at the end of the day I break out in trembling fits & horrible, itchy rashes due to the stress of having to deal with people.

I know I'm going to die younger than "normal" because of all of this. To be honest I don't know that I have many years left now.

If adults were treated as I was, it would be a crime. Why do we throw our children to the wolves?

We moved a lot because my dad was in the Marines, so I was always the "new kid".  Imagine a Marine dad not teaching his son how to protect himself!  Well, I was cast out into the mean old world of school bullies and was constantly being "called out".  Usually, I would run home after school, hoping to avoid the bullies in school the next day.  It never came down to getting beat up, but I was constantly stressed out that I would.  One time, when I was just about to go into high school, I did get punched by a punk Mexican kid who had older brothers (if you know what I mean).  I would have jumped all over him but I knew if I did, I'd get it bad sometime later.  My dad was disgusted with me for not hittin him back.  That really hurt.  I'm fairly healthy except for the arthritis.  I made sure my son never had to go through that and had him in Tai Quan Do classes at age 4.  Now he is a confident college student.  Parents, be sure your kids are well adjusted and confident.  Get them into things like sports or self defense at a young age so that they will grow up confident and not get picked on.  And if they do, tell them to kick the other kids you know what and sort it out later!

I too was bullied in school -- being younger and smarter with no social skills, middle school and high school were a nightmare! Fortunately, college was better and then I ended up in the Army (of all places) which turned out to be a "saving grace".

Now I have a good job and marriage, but still sometimes struggle with "social skills".

I'm honestly not sure how effective "bullying programs" are in our schools. Perhaps at the younger levels where the teachers have more control over the students they work.

I think for high school students, it's time we realized that not every kid fits into our "social" high schools -- for that's what they are -- and make alternative arrangements for them. With computers, online schools, the internet, this is indeed possible. I don't think the argument that these kids will "learn" social skills in high school is valid, because they don't. Let them take an alternative route and move on to college. While enjoyable, sports, cheerleaders and dances are NOT necessary for an education (as can be noted by the rest of the world, where these activities are NOT in high school).

Despite having a high IQ and natural talent, the bullying that I received in school and at home left me without any viable social skills, unable to fit in with my "peers", cancer at 32 and 2 heart attacks by age 47. I am now classified as bipolar and suffer from PTSD. I don't work anymore and have given up trying. My last boss was a horrible bully that finally sent me over the edge for good. I stay away from people in general now and spend time at home and with my dog. I've gained 60lbs. I can't make plans for anything because the stress of having to go anywhere makes me physically ill. I am sad and angry.

I was bullied relentlessly and daily for 3 years of middle school. I am scarred for life, suffer PTSD, and have been in therapy for 14 years. Luckily, I had a successful and very happy high school, college and graduate school experience, but the scars of the bullying are still with me and have significantly negatively impacted my social and professional relationships throughout my life. I feel I am on the road to recovery, but it has exacted a huge toll on my marriage and my self-confidence. I was told to ignore the bullies and be happy and confident despite them, but that did not make them go away, as the article alludes to.

I do not have confidence schools can do much. Yes, while they may state they have a no tolerance policy, I do not believe many will follow through and take action to prevent or decrease bullying--only maybe at the most liberal and progressive of schools. The bullying takes place outside the classroom and away from teachers: in the halls between class, on the playground before and after school, walking home from school, at night via phone calls (in today's environment, on the internet and texting).

Fostering a sense of community, love and acceptance towards others beginning in pre-school is part of the solution. Insisting as parents, teachers, and friends we treat each other with respect and how we want to be treated needs to be emphasized. Narcissistic parents who believe their own children can do wrong also contribute because they aren't willing to "hear" that their kids are bullying others. While these solutions are flowery and idealistic, they need to be part of the solution.

Yes, I was bullied in school. Teased about whatever I wore, my grades, for my manners (as in, having them and using the phrases please and thank you) being constantly called ugly, no teacher would ever help - they'd tell me to stick up for myself. Yeah, a note to oblivious teachers and parents: IT MAKES THINGS WORSE FOR THE CHILD! GET INVOLVED! I had no friends. Pair this with being physically and mentally abused at home, my childhood was terrible. I still hate the people who teased me. Now they try to contact me on various social networking sites and it makes me physically ill. If any kids pick on my kids, I will go into ultra-kickass mode on their parents and teachers.

I was buillied all through junior high and high school. Being an overweight girl, being taller than most in my class (5'8" by the time I was 13), and considered a geek because I was a "brain," I was a target. I faced humiliation every day. The teachers and administrators ignored it all. Eventually I realized that bullies are cowards. I focused on ways to exploit that weakness. I found that a good way to deflate a bully was to laugh at him or her. It showed that I didn't take them seriously. They were humiliated in front of their friends (a bully always has a posse). I was roughed up a couple of times but after a while the bullies realized they weren't getting to me and moved on to other targets. Another technique I used was to do a full frontal face down - mainly a stare-down. A bully would come up behind me and start picking on me. I would turn around and lock eyes with the bully. I never broke that stare even when surrounded by the bully's friends. The bully always blinked first. Then I would walk towards him or her in a deliberate manner. The bully always backed away. I made sure that I was more confrontational than the bully without being violent. Bullies don't expect that their targets to turn on them. Eventually I was left alone.

As for health issues, I have been diagnosed several times with depression and at one time had an ulcer. Whether that's from being bullied or more contemporary issues I can't say. However, I'm sure some component of these emotional and physical health problems stems from bullying. I know some people will say being bullied is a rite of passage as a teenager. I disagree. No one deserves to go through that "just because" teenagers will be teenagers. I'm glad to see that schools are addressing this.

I started school with a serious overbite and buck teeth, even at that age. I was also smaller than the other students, and I was extremely shy. Also, I was highly intelligent and wanted nothing more than to bring my book to school with me and read it. I was verbally abused about my physical attributes; I was physically abused by having people grab my ankles while I was sitting on the toilet and pulling me off, having people shove me hard while I was swinging so that I would fall off the swing, and in Jr. High School, people would accuse me of writing bad things about them on the bathroom walls and then actually signing my name to the bad things I'd written - I was ratpacked in the schoolyard because of one of those supposed bad things I'd written (and supposedly signed my name to) and slapped around so badly that I cried all through my next class, purely because my heart was broken at the tactics that these kids used to make excuses to hurt me. My parents tried so hard, but they could not believe that people were really that mean to me. I never completed high school, despite my high IQ - I gave up and cut classes for most of my senior year because I could no longer deal with the torment. I took the GED and am gainfully employed, but I feel I could have done a lot better in my work life if I'd felt able to go to college. I was just so sick of school at that point that I could not tolerate any more education. I've been diagnosed with depression and generalized anxiety disorder, and I can't tolerate any type of anger directed at me, and I can't tolerate having people be critical of something I do - I just go into that sad, depressed state in which I feel worthless. That is what bullying does to you - it destroys your self-esteem, and I don't think that one can ever build it up again. No matter what praise you may earn later in life, nothing can make you feel like anything more than that scared little kid, and you're convinced that the people who say good things about you are either (a) dead wrong, and someday they'll discover what a bad person you are and stop liking you, or (b) the victim of a bad joke whereby the person who says nice things about you will turn out to have been your enemy all along, and is actually saying bad things about you behind your back.

I'm almost always fearful in new situations; I'm shy about approaching more than one person, no matter how well I know the group of people; I'm convinced that people only tolerate me because I do good things for them. At work I'm constantly praised for my teamwork and cooperation - little do they know that I'm just trying as hard as I can not to get yelled at or criticized in any way!

I was bullied, but not to the extent my grandson was. He entered a prestigious charter school in the eighth grade as an A student. He was "chunky." One student in particular dumped his backpack in the trash and scattered his papers about the campus. This was ongoing. He didn't tell his family for fear of exacerbating the situation. The office secretary told the headmaster repeatedly who was responsible, but the bullying continued. By the end of ninth grade, my grandson had gained more weight and was failing in his classes. We requested a hearing before the board of directors, but were told that my grandson would be expelled if we insisted. Expulsion, of course, would have made it difficult, if possible at all, to enroll him in another school. My grandson was in counselling for many months, and we were poorer for the legal fees we paid trying to keep my grandson from being expelled. The school is a charter school in name only. In reality, it is a conservative religious school. One of the "advisors" is CEO of a group of religious schools in the East.

I just ran into this article on the internet and it brought back a flood of memories.

I had been bullied severely when I was younger. I happened to me as far back as I remember and stopped sometime in high school when I grew a little larger and started to push back.

It makes me think of all the health problems I have had and am currently experiencing.

Even as I am writing this I have been up all night feeling nauseous and battling a severe head pain since yesterday evening, a headache which I have had as far back as I can remember. All of this starting Sunday morning, and going down hill from then.

At times my mind seems to be floating in a constant sea of alteration. No one thing remains, I must move on from thought to thought, feeling no accomplishment, feeling no fulfillment. When my mind drifts away, it is as though the previous thoughts had never existed. Sometimes I sit in silence.

I am far from what I want to be. Yet, most times it is too easy for me to settle for who I am. I find myself too often consumed by what I am lacking, or what I should do, to get anything accomplished. I need strength to focus on my responsibilities and objectives. Most of the time I can not accomplish anything on my own.

I now wonder if a lot of it has to to with my childhood.

I really feel for you people who were bullied and now suffer as adults. You are right, LGramlich, the behaviors we tolerate from children would be crimes if committed by adults. I too was bullied as a child. A girl once slammed my head into a wall, nearly knocking me out (at 10 years old). I was punished, because obviously as a boy, I was the aggressor. Every time she saw me thereafter, she would point and laugh, bragging to her friends. I dreaded going to school, especially in junior high. I was tormented almost daily. I was also gifted and had plenty of opportunities to be successful, but now I am in my mid-thirties, still single, terrified to even ask a woman out (even though I am athletic and considered good-looking, even by beautiful women), barely earning enough to pay my bills, suffer from depression and anxiety and have suffered from drug abuse and alcoholism. I look back on my childhood with pain in my heart. What can I do now? I don't know. I am afraid I will eventually wind up on disability, or have to work 2 or 3 crappy jobs just to support myself. I am afraid to live.

Why our society has tolerated bullying for so long, even encouraged it, is beyond me. It takes an enormous toll on individuals and society. Sometimes, bullies get what's coming to them, but often only after terribly hurting someone. A boy in my junior high school threw another (a subject of constant harassment) down a flight of concrete stairs. He needed 111 stitches in the back of his head. He could have been killed (at age 12). The bully got expelled. It should have happened sooner.

Although I don't suffer as you all, I engaged in some very self-destructive behavior in my teens and twenties due to the awful bullying I endured in middle school. I, too, was smart and talented. I was also very tall and very thin, which I now realize made other girls jealous. The girls were awful to me, and I missed a lot of school (but was still able to keep up for the most part). I was constantly told I was ugly, unlovable, awkward, etc. Things improved somewhat in high school but then a very immature guy started a rumor that I was a slut (I was a virgin at the time).

In my later high school, college and early post-college years, I had many sexual partners (thank God it was pre-AIDS era); I constantly worried what others thought of me. I needed the acceptance of others to feel good about myself. Instead, I felt awful, endured more bullying and a "bad reputation," and was often ill. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder in my 30s.

The only positive thing that came from the bullying I endured is that I'm raising my children with self-esteem. I was able to advocate for my son with a principal that thought bullying was "a normal right of passage," and my kids know I'm on their side completely. Schools may have "policies" but they don't always enforce them. I've had to go to the school with lists of names, dates, etc. to get them to take action against the bullies. One school had a "3 strikes" policy where they didn't even call the bully's parents until the victim reported them 3 times! Ridiculous!

I was bullied, but it subsided in highschool when I learned to fight back without regard for the consequences. It took very little of this to end it. I was also abused at home physically. I was miserable as a child, depressed and anxious as a teen and young adult, but I graduated with a Master's degree, got a good job, raised several children, and found my strength. I am now very happy, functional, and socially capable. I learned most of my social skills in my early 30s, by trial and error, since up to that point I was around my family, coworkers, but avoided any other social contact. I think there's always the possibility of change. Never give up hope. Remember that although there people that do terrible things, there are many loving people that do wonderful things. Never stop loving yourself, and keeping up hope. Anything is possible, and happiness is something you can choose if you set your mind to it.

I was born with Cerebral Palsy. Everyone said it was mild, but I was weaker than everyone else. In sixth grade, I was being bullied and the stress was so much that I was saved by coming down with Rheumatic fever and spent the rest of spring and all summer in the hospital. I had to have a tutor come to my house until January. The walk to my bus stop for school was 1/4 mile and my doctor did not want me to walk and wait for the bus, so I had to ride the special bus to school and take the regular bus home. I took steroids for three years and penicillin until I was 18.

Wow, what a flood of memories, 48 this year and still have a hard time dealing with people on a daily basis. Was beat up and made fun of my entire school years. Joined the Army fresh out of high school, shipped overseas and had to learn to deal with people but still will never trust them always worried what they may be saying about me. Have learned to not care what they think but it's still in the back of my head. Have come along way in life, great career, wife and family. My daughter has some of my same traits but she did very well in school but also was very shy. Learned long ago to onlly worry about making me and those important to me happy. The rest of them can get f'd as far as I'm concerned, they will all have to pay at some point in time. I agree with most others that most bullies aren't very intellegent and most times come from all walks of life. What a terrible shame the world is so cruel. I now have some very dear friends who I would go to the end of the earth for, happiness is really all life is about, it's short and your gone before you really now how to enjoy it. Would be afraid to go to a shrink for fear of all the problems they would find. Just keep in inside and keep telling myself to enjoy life for what it is and ignor the idiots in life. No sense in bitching about it because only you can fix yourself and be happy, making excuses and saying we are having health problems because of it is just another way to try and get someone to feel sorry for you. I've made it this far on my own and my family I don't need the rest of this sorry a** world to help. There will always be cruel people in the world we just need to teach to be confident of yourself once you reach an age to comprehend, took me until 30. I'm sure most won't agree with my comments but it's just the way I feel. Thanks for letting me vent after all these years.

My dad was in the Air Force so we moved often and every new base had a new set of bullies. At first I tried keeping my distance and avoid being noticed but that only put me on the bullies’ radar. I did stand up for myself and fought back. Because of fighting I was suspended from school several times even though I didn't start the fights. I felt betrayed by a system that says standup for yourself but punishes you for doing so. My experiences with bullies made me suspicious of people and I'm very cautious when in unfamiliar social situations. I’ve had health problems dating back to elementary school with stomach ulcers, migraine headaches, depression, and anxiety. I don’t know if bullies created the health issues I’ve had but they sure didn’t help them. Sadly bullies don’t just go away after school is over. I encountered bullies when I served in the military and have had several as bosses who used their position to bully subordinates. The world has had and always will have bullies. Wars are fought because of bullies. Bullies are the bane of humanity and perhaps setting them straight at an early age would help create a better world.

The Bully's Side to this Story:

I was the bully, yea my life was hell so I took it out on others, my step dad beat me senseless, my step brother started raping me at 4, by the time I was 12 I was the meanest MF you would not want to meet. My tattoo says it well, a scorpion, that was the name I got when I was in the Marines, because I would just rather hit someone than talk to them.

After the Marines and a tour of Nam while in a bed in Okinawa I decided I could become whatever I wanted. March 18th, 1968, that is when my life started. Went to College became successful, our product is found in every big box store and home improvement center in the US and two successful children that are still my best friends. I did this by moving on in my life, leaving what happened to me behind, and also leaving the type of person I was behind. I came home without a dime and no family. I have built my life from that date and proud of everything I have accomplished from that date, (and I still do not use the VA)

My message, GET OVER IT! Bullies had their own problems at home, there is a reason they were bullies. Whining and crying does not change a thing, YOU CAN. Letting some dysfunctional bully ruin your entire life while he fixes his does not make sense. (and if he did not fix his life, he is no doubt sitting in a prison)

Your life starts when you move on.

I am not surprised at the messages I have read on this matter or the study that has led to the conclusion that bullying and it's effects are much more damaging than previously considered.

My experiences have told me that the effects of bullying can last a lifetime. I also know that bullying from teachers is another source of misery for a victim and of course it is always the victim's fault. That is the hallmark of an abusive adult who should not have contact or authority over children.

I have also experienced bullying as an adult with a disability which leads me to think that bullies deserve to be sued as well as criminally prosecuted and I have arrived at the conclusion that bullies are insecure nasty kids who grow up to be nasty adults with problems of their own that have not been addressed.

Isolation is a strong and sometimes only resource victims feel they have avaliable to them; it provides a barrier and a way to protect oneself from bullies.

Trust is another big issue for victims that adds to the difficulties victims have for a lifetime and by the time a victim becomes an adult enough has become too much.

Public schools have only recently acknowledged that bullying is a big problem which is something that should have been acknowledged a long time ago and more needs to be done to address the problem on campus. Perhaps it is one step in the right direction but for a good many victims it is too late.

Oh yes. I have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, depression and obsessive compulsive disorder. I am on disability and will never work again. I have social anxiety, anticipational anxiety, sleep disorder and am basically a mess. I never left my apartment until the day after my doctor prescribed Xanax. I take 1mg four times a day.

I know the feeling. When I was in Elementary, Junior and High School, I was picked on by other kids. I remember in Elementary School, I was at my desk minding my own business and one girl smacked me upside my head and called me a "Black B----". I should have stood up for myself then and fought her and I would have been left alone, but I cried in the bath room and later told the teacher. He did speak with them. I had no problems later. One time, a boy, (who was taking Karate), pulled my out of the bus line and got in front of me. I did go through some things in shcool. It made me tougher in my adult life. Now, I take no mess from anyone.