In the last two years of school I've been seen as a bully. After the first year my doctors diagnosed me with Aspergers. The next year was awful because I was still figuring out the whole aspie thing. I am honest. I have a short temper. I'm not a bully. I don't understand social behavior. I'm not a bully. Are there any other aspies out there that have had a similiar experience?

So your doctors diagnosed you with Asperger's because of they though you were a bully ? ...


I was never seen as a bully but I had pushed people away before because I'm passive/aggressive .... :/

Who says that you are a bully? Your teachers?

When there is trouble between kids teachers often take the easy way out - blame the unusual kid, the kid they least understand. If you are regularly having these sort of issues with your peers it may appear that you are the common factor and therefore you are the problem.

I think students would benefit from due process.  Taking physical action against a student is not permitted, but the school can still do many disruptive things to a student's education with total impunity.  It's up to parents to fight it, and few would deny that as a class, parents have a lot on their plate.  And this peculiar emphasis on learning to accept discipline, it seems more like teaching children they should expect their rights to be violated and to accept that as somehow right and holy.  The greatest enemy of democracy is cynicism and apathy, and the fight against it should be joined early.  Instead people are taught that they SHOULD be apathetic and cynical.  Instead of the excitement of knowledge and skill, it's the elevation of drudgery.

Apparently I was a "troublemaker", mainly because I'd fight back when picked on.  And then the perps (always it was more than one) would back each other up with lies about what happened.  For example, one small and bookish nerd-girl against five bigger girls?  And I was the aggressor?  So I'd be sitting there with two black eyes and a nose dripping blood, getting lectured by the teacher for picking on the five muscular sports-girls smirking in the corner...  

Personally I think the teacher was scared of the gang o'girls herself.  So to go crook on me was the easy option.
Alison

This post was last modified: 10-08-2012 09:02 AM by Alison.

Nope. Never had that problem. I was more of the one who when bullied you could ignore the problem. Say that I "misunderstood" the situation.

They were all a bunch of bastards.

I am sure I was seen as a bully because I didn't understand my own behavior and I read social situations wrong. You can be a bully unintentionally. Kids do that all the time. That is what makes them innocent and there are the ones who do it intentionally and it doesn't make them innocent. You can also be one when you think you are the one being bullied but you are not so you end up being seen as the bully and it is considered bullying when you defend yourself because you are not really defending yourself.

I did once see a great article about how an aspie can be a bully unintentionally but I can't remember the link. It was all about reading social situations wrong. For one, saying something honest that is downright mean can make you come off as a bully because kids may think you just said it to be hurtful. So they react to it and then the teachers look at it like it was your fault because you provoked them with your comment. If they knew you had AS and they cared, then they would have looked at it differently and try and explain it all to you and tell the other kids to back off and that you didn't mean it. Also another example can be an aspie kid sees another kid take a cap off a salt shaker and give it to their friend to use. He uses it and the salt pours all out and everyone at the table laughs. The aspie kid sees that and starts doing it to the other kids and they all look at him as the bully because they think he is doing it to be mean, the aspie kid didn't understand that one situation was totally different and it was done as a practical joke and they all know each other. The other kids don't know the aspie well and there he is doing it do random kids so they think he is being mean. So they treat him like he is a bully.

Of course aspie kids can be a bully intentionally. It can also be because they think that is how they are supposed to be treating others because that is how others treat them so they do it to others. I would say that is another example of reading social cues wrong and reading social situations wrong. Just an example of being literal.

The whole "provoking others" thing stinks.

Or the "it must be the kids fault"  so many people find fault with him... "he must be saying things while we do not notice"  PLUS the aspie kid DOES say things when the teacher CAN hear.. as opposed to the more skilled teen/kid who says stuff and is NOT heard...

A few kids whispering mean things to an aspie -and then all of a sudden he/she blurts out *loudly* no, "you are a dick - or repeats an expletive of some sort"  guess who gets in "trouble" - even if it is unconsiocus on the teachers aprt- (if only THAT kid was not here)... ick mix that with the teachers advice of "not letting them know it gets to you/ignore and they will leave you alone..." argh!



League girl says all of this beter than me.

Great post League girl (as usual).

P.S> My son says things out loud (that I do not think he realizes can insult people) like "what is that smell? " or "what is that on your face"  (he is serious - he thinks you might want to know an wipe it off) at school - teens are sensitive and think they are being insulted... (os this kid serious?) I have seen him do that with me and siblings... I know where he is coming from, others might not.

This post was last modified: 10-09-2012 02:41 PM by windy.

Ugh, I'm always mistaken as rude, it really bugs me, because I'm not. Other people don't mistake me as rude, it's just my family that does and it's mainly my sister who does. No matter how many times I try to explain to them that I'm not rude and that I'm simply very shy, so much so I lack any  outgoing traits, anxious, and eccentric. The only time I'm ever mean is if I feel very irritable after too much stress. In that case then I'll sometimes do something "mean", because I'm feeling irritable. For example, if I'm at school and I feel irritable then when I approach my locker I'll usually push people crowding up the lockers out of the way. Other then that, I never do anything rude or mean.

Yes on rudeness. You miss social cues, keep to yourself, people think you are snubbing them. One of nice things about coming out aspie, or hanging with other aspies, is perhaps you can avoid this kind of misunderstanding.

~Ken the Aspie Lawyer

Aspies might be talked into bullying others. Due to their lack of TOM, they're ideal "material" for bullying-by-proxy.

Same story as Some_Bloke. From kindergarten to the first few weeks of 7th grade, the teachers always said, "oh you're just misunderstanding them. They're just joking with you."  I wasn't diagnosed with aspergers until the 1st of October 2007.

Welcome to the Forums Ninja_Angel007!!!!!

Or tricked.

I remember when I was eight, my friends were talking about ditching Sara and they told me about it asking if we should do it. I said there were no ditches around and I was against the idea. It didn't make any sense. Then when she was around, my friends made her turn her back on us and close her eyes and then they started to run. I ran with them thinking we were playing tag. Sara tells us "I hate you." We all keep running and she runs after us. She is way behind us and we go to my house. I don't know why we did this but I did learn that day that ditching someone meant running away from them. She went home instead and we all saw her in her living room watching TV with her family. I can remember my friends saying things like "I bet she is stopping at Stephanie's house asking if we are there."

I don't know if this was bullying or if Sara was being mean and my friends got tired of it so they decided to ditch her. I didn't have a clue what was going on. But this would be an example of how an aspie can get tricked into bullying someone. I also remember another time a girl in my class told me to place this paper on Nick's chair. It said Kick Me. Confused, I asked her why and she told me to just do it. I asked her why can't she do it and she kept telling me to do it. I don't remember if I did it or not not knowing why I was doing it. Just another example here of how an aspie can be tricked into bullying someone. Kids will sometimes use the aspie as a scapegoat to have them do things for them so they get the blame and not them. That way if the teacher or the victim or anyone else asks who did it, they can say the aspie did and boom he is the culprit of the whole thing. People seem to have the concept that if they don't psychically do something, they are innocent of the crime so they have someone else do it for them. Some will even use people who are vulnerable and naive because they are easy targets.

^ I was tricked once. This guy wrote on a piece of paper "I hate knee grows" and told me to say it to a black staff member. I said no I don't want to it's stupid. I read it literally so I didn't realize that it woul sound like "I hate negroes". He kept bugging me and I said" if I tell her that, will you stop bugging me?" He said yes. So I said it not realizing how it soundEd till it came out of my mouth.  Anyway, the woman was upset and I said that the guy wrote it on a piece of paper. The guy had ran off and I found him. The redneck denied it and I frisked him. I fetched the piece of paper in his *** handwriting and showed it to her. The doctor confirmed it was my handwriting when the lying little *** said I lied and put the paper there. I argued I have better penmanship. Being literal =/ = stupid.