R.I.P all those people who have committed suiced due to the cause of bullying!!

If their parents and the school don’t do anything it’s time to take matters into your own hands. If anyone ever did that to my daughter, I’d beat the everlovin’ crap out of them. I mean beat them until their brains oozed out onto the street. There would be no witnesses.

What kind of kids do we raise when a parent stands by and allows and practically encourages their children to treat other people this way? The girls who were doing the bullying – where were their parents? Why don’t they care that their daughters were engaging in this? Did they ignore it, turn away or approve of the bullying because they would do the same thing if they despised another woman.

What happened here is unacceptable, period. And to make sure that message is understood, any and all school employees who were aware, at any level, that this was going on, should be terminated and banned from working in any educational system, anywhere, permanently.

Short of pulling online applications entirely, developers can already limit bullying by performing advanced semantic analysis of network traffic in real-time (see NarusInsight, for instance, the most recent private-sector iteration of the FBI’s Carnivore program). Ubiquitous social network providers really need to be called to task about why they’re not implementing available semantic content filters.

I hope that we’ll eventually see a successfully prosecuted lawsuit involving the developers of a social application (though current precedents are not encouraging – “guns don’t kill people,” etc).

As always, it’s only when “real” money becomes part of the equation or, in this case, the “development cost”, that effective changes are made.

Our kids need more help. Every school should have a system in place that works. Group therapy or some kind of intervention needs to be considered. There should be a well-liked teacher with the right skills and strength of personality who is an advocate for the bullied. Some bullies might even want to be stopped.

Please, kids who are being bullied, understand that things will get better. You can count on it. I know personally how painful it is, but school is such a short time in your life–even though it seems like forever. Many people who were bullied as children and teenagers go on to do great things and lead satisfying lives. They have interests and hobbies and jobs or careers. They find partners who love them. They have children. They have their own households and pets. They have autonomy and choose their friends. What you are experiencing now will soon stop. You have so much to offer. The bullies are not special, they are mean or bored or hate themselves or feel so boxed in by school and adolescence that they lash out at others. They bully those who are different from the herd or who are exceptional in some way. You have attributes they secretly admire. I was bullied because I had red hair and was “too feminine.” My husband finds it absurd that anyone could think that those things were a problem! He was bullied because he was slow to mature, until at fifteen his voice changed and in the next year and a half he shot up to 6’3″. He is quiet, artistic and interested in science. When I met him I thought he was the handsomest and smartest man I had ever met.

You will get past this. I did, my husband did, and we have a good life. Our daughter was also bullied verbally and physically during middle school. The school was hopeless about addressing it. She is highly creative and also learned differently. She is a professional now who travels the world with work and the bullies from middle school are now contacting her and trying to be her friends. She chooses to ignore them. She has found some good friends who she enjoys and trusts. One thing that happened as a result of her being bullied–she has no use for unkind people and will not put up with any nonsense. I don’t mean to imply that life beyond school is perfect and without problems for anyone–just that you will have more choices and the bullies frequently make the wrong ones.

Just get through school, do not be afraid to talk to a sympathetic adult and tell them you need assistance in dealing with a situation. You are not alone in this. It goes on in schools everywhere. It is temporary, but at your age I know that is hard to believe. Just hang on. The roller coaster always slows down and stops and then you step out of the “box” and walk on your way. Keep some goals in mind, finish school, read some good books, and enjoy whatever music you like but don’t go too dark with it. Keep a journal or work on whatever interests you. Another thing, many kids who are bullied find themselves more comfortable with adults. If you find yourself sitting around with your parents and their friends on a Saturday night and discover you are actually having fun, just go with it. When you are an adult you will have friends of all ages.

I know it is hard to handle the anger and sometimes it is so hard to get up and go to school in the morning. But you will be free of this eventually. My experience is that bullying is rare in college or trade school. By then, most bullies have learned or discovered the hard way that bullies are jerks. Be your own person and you’ll be clear of this before you know it!