My son, who's 14 now, has always had a tougher time making friends at school. He doesn't put a lot of time into his appearance. Doesn't care much if his clothes match or not, just that they're comfortable. And he's pretty introverted unless he's with his core group of friends. He's extremely intelligent and spends most of his time in school with his nose in a book. He was attending a school for academically gifted kids and apparently was getting bullied by some of the 'cool kids.' Not sure what qualifications one has to have to be one of the 'cool kids' in the school for the academically gifted, but apparently it involved singling out my son and bullying him regularly.
Now he also comes from a long line of men in my family who internalize everything, don't tell their parents about any problems at school and either ignore things until they go away or deal with them when they come to a head. His bullying apparently came to a head.
For those of you who have ever read or seen the movie "Diary of a Wimpy Kid," there is a piece of cheese that has been left on the playground forever and if anyone touched it, they would become a pariah of the whole school. Cooties writ large. Well, these boys started something called the "Aidan touch" referring to my son Aidan and informing all the cool kids that they'd better stay away from him, for fear of touching him and catching the "Aidan touch" Of course, I know nothing of this until I get a call from the principal.
Aidan is being suspended for 3 days for getting into a fight at school. According to the teacher, another young male in Aidan's class whispered something in his ear. Aidan, apparently having had enough, round-housed the boy and knocked him flat on his ###. The kid tried to recover, but Aidan got a few more licks in before they were broken up.
I told the principal that I understood and would accept whatever punishment the school thought was appropriate, but that I wanted to understood how and why this happened. After the principal collected and read accounts from other kids that detailed the length and extent of the bullying that the other boy had inflicted upon my son, the principal decided that Aidan would serve a half day suspension, with credit for time served and the other boy was suspended an extra day. Publicly, in front of the principal and Aidan's mother, I told him that fighting was not the answer and that he should have come to us first. Privately, later on, I told him that while he definitely should have let us know what was going on, that I was glad he kicked the kid's ### and that the little punk deserved everything that was coming to him.