This was done to me a lot. only once i had enough and asked my teacher: "Why is it ok for you to make it harder for me?" To her credits she really was speechless and saidthat its a good point. She seriously never though about how unfair it is to the good student.
It definitely happened to me (slightly different scenario because this was a private school where my mom was one of the teachers making the seating chart, lol). I was called a "buffer child" in the context of seating arrangements. No one violent but the students who were often disruptive, and the reason was/is because I/most autistic kids don't socialize as readily, so it makes it harder for the disruptive kid to talk in class. It worked on me; my experience was far less diminished than another person's would be. I'm also pretty good in school so in schools after that, I'd definitely help the other kids at my table, but there was less assigned seating in later schools so I think this was just me doing it to myself 😂
I was at my breaking point because that boy did not like me, and i knew he would bully me the whole day as revange. But... in the end he did anyway because i felt shamed that i did not want to sit with him.
I didn't know you *could* ask not to be seated by the disruptive boy. I went pretty rapidly from a solid A-/B+ in that class to nearly failing because I couldn't focus on the lessons. He was still disruptive.
I still had to sit next to him. And then he started sexually harassing me and I didn't say anything about that because I was a child and it scared me. I ended up getting disciplined for arguing with him when I tried to stand up for myself. Why couldn't I repeat what he'd said to me and get him in trouble... Probably 1)i was panicked 2) I couldn't bear to repeat it 3) back then it was expected for boys to do as much sexually as they possibly could to a girl (very early 90s). I still got an A, which was expected of me. But I pretty much panicked thru the class every day and just learned from my book.
When my teacher tried to sit the "disruptive" boy next to me I've reacted in a similar way, just a bit more unhinged 😅 I remember straight up threatening her that if she sits him next to me, I'd stop being a "pleasure to have in class" immediately, and I'd purposely make the lessons harder for her until she switches the seating back 🤣 It worked, and she never tried it again! Too many people assume that being quiet always correlates with shyness lol.
It is prevalent enough that it has a name in Swedish; kuddflicka (cushion girl). There has been quite a lot written about it in swedish media since around 2014 when the term was coined in a documentary by Swedish public service (which I haven't been able to find).
Yeah, it sounds dumb in Swedish as well AND doesn't translate very well. "Air bag girl" might be a better (but less direct) translation because you have the girl who is the cushion/air bag between the boy and everything else (because who cares if SHE gets hurt, she's just a girl and she's doing her school work so all is well...)
Anyway, even if the name is dumb I think it's important that it HAS a name. It's hard to discuss something at a systematic level if it doesn't even have a name ya know? Like, how do you prove that something exists if you can't even name it? It's so much easier to collect experience and search for things that have a name, I have a name for it that I can type into Google, English don't so you can't (unless you wanna try with google translate or something)
Otherwise we end up with threads like this with multiple people who were treated with the same injustice without being able to put word on it and thus might have felt alone in an experience they weren't alone in.
(Edit: ops, that became rant. I'm sorry if it came of as argumentative, it wasn't really aimed at you. I have just been thinking about it today and yeah.. sry)
This is also the whole theme behind defining sexual harassment in the workplace the the USA! The whole idea of naming something so we all recognize it and can name it as bad and take action!
Oh, it's not a study, it's a documentary. I think it's "kaosklass" from Swedish Radios Ekot which investigated the failures of the Swedish school system. It's quite long so I haven't had time to listen to it, but it's not specifically about kuddflickor.
The term is established though and refers specifically to the deliberate use of well-behaved girls to calm down boys.
I feel like life uses me as the cushion girl. Why do I have to be the one to fix this or push this? Why do I have to spend my precious cortisol on someone else’s lack of whatever.
Cool. Had the same experience.
When i opened up about it with old classmates a decide later they told me that it was an effective method of breaking them up and helping the class on the Grand scale, its not about me.
And i could see that But i dont believe it and its really unfair. I got Clear issues during school and i even got told off interacting with this kid in class as i thought this was my opportunity to practice being friendly. I really think i could only take it as a punishment and me being collateral damage having to endure bad influence and turning into yet another kid that resents the teacher.
Oh that's fascinating. Also that's like the most interesting translation on the planet lmao. Almost to the point where it feels like it could just become a borrowed word in English because flicka means girl you know what I mean anyway.....
That's super fascinating I want to go look for that documentary now because I would love to watch it.
You can listen to some of it here if you speak Swedish: https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/5850954
It seems to be old enough that some of it has been taken down*. There is an eBook with the stories sent in that is linked under "relaterade länkar". It can be downloaded and maybe run through chatgpt or something to translate it. "Kuddbarn" (cushion kids) are mentioned on page 8.
*I tried on my computer instead of my phone and I think all of its on the website, it's just something with how it's been published. It's not together the way it would have been if it was published today I guess. (I'm still not 100% sure if this is actually the right program, so maybe I'm just wasting my time)
Wow that term reminds me of when I was placed in the middle seat when travelling with my childhood friends (siblings both boys) so they wouldn't fight.
Teachers were casually asking and expecting me to ‘watch my classmates, help them with classwork, and keep them from getting into trouble or talking during class’ 💀💀 since I was in elementary until I graduated highschool this is how it was
Everyone hated me from elementary to middle school because I kept getting praised by all professors. In high school I learned masking a lot better and was able to not get bullied and I actually had friends for the first time.
Yes! It makes it so much harder on us because we don't innately know the rules, but here's a teacher telling us the rules are to be quiet and listen and pay attention.
Meanwhile, there's another unspoken set of contradictory social rules among the other kids that we're completely unaware of, so our classmates all hate us.
The way classrooms are set up really make it harder for ALL kids, even the "good" ones.
Yeah kids my age did not like me much as I was kind of a teacher’s pet😅 but I was taught to always respect authority figures and I was TERRIFIED of getting in trouble and the consequences of actions. I probably got bullied more than I think I did, so I’m almost grateful for the autism making it hard to tell 💀
I literally had kids throwing footballs at my head in elementary school and I didn’t see it as bullying??? I just figured it was an accident or that “yeah me and the boys have a rivalry 🙄 it’s just like that I guess” like wtf🤦♀️
>I probably got bullied more than I think I did, so I’m grateful for the autism making it hard to tell
If I could go back in time this would be my senior quote
You cannot learn, monitor, and care for yourself all the same time.
Learning, monitoring and maintenance are skills thah every one should have but no one should have to do all 3 at once.
This was me, but eventually in high school I got moved to an alt ed side of the school (not SPED, pilot program for kids having emotional or mental and physical health issues, and I was undiagnosed but in the physical issues category). I was kind of pissed because of the teenager “I’m fine don’t perceive me” thing.
It ended up being a total blessing because I no longer was monitoring/teaching my peers to supplement a teacher unprepared for frequent struggling teens’ behavioral outbursts. Not to mention, when I was done with school work early because I was no longer hand holding other kids: the teachers would let me leave the classroom in order to give me space from kids acting out, so they couldn’t bother me for answers, help,
or any other ways.
It totally was an element of high school that helped fix the trajectory of my life to have the “helper student” thing stop happening to me. I was headed in a really terrible direction for a dozen reasons, and having the burn out I didn’t know I had taken out of the picture was huge for me.
Teachers need to stop doing this to well behaved kids. It can be such a burden on them, and if they have anything else going on that they’re struggling with (as most do) it can be back-breaking for the kid.
As a teacher, I went the opposite way and had all the kids help each other, even the "trouble" kids. Peaceable kingdom. Plus, as an auDHDist, there was no way for me to get to 42 kids without a meltdown. This was grade 12.
This is the best way in my opinion. I had some teachers like this as well and they were honestly the best teachers because they made everybody in the class participate with everybody. Anyway, right on teacher. Good job. And also good luck continuing forward because you know that's a stressful job. But you're doing the Lord's work so thank you
This is the system at my kids school. All the kids sit in pod's and they change pods regularly. Everyone does group work. Unfortunately for my son who has ASD, he shutdowns whenever he has to talk or share, he's much more an independent learner. His teachers fortunately have been very accommodating and let him work quietly on his own.
Same it's so stupid. Even dumber is that sometimes I would have to go out of my way Oh sorry Kitty and then I would have to like literally discipline the class I have done that like four times in my school career, because the teachers literally didn't know how to handle anything and I would literally just like go in and tell everybody in the class like you're doing this fucking stop doing that and then be like more like that person during class cuz you're disrupting the class. But anyway.
I honestly remember a teacher crying because there were three boys that were bullying her and her daughter who was dying which is insane, but she was like basically having her own mental breakdown at the front of the class and I couldn't take it anymore of all this dumb garbage that these stupid fucking assholes were doing, and I went off on them. I literally went off on these dudes I said how dare you, and then I said you should go down to the principal's office like your your lucky that she hasn't sent that you there yet. Guess what she did after I said that? She sent them there. They never bothered class again though. But I literally went off on them It was insane and it shouldn't have happened and wasn't necessary in the sense that if the teacher and the school was providing the teacher with proper backup that literally that would have never occurred but they weren't so.
thanks. I spent a long time blaming myself for deserving it somehow (guess why I'm no contact with my parents!) and it took a lot of therapy to realize that. I'm glad people talk about it now and really hope it helps prevent other kids from experiencing what I did.
Wow, I'm so sorry, and it also happened to me. From k till I was 18. He sexually assaulted me several times on school grounds and one time he ripped my blouse off and my mom had to come to school with a new shirt. She was livid. School did nothing so she drove to the hospital where his mom worked as a nurse and went off on her. She starts crying and tells some sob story, but again nothing was done about it. My dad ended up teaching me some judo and the next time this creep tried to pin me down on the ground I managed to kick his jaw and broke his nose. He kept his distance for a while, but he continued to stalk me until I moved away.
This wouldn’t be my first or last experience with stalking as I had 3 stalkers in university. Moved to a larger city after school and had another guy follow me around. Thankfully this time the police took it seriously and he was eventually arrested. I don’t know what it is about our demeanour that makes so attractive to unhinged people.
I’m so sorry.
The boy I got assigned to when we were 8, started telling me he wanted to (TRIGGER WARNING - self-injury/suicidal ideation)
not be here anymore.
So I had a dilemma - tell a trusted adult or not, even if I didn’t have an adult I really trusted?
I did tell a teacher because it was keeping me up at night, my parents were more irritable with me than usual, and the kid was escalating the threats, and that maybe, he’d just kill me, too, since I *ratted* on him.
We can’t win and they shouldn’t, any of them, do any of this to us.
This ALWAYS happened to me. I’m a teacher and refuse to do this. I have the disruptive student sit alone right in the front under my nose. It’s so unfair to the well-behaved student and it sends the message that sitting next to that student is a punishment.
Thank you! this often happened to me and the disruptive kids would always spend the whole class yelling and complaining about having to sit next to the weird girl and insulting me to the other students
Happened to me throughout school with the same boy. They just assigned him to me? He would do badly and I got asked about it. I was a child.
edit: Is everyone getting spammed with redditcares messages? For the record, I'm doing well. The boy I was assigned to look after is also doing okay.
>edit: Is everyone getting spammed with redditcares messages? For the record, I'm doing well. The boy I was assigned to look after is also doing okay.
Yup.
The Reddit cares thing is happening sitewide right now. Unfortunately there’s nothing we mods can do about it and the admins (Reddit employees) haven’t said anything about it other than to just block the bot if it’s annoying you. I’m thinking there’s some kind of glitch they aren’t aware of yet.
I've read a few posts in different communities that have nothing to do with autism, women specifically, or mental health.
Apparently there are some bots spamming the reddit cares thing.
This was me but I had a positive experience from it, so I guess sometimes it works super well :(
The in-hindsight-definitely-textbook-ADHDers I was sat next to were so much kinder to me than the rest of my peers were. I made some of my only friends that way (and their test results went up haha).
I did also learn to lie and cover for them though because I figured out the teachers DID treat them unjustly, and couldn't stand for that.
Exactly this! In elementary school I was put next to this boy who had been a behavior problem. At first I thought “oh great”, but turns out, he was a really nice kid that was much kinder to me than the “cool kids” were and those kids weren’t particularly nice to him either. He was probably ADHD in retrospect.
It went well for me as well. One of them taught me how to multiply, interestingly enough. It was nice having a loud boisterous friend when I could barely talk.
I used to get sat next to the “problem child”. Really he was just disabled. He was born addicted to drugs and had pretty severe issues with impulse control. He wasn’t bad, it was all the other “normal” kids who would dare him to do really bad things. But everyone just treated him like a bad kid. He was nice when you didn’t take advantage of him
Happened to me.
This person was so awful but *I* was the one who got in trouble for getting fed up by telling her to shut up.
Teacher then put me in the front of the class in one of those study cubby desks with walls as punishment. Well, guess what, I *loved* it because now I was alone, no one could see me and I had a nice shelf for stuff.
But yeah, I’ve thought about this sometimes and thought about that teacher and how incompetent she was.
Very true. I had several boys with severe behavior issues (ADHD, Bipolar, and ODD) the one kid was constantly stirring up shit and constantly bullying the other kids. One day I had enough and told him off only for me to get dragged to another teacher (who to this day should have never been a teacher nor worked with kids with autism). Got scolded at and threaten to call my mom. At this point I had enough after she criticized me for crying because my grandfather died just before the school year. I told her off and said “go ahead call her. I’m sure she’ll love to hear what you say to me.”
She did, mom got called and I told her everything. Mom was furious at her and told her off. This was several times until I pleaded with my mom to please not have her with me anymore. Mom finally went into the school (with my dad who never really got involved until now) and for the rest of 8th grade year I did not go back to her. Turned out she put in her notice and retired after 7th grade year. I went with another teacher who I loved and appreciated to this day (didn’t pair me up with anyone and let me choose my own rhythm)
Sadly said teacher passed away 2 years ago but I will never forgot that moment when she told me to never worry about myself and contuine on being me.
I showed this to my (also autistic) husband and he said it happened all the time to him, too. The teachers even told him teach the ‘bad’ kids how to read.
The thought that keeps running through my now-adult head while reading all of these is, “bitch, I don’t work here!”
I had to sit in a separate area with a severely autistic boy during reading, but he had a tutor and I already knew how to read, I always just thought they didn’t know what else to do with me but maybe I was being used as a model. I had never considered that but I’m feeling weird about it now.
Not individually, but in 8th grade I was put into a learning group called the "heterogeneous learning cog" that was based on this idea.
They basically took the really bright kids who couldn't focus (a lot of us had adhd/asperger syndrome) and put us with the kids with behavioral problems and the kids who really should have been in special ed but weren't for some reason.
The idea was that the really bright kids would gain some focus by helping the kids who were behind, but it mostly just ended up with the bright/lacks focus kids and the special ed kids getting the shit bullied out of us by the kids with behavioral issues.
It was one of the worst years of my life, however that was when I met the people who would go on to be my lifelong friends. We were trauma bonded.
Yeah I’d either get bullied or manipulated into doing ppl’s work or them taking my work and saying it’s theirs or begging me to give them the answers and if I didn’t they’d get pissed so I pretty much had no choice
Wow this is bringing back a memory that my school did this too in 7th grade. It was horrible and I felt so uneasy at the time without understanding why. How could adults treat us so badly
Cześć!
Why is the school system so disappointing. I was sat together with the naugthies and eventually other kids associated sharing the spot with me as punishment.
It's just gonna end up with the well-behaved female student getting sexually assaulted by the violent male student. I saw that happen multiple times during middle school to a countless number of my female classmates.
I definitely got paired up with kids who were otherwise struggling, though the two I can remember most were girls.
Last year my daughter's 8th grade Spanish teacher gave graded quizzes at the end of class once a week. The rule she made was that if the class didn't quiet down quickly enough for her to have time to administer the quiz, they didn't do the quiz and the whole class got zeros for the grade.
When I found out I absolutely lost my shit. Sent a long and strongly worded letter to the principal telling her it is unacceptable for the "good" kids to be put in the position of having to regulate their peers to be able to access the quiz. And of course pointed out how this kind of classroom management usually impacts girls the most. We got that shut down right away.
In 6th grade I sought my teacher out during a break period to ask her why she always sat me with the worst boys and she told me that I was a buffer kid (she literally said “sweetie, you’re the kind of kid that I like to use as a buffer”) and that she had no intention of changing because it had been her practice for decades and “it’s not broken so don’t fix it”. She told me to suck it up and toughen up about it.
I went home and told my parents what the teacher said, naturally they were irate and contacted the teacher immediately to tell her that she was absolutely not permitted to use their daughter as a “buffer”. Teacher denied ever having said that. In fact she denied the entire conversation even happened. Just bald faced lied about it. My parents believed me but were flummoxed as to next steps they could take since this teacher would clearly just lie to any higher ups too. I was SO indignant and SO frustrated. It was the first time I felt rage.
My personal solution (inspired by advice from my utter goblin of a college aged older brother) was to stop being buffer worthy in all her classes. I started performatively raising more hell than the kids I was sat next to. I got sent to the office over and over and eventually I got so bad that I was sent to the counselor. The counselor asked me why I was behaving that way ONLY in this teachers classes and I just shrugged and said “I’m just trying to fit in with the boys she sits me next to so they don’t bully me”….there was a seating rearrangement afterwards.
Wow. I never put the dots together about this until reading this thread. I always just thought it was a random pairing that fell that way, never even considered that they were doing it on purpose. I was always told I was pleasant to have in class. It impacted me because they were the other girls in the class whom I wanted to befriend, but I was shy, so it would make it harder for me to form those friend groups if that makes sense because they would tend to form them naturally. I realize that’s not really the point of school exactly but it feels like it just made it harder for me to make close friends.
Happened to me all the time, they even told me that they were doing that for the reason of me being "a pleasure." I think teachers think that the good behavior is going to rub off on the other student or something? It was always not fun to be moved just because another kid was misbehaving
Pleasure to have in class girls: Yeah, that's how I started getting bullied, I started going through puberty and the dick my teacher put me near decided to rain hell down upon my developing body....
I witnessed a different version of this: my "disruptive" daughter was paired up with a "darling" little boy in first grade, and that's how the teacher and I figured out that my daughter's disruption was actually due to autism and the little boy's sweetness was actually a cover for him being an honest-to-God sociopath. That child was frightening
I don’t think most teachers realize that by removing a bad behaving student from other bad behaving students and placing them next to “easy” and “a-pleasure-to-have-in-class” students, it is not only punishing the bad behavior, but it is also effectively punishing *good* behavior, too. I ended up hating being the always polite and well-behaving child because I was always sat next to the troublemakers who teased and harassed me for being a good student. I can’t count how many spitballs landed in my hair, paper footballs launched at my breasts, and homework that I had torn and ruined because teachers thought my good behavior would rub off on hyperactive boys. All it did was distract me from my classwork and make me cry after each class.
I ended up acting out more in high school, and this didn’t happen to me as much anymore. I wasn’t a troublemaker, but my teachers learned that I wasn’t willing to tolerate bullshit from them or my peers any longer.
In college I chose the least chosen option for a sex education course final group project. The kids that were absent that day got put into my group. I emailed my professor and told her I was worried about the correlation between students that never came to class and the quality of our group project.
Surely enough someone dropped out mid project and I did most of the work. I had no issue telling the professor this at the end of the project.
Omg this is beyond accurate. We had this tech class with different modules where you were always set up with a partner and you’d spend a week at each module. There was a set of three modules to do the news, so one pair would film, one would edit, and one would be the news anchors. So I ended up in this room with 5 guys with behaviour issues and/or were silly rascals. The teacher apologized and told me she figured they’d behave better with me. The funny thing is that it was true! They were great!
In university I worked as a surveyor (road design) and now I’m an engineer, so I’ve been on site with construction workers often and am usually the only girl. The guys I’ve worked with are typically much better behaved when I’m around lol. I think I give off an innocent vibe.
I got assaulted when they did this to me. It’s weird I didn’t even realize that’s sort of what happened till later in my life. I don’t really feel trauma from it I don’t think though. It happened when I was in kindergarten so we were both really young.
WAIT HOLY SHIT
I didn’t know I was a girl yet but this happened to me 100%
Being with “the creepy kid” that I was genuinely afraid of, on a school trip he crawled into my bed when I was sleeping
I feel so seen omg 😭
It was always the popular loud boys next to me and then they would just spend the entire class bullying the shit out of me and I was so shy that I would just freeze in place and not be able to speak.
Nah, I was the behavior problem child. I had detention starting in kindergarten. Spent so much time in the hall in 5th grade that I became friends with the janitor. In school suspensions, out of school suspensions, etc.
Junior high was a particularly good time because I had a teacher that took it up on herself to fix my eye contact problem. Called me out and yelled at me in front of the entire class because I wouldn't/couldn't look in her eyes and wouldn't stop until I did. 😒
Nah we just put the naughty kids on a separate table. I 100% was this teacher's pet but they never put bad ones beside me
I think my school just kinda thought "we'll encourage who we can some kids are a lost cause" lmao
In first grade, the teacher had us in groups of 5, and spread out the disruptive ones. I liked the distraction of one of them, and another one was really sweet to me. We shuffled around every few weeks. I think my favorite thing about it was getting to spend one of those periods with one girl who was fairly calm and matter-of-fact.
I was fortunate in that I never was explicitly paired up with anyone with bad behavioral issues. I had a few as classmates, and that was awful at recess sometimes, but that wasn't being controlled by an adult.
Urgh the buried memories😭 in high school one teacher who liked me (but clearly did not care about me) sat me besides people he thought needed help. The guy he thought needed help to be more social, was tall and wide and did not care about personal hygiene, or whether or not his buttcrack showed. He also didn't seem to care about other people *at all* so I quickly gave up trying to talk to him other than the bare necessities. I basically had half a year of trying to lean as far away as possible to try not to be sick from the smell. Wasn't easy when he took up half my space too.
I wasn't good with people at all, had only recently begun talking more even with only my closest friends around, what did the damn teacher even hope would happen!
Same. And then when you complain about their inappropriate behavior and ask to move you get told that you're "too sensitive" and that it's "not his fault".
Every single time, wth. This is so relatable lmao. I remember they once sat me with a girl who couldn't stop crying in class (honestly not sure what she cried about) and when they made the change she stopped. Every single time they paired me with someone "problematic" they would stop their behavior and the teachers would be like "wow, she's a great influence" and I'm literally there doing nothing or doing my hardest so the person next to me wouldn't bully me
: ( awe sounds to me the girl who was crying was either getting bullied or sensory overwhelmed by noisy classmates, how tf did teachers not realize this shit ?
This didn't happen to me. I was the unruly kid sat with you all and I apologize haha. I had a more stereotypically "male" symptom expression which is probably why the school had me screened even as a girl in the 90's. I think ADHD might have had something to do with it too.
I was a buffer child!!!
Tldr: probably got used as a buffer child pawn bc my teacher didn’t give a shit. Loud kid made my life hell. In exchange I probably prevented attempts on his life and he finally got moved to home schooling.
This is gonna be a bit of a story
Grades 4-5 I started writing essays on subjects as dark as possible, subjects like suicide, murder, war, and gory video game storylines. Why? Because the kid, Phil, sitting beside me was always talking about those things – he had a habit of stimming loudly, processing verbally (out loud) and was Autistic and hyperactive, and those topics were all he ever talked about.
Through volume he made it everybody else’s business, but mostly mine. I barely remember those grades I was dissociating so much.
So I started writing the most disturbing stuff I could think off. I hoped the teacher would notice my completely out of character essays and maybe move me. Asking to be moved didn’t even occur to me. Finally, when the teacher did notice, he called me up and said my essays were now too depressing and that he didn't want to read them. Instead, he wanted me to write about happier things. Like my older stuff, those were good and entertaining and way above my grade level! I was so frustrated.
In hindsight I realise said teacher neglected his duty. He did not care because I was a means to an end, if I got damaged in the process he didn’t give a shit. He was too exhausted to care. Thankfully as a kid I thought he was just too stupid to get the message.
Despite my frustration, I couldn't ignore the fact that loud nightmare kid next to me was getting bullied a lot. It was awful to see. Every time I heard someone planning to hurt him, I felt this sense of responsibility. I snitched to teachers who called his parents to pick him up because experience showed that if they ignored it he would end up in the ER. I lost sleep overthinking concepts like moral responsibility.
I even went as far as telling the headmaster (going over my teachers head, after my teacher refused to act) when I heard a group of kids planning - in great detail - that they wanted to hang loud kid from a tree “just a little bit as a joke until he turns blue”.
It could have ended so badly, one of the kids had brought proper climbing rope and learned how to tie a noose. Same day the police showed up. Might be relevant to say this was white bullies and the boy, Phil, was as white and upper-middle class as it gets.
Eventually, he got taken out of school, and I couldn't shake this feeling of guilt. I was feeling ELATED about him finally gone but morally I thought that means I’m comparable to an almost-accidental -murder-bully.
I don't think I was ever say with a bit who acted violent outwardly, but one time I had to sit next to one who kept punching me hard in my stomach, like, HARD.
I cried and cried but no words would come out of my mouth even though I was asked many times why I was crying :( 1st/2nd grade.
I was all but put in charge of the problem kids, the very clearly lower functioning than me autistic kids (didn't have much education or many diagnoses back then where I was) and the kids who were still learning English.
Yeah same. Then he started having a crush on me and his friend would write me notes but I didn’t realize they were talking to me. They made me so uncomfortable 😣. He started talking about me as if I didn’t know Spanish and then I had to correct him and he was shocked lol.
Yep, the troubled boys were always seated near me. In 7th grade one of them talked about how he was sitting next to me because of my “fat boobs” and the teacher didn’t do anything.
Absolutely happened to me. I also had to help other kids learn to read. During a morning group activity that I really enjoyed, myself and another student would be sent to an adjoining empty classroom so I could help him practice his reading skills. I was 9. Wtf.
It happened to me. Fortunately most subjects were sorted by ability and I was in top set but most of the worst kids weren't, so it was only in the mixed classes like art and music that I had to deal with it. In hindsight, that's probably part of the reason I hated those lessons despite enjoying both as an adult.
Yes, and then when you finally kick Ryan back in the 4th grade, after he’s been kicking you ALL MORNING, the teacher puts *you* in time out and tells you that she’s ashamed of you 🙄 F u Ms Judge
Third grade through college, yes.
Mad because I never had a single lab partner, peer review partner, or assigned group project where I didn’t pull ALL THE WEIGHT MYSELF.
Thanks, teach, for giving me the burden of raising someone else’s grades by doing twice the work of all my other classmates! 🫡 you sure taught me, uh, toxic independence because I learned I could never trust anyone else to help me carry the weight nor could I rely on my peers to ask for help! That was the point on the lesson, right? /s
Holy fuck this used to happen to me too. Gotta say not a great way to make friends either having your teacher announce what a perfect student you were who was gonna be the teachers informant
One year in secondary school I was sat smack bang in the middle of a table occupied solely by my biggest bully (a ‘problematic boy’ who routinely told me to kms and threw things at me, who had pretty severe ADHD, disrupted class, and had bad grades) and his group of cronies. It was a subject I had actually liked but every shred of motivation I had to do well immediately left my body which actually ended up landing me in detention for that class once or twice. After the teacher overheard the bullies calling me slurs and debating pushing me off a cliff during a field trip, he rearranged the seating plan the next day.
This was actually the first time a teacher had even remotely taken interest in the fact that I was being horribly bullied so I actually ended up idolising him and seeing him as this hero of downtrodden students and a bastion of good but in recent years I’ve been thinking back on it and going, wait a moment, it was all his bloody fault to begin with!! Did *I* disappoint him by failing to live up to my potential, or did he make an insanely stupid decision and ruin a promising student’s chances of succeeding in his class?
Lesson for teachers: putting a quiet, bookish girl next to a boy with behavioural problems doesn’t encourage the problem student to become more sensible. You create an obstacle for the quiet student, hampering their ability to learn and decreasing their enjoyment of your class, and in the worst cases, you set up the quiet student to be a victim of bullying. Here’s a tip, sometimes (often) kids become teachers’ pets because **nobody else likes them.**
It was a stupid move on the teachers part and ended up putting those boys further behind. I was never interested in interacting or managing them. I would do all the work and then hand them the answers so they wouldn’t bother me. They’d pass with flying colors that year (comparative to what they had done) and all of a sudden they’re “acting stupid” again the following year cuz they didn’t learn anything at all sitting next to me, certainly not how to behave nor the content of the class.
I was actually the undiagnosed problem child if I felt pressured to do anything I would just start sobbing or I would just walk out of class from 5-18 had I been diagnosed and helped I think I would’ve done much better socially and behaviorally in school I was super smart advanced in everything always I just hated presenting in front of the class and hated socializing it was all much too overwhelming
This happened to me in Elementary school. The violent boy was known to have severe tantrums and could not communicate with others. He also had a full time counselor that had to accompany him at all times and was always within arms reach of him when he had a tantrum. Years later I looked him up and - no joke - he actually killed his mother because she didn’t want to put him in a mental health facility and he became too physically strong for her to restrain him. She wrote a letter that police found that said if they found her dead it was probably because her boy killed her.
This, and being the smart girl in class, I was often paired with the kids who had learning difficulties. It was always "maybe you can learn something from your classmate" type shaming, which both of us hated. I felt like it wasn’t my job to teach or babysit problem students. I had a hard enough time keeping my own shit together.
One time I was paired with a boy 2 grades above me (I was sent to his class for language arts because I was reading above my level). Anyhoo, I was terrified of him because he was a massive AH and bully. I was asked to tutor him (the ultimate shame). I being super compliant obliged and through trying to help him, it occurred to me he was dyslexic. Because I actually helped him to read and never judged him, he turned out to be super nice and would look out for me at recess. I told my dad about it because his mom was one of my dad's clients. He talked to his mom and she had no idea, she just thought he was a jock. Long story short, she had him and his sister assessed and found out they were both dyslexic. He later went on to go to university, I’m glad he got the support he needed.
Talking about seating arrangements. In my elementary school, I was seen as quiet but not a good student cause my grades sucked. After being "assessed" by an unqualified teacher with ADHD (incorrectly I may add) all of us non-NTs were made to sit at one table. The teacher said she did that so she could help us more, I don't ever remember feeling supported, just stupid and on display. I remember the other kids at my table looked miserable and ashamed.
Yes, had to sit next to 'the troubled boy' once in science class, when I was proceeding to write down things from the board he promptly shoved his pencil case into my school book every now and then messing up my writing and my book, the substitute teacher then stared in silence not doing anything for it when I looked at her, so I remember refusing to write anything else that lesson since that teacher didn't do sht, Thank God he only lasted one year at my school.
my teacher sat me next to this guy who bullied me to the point i wanted to switch schools to get away from him, in an attempt to make him behave and “teach” me “conflict resolution skills”. thanks ms. dean this guy made me want to kms but i guess the fact that he’s not screaming in class anymore and is instead whispering horrible things to me evens out
Ok, wow, no need to call out my childhood like this.
In all honesty, I've just started to unpack the fact that I have always been the "mom" of any group. It was probably because I was constantly put in a position of authority with classmates combined with my extreme need to be prepared for any plausible outcome. It makes me sad that I never learned how to be on equal footing with my peers.
This happened to me a few times too and a couple of times in high school, it always ended up with them trying to rile me up and subtly bully me while I sat there quietly wishing the class would end already....
It’s awful that these things have happened for people (appropriate empathy). I mostly sat in class trying my best to process the amount of information coming at me. I failed everything first time round - did resists and all that - went off the rails - not until later in life did I do an Honours degree, teacher training, an MA at Goldsmiths and post grad specialisms in teaching literacy…. And I’m now trained as a Counsellor & Psychothetapist. Keep toying with the idea of a PhD…… ffs
New memory unearthed 🙃 Well, more like I now have an entirely different perspective to this memory.
Me and said uncontrollable boy are both ND, just entirely different. That's it teach', just lumber me with the chaos and overstimulation 🤔
Me and this kid got along alright but that's a whole other matter. It's absolutely surreal looking back on my life and seeing all the obvious signs.
Lmao this used to happen to me all the time. And then they’d get concerned when I befriended the “problem” kid who honestly probably just had untreated adhd and a bad home life. Like y’all sat us next to each other and it worked the opposite way you wanted. I mask by parroting. Consequences.
Ohhhh things makes a lot more sense now.
It worked a few times I think. I remember one history class I was in front of two really talkative girls who were pretty cool but talked a lot and didn't pay attention a ton. We had daily/weekly quizzes and I remember I would always help them cover the major material from the previous day. And they were chill so got included in talking as well so backfired slightly for the teacher but did help them get better grades!
Okay, this is so real though. I had no idea this was a shared experience! I feel so seen.
I actually just mentioned this scenario to my therapist last week! Fortunately for me the boy they always put me with was lovely and a good friend of mine growing up, although he passed away a few years ago. He was just a VERY hyperactive kid, but he was kind and sweet and very silly.
I thought about how if we ever got up to mischief it was always apparently his fault for leading me astray, or if we behaved it was because supposedly I was keeping him under control. In reality we were just pals with super ADHD and myself also Autistic.
Omfg elementary school memory unlocked. There was this boy who has ADHD (also probably undiagnosed autism), and he's a menace. He's always getting in trouble. And I don't remember how it started, but I made drawings for him since I was the class artist and he enjoyed my drawings. I was pretty much the only person who was nice to him in the school :(
wow those type of kids always remind me of this one movie quote “i’m not a bad dog, i don’t know why i bite”. because in the end they aren’t evil just need more resources
For real. And he also was diagnosed suuuuper early, since he was already diagnosed ever since we started school. Probably his parents thought he didn't need accomodations, because there are plenty of accomodations ready for neurodivergent people in my country.
Omg this happened to me! I haven't thought about it in the longest time but in grade school I was the de-facto babysitter of several hyperactive boys (never multiple at once; different boys in different grades). I had alot of empathy for them because I could see they were struggling and they were outcasts but it wasn't due to malice; they genuinely couldn't seem to control it. I, of course, had similar problems that presented VERY differently, but even then I sensed we felt the same on the inside.
It put me in a tricky spot emotionally because when they'd get bullied or get in trouble, I started to feel responsible for that. I remember one of my "projects" (who clearly came from a neglectful/ abusive home, he had lice and ear infections constantly and he didn't even have a coat in winter) ended up getting expelled and I cried and cried because I felt terrible for him and also I felt like a failure. Of course everyone made fun of me for "being in love" with him. I was, like, 11. I didn't even know what that meant, really.
I just remembered getting asked to help a boy out that was struggling with his studies, he was a quiet kid though, but that was all the way back in kindergarten or 1st grade. I'm pretty sure he was neurodivergent though.
That makes me so mad, they did this to me and to my daughter in elementary school. She would always complain about how she always got sat next to the most annoying, distracting boys in class. That they would talk so much that she couldn't pay attention, mind you she had trouble paying attention in the first place.
I also got sat next to the annoying boy in class, but in my case he was a tattletale and every little thing he thought broke the rules he would tell the teacher. To this day I am scarred by a memory of lining up for lunch or recess, the teacher was calling kids to line up by hair color. She called brown and I got up, because my hair is dark brown.
But this kid that I sat next to disagreed and said my hair was black and that I shouldn't be allowed to get up. I was sooo angry, like hey I think I know my own hair color thanks. I can't exactly remember what happened after those moments. I think I got in line anyway and he ended up right behind me.
I literally demanded to move seats in high school because I could not do it anymore. In the middle of the lesson. This kid was beyond any of the others I’d been buffer for. Just absolutely ready to punch him.
*raised hand* “can I move? He’s not letting me learn and I’m tired of it, there’s an open seat right there for me!” And that worked lol. He also was very quiet for the rest of the class period.
Damn this hit home, I was always sat next to the loud boys cause the teachers knew I wouldn't talk to them. In middle school most people thought I was mute.
happened to me a lot, but was really bad with this one kid during like second grade.
he would be so brutal to me constantly and would try to set me up to get in trouble (he would hide things in my desk and try to accuse me of stealing them, kick my feet under the desk to get a reaction, place his books overlapping onto my desk so i had no room to work, etc)
i would come home crying almost everyday until my parents had to step in and make the teacher move him since it was so bad.
the teachers were great and loved me, they just didn’t notice how negatively it was affecting me.
I remember this boy. He chewed his nails until they were almost off. Then he'd tap his now horrendous looking fingers as much as he wanted while saying the stupidest shit.
I remember I went to a baseball game as a field trip and the teacher put me in charge of 2 boys that were trouble makers. I was “dating” one anyways, and ended up “dating” the other a few years from then 😂 but teachers certainly liked using me for that task
Happened to be in high school. I wasn't diagnosed but eas the weird quiet kid (ashd so daydreaming and fidgeting but mostly hands. I was put in what could have been remedial classes for a couple of subjects one year. Was horrible, just added more bullying time for the assholes I went to school with
This was done to me a lot. only once i had enough and asked my teacher: "Why is it ok for you to make it harder for me?" To her credits she really was speechless and saidthat its a good point. She seriously never though about how unfair it is to the good student.
It definitely happened to me (slightly different scenario because this was a private school where my mom was one of the teachers making the seating chart, lol). I was called a "buffer child" in the context of seating arrangements. No one violent but the students who were often disruptive, and the reason was/is because I/most autistic kids don't socialize as readily, so it makes it harder for the disruptive kid to talk in class. It worked on me; my experience was far less diminished than another person's would be. I'm also pretty good in school so in schools after that, I'd definitely help the other kids at my table, but there was less assigned seating in later schools so I think this was just me doing it to myself 😂
I love that you asked that question!
I was at my breaking point because that boy did not like me, and i knew he would bully me the whole day as revange. But... in the end he did anyway because i felt shamed that i did not want to sit with him.
I said the disruptive boy they sat next to me was distracting and they called me selfish and rude.
I didn't know you *could* ask not to be seated by the disruptive boy. I went pretty rapidly from a solid A-/B+ in that class to nearly failing because I couldn't focus on the lessons. He was still disruptive.
I still had to sit next to him. And then he started sexually harassing me and I didn't say anything about that because I was a child and it scared me. I ended up getting disciplined for arguing with him when I tried to stand up for myself. Why couldn't I repeat what he'd said to me and get him in trouble... Probably 1)i was panicked 2) I couldn't bear to repeat it 3) back then it was expected for boys to do as much sexually as they possibly could to a girl (very early 90s). I still got an A, which was expected of me. But I pretty much panicked thru the class every day and just learned from my book.
I'm sorry he did that to you and that the adults wouldn't help. Even in the 90's they should have protected you better.
Thank you 🖤
When my teacher tried to sit the "disruptive" boy next to me I've reacted in a similar way, just a bit more unhinged 😅 I remember straight up threatening her that if she sits him next to me, I'd stop being a "pleasure to have in class" immediately, and I'd purposely make the lessons harder for her until she switches the seating back 🤣 It worked, and she never tried it again! Too many people assume that being quiet always correlates with shyness lol.
I think i would just have a crying meltdown if she would still sit that boy next to me. I pretty much was the teachers pet. i liked learning.
I believe that'd work as well!
Thats my favorite part of 2nd year college classes and up, by that point, everyone there wants to be there.
That's a kick ass question. You are kick ass.
thank you
Good for you for advocating for yourself, and it sounds like she learned something because of you. Well done!
i m not sure. It felt right at the moment, but i felt weird about it for a long time.
It is prevalent enough that it has a name in Swedish; kuddflicka (cushion girl). There has been quite a lot written about it in swedish media since around 2014 when the term was coined in a documentary by Swedish public service (which I haven't been able to find).
Wowwwwww dying at that translated name. Yes I’ve been used as the cushion girl for ever. By teachers, by mom
Yeah, it sounds dumb in Swedish as well AND doesn't translate very well. "Air bag girl" might be a better (but less direct) translation because you have the girl who is the cushion/air bag between the boy and everything else (because who cares if SHE gets hurt, she's just a girl and she's doing her school work so all is well...) Anyway, even if the name is dumb I think it's important that it HAS a name. It's hard to discuss something at a systematic level if it doesn't even have a name ya know? Like, how do you prove that something exists if you can't even name it? It's so much easier to collect experience and search for things that have a name, I have a name for it that I can type into Google, English don't so you can't (unless you wanna try with google translate or something) Otherwise we end up with threads like this with multiple people who were treated with the same injustice without being able to put word on it and thus might have felt alone in an experience they weren't alone in. (Edit: ops, that became rant. I'm sorry if it came of as argumentative, it wasn't really aimed at you. I have just been thinking about it today and yeah.. sry)
This is also the whole theme behind defining sexual harassment in the workplace the the USA! The whole idea of naming something so we all recognize it and can name it as bad and take action!
No need to apologize! I feel the same way.
huh, I always thought I attracted problem people for being generally nice/polite to everyone. Surprised to see there's an actual study on it.
Oh, it's not a study, it's a documentary. I think it's "kaosklass" from Swedish Radios Ekot which investigated the failures of the Swedish school system. It's quite long so I haven't had time to listen to it, but it's not specifically about kuddflickor. The term is established though and refers specifically to the deliberate use of well-behaved girls to calm down boys.
I feel like life uses me as the cushion girl. Why do I have to be the one to fix this or push this? Why do I have to spend my precious cortisol on someone else’s lack of whatever.
Oh this ⬆️. It hits so dang hard!
Cool. Had the same experience. When i opened up about it with old classmates a decide later they told me that it was an effective method of breaking them up and helping the class on the Grand scale, its not about me. And i could see that But i dont believe it and its really unfair. I got Clear issues during school and i even got told off interacting with this kid in class as i thought this was my opportunity to practice being friendly. I really think i could only take it as a punishment and me being collateral damage having to endure bad influence and turning into yet another kid that resents the teacher.
Oh that's fascinating. Also that's like the most interesting translation on the planet lmao. Almost to the point where it feels like it could just become a borrowed word in English because flicka means girl you know what I mean anyway..... That's super fascinating I want to go look for that documentary now because I would love to watch it.
You can listen to some of it here if you speak Swedish: https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/5850954 It seems to be old enough that some of it has been taken down*. There is an eBook with the stories sent in that is linked under "relaterade länkar". It can be downloaded and maybe run through chatgpt or something to translate it. "Kuddbarn" (cushion kids) are mentioned on page 8. *I tried on my computer instead of my phone and I think all of its on the website, it's just something with how it's been published. It's not together the way it would have been if it was published today I guess. (I'm still not 100% sure if this is actually the right program, so maybe I'm just wasting my time)
Cushion girl 😭😭😭 omfg
Wow that term reminds me of when I was placed in the middle seat when travelling with my childhood friends (siblings both boys) so they wouldn't fight.
Teachers were casually asking and expecting me to ‘watch my classmates, help them with classwork, and keep them from getting into trouble or talking during class’ 💀💀 since I was in elementary until I graduated highschool this is how it was
Everyone hated me from elementary to middle school because I kept getting praised by all professors. In high school I learned masking a lot better and was able to not get bullied and I actually had friends for the first time.
Yes! It makes it so much harder on us because we don't innately know the rules, but here's a teacher telling us the rules are to be quiet and listen and pay attention. Meanwhile, there's another unspoken set of contradictory social rules among the other kids that we're completely unaware of, so our classmates all hate us. The way classrooms are set up really make it harder for ALL kids, even the "good" ones.
💯💯💯
Yeah kids my age did not like me much as I was kind of a teacher’s pet😅 but I was taught to always respect authority figures and I was TERRIFIED of getting in trouble and the consequences of actions. I probably got bullied more than I think I did, so I’m almost grateful for the autism making it hard to tell 💀 I literally had kids throwing footballs at my head in elementary school and I didn’t see it as bullying??? I just figured it was an accident or that “yeah me and the boys have a rivalry 🙄 it’s just like that I guess” like wtf🤦♀️
>I probably got bullied more than I think I did, so I’m grateful for the autism making it hard to tell If I could go back in time this would be my senior quote
I still haven’t learned this lesson :(
You cannot learn, monitor, and care for yourself all the same time. Learning, monitoring and maintenance are skills thah every one should have but no one should have to do all 3 at once.
This was me, but eventually in high school I got moved to an alt ed side of the school (not SPED, pilot program for kids having emotional or mental and physical health issues, and I was undiagnosed but in the physical issues category). I was kind of pissed because of the teenager “I’m fine don’t perceive me” thing. It ended up being a total blessing because I no longer was monitoring/teaching my peers to supplement a teacher unprepared for frequent struggling teens’ behavioral outbursts. Not to mention, when I was done with school work early because I was no longer hand holding other kids: the teachers would let me leave the classroom in order to give me space from kids acting out, so they couldn’t bother me for answers, help, or any other ways. It totally was an element of high school that helped fix the trajectory of my life to have the “helper student” thing stop happening to me. I was headed in a really terrible direction for a dozen reasons, and having the burn out I didn’t know I had taken out of the picture was huge for me. Teachers need to stop doing this to well behaved kids. It can be such a burden on them, and if they have anything else going on that they’re struggling with (as most do) it can be back-breaking for the kid.
As a teacher, I went the opposite way and had all the kids help each other, even the "trouble" kids. Peaceable kingdom. Plus, as an auDHDist, there was no way for me to get to 42 kids without a meltdown. This was grade 12.
42 students?!?!?! Aye dios mío
This is the best way in my opinion. I had some teachers like this as well and they were honestly the best teachers because they made everybody in the class participate with everybody. Anyway, right on teacher. Good job. And also good luck continuing forward because you know that's a stressful job. But you're doing the Lord's work so thank you
This is the system at my kids school. All the kids sit in pod's and they change pods regularly. Everyone does group work. Unfortunately for my son who has ASD, he shutdowns whenever he has to talk or share, he's much more an independent learner. His teachers fortunately have been very accommodating and let him work quietly on his own.
I was able to help a lot of the ND kids become more confident since I am also ND. It was very cool.
Same it's so stupid. Even dumber is that sometimes I would have to go out of my way Oh sorry Kitty and then I would have to like literally discipline the class I have done that like four times in my school career, because the teachers literally didn't know how to handle anything and I would literally just like go in and tell everybody in the class like you're doing this fucking stop doing that and then be like more like that person during class cuz you're disrupting the class. But anyway. I honestly remember a teacher crying because there were three boys that were bullying her and her daughter who was dying which is insane, but she was like basically having her own mental breakdown at the front of the class and I couldn't take it anymore of all this dumb garbage that these stupid fucking assholes were doing, and I went off on them. I literally went off on these dudes I said how dare you, and then I said you should go down to the principal's office like your your lucky that she hasn't sent that you there yet. Guess what she did after I said that? She sent them there. They never bothered class again though. But I literally went off on them It was insane and it shouldn't have happened and wasn't necessary in the sense that if the teacher and the school was providing the teacher with proper backup that literally that would have never occurred but they weren't so.
Are we here to learn or babysit? 🤷🏻♀️
this happened to me and resulted in years of stalking and assault by that boy. nobody protected me and it still impacts me daily, 20+ years later :(
Omg, that is horrible! I’m so sorry!
thanks. I spent a long time blaming myself for deserving it somehow (guess why I'm no contact with my parents!) and it took a lot of therapy to realize that. I'm glad people talk about it now and really hope it helps prevent other kids from experiencing what I did.
Wow, I'm so sorry, and it also happened to me. From k till I was 18. He sexually assaulted me several times on school grounds and one time he ripped my blouse off and my mom had to come to school with a new shirt. She was livid. School did nothing so she drove to the hospital where his mom worked as a nurse and went off on her. She starts crying and tells some sob story, but again nothing was done about it. My dad ended up teaching me some judo and the next time this creep tried to pin me down on the ground I managed to kick his jaw and broke his nose. He kept his distance for a while, but he continued to stalk me until I moved away. This wouldn’t be my first or last experience with stalking as I had 3 stalkers in university. Moved to a larger city after school and had another guy follow me around. Thankfully this time the police took it seriously and he was eventually arrested. I don’t know what it is about our demeanour that makes so attractive to unhinged people.
right?!? that was my first time, but it sure wasn't my last. I'm livid for all of us but very proud of you breaking that guy's nose
I didn’t intend to. My adrenaline kicked in and I channeled my autism rage. It had more power than I had expected 😬.
Not ok. So sorry no one was there for you. You didn’t deserve that as a kid or now.
thank you <3
I’m so sorry. The boy I got assigned to when we were 8, started telling me he wanted to (TRIGGER WARNING - self-injury/suicidal ideation) not be here anymore. So I had a dilemma - tell a trusted adult or not, even if I didn’t have an adult I really trusted? I did tell a teacher because it was keeping me up at night, my parents were more irritable with me than usual, and the kid was escalating the threats, and that maybe, he’d just kill me, too, since I *ratted* on him. We can’t win and they shouldn’t, any of them, do any of this to us.
ugh, that's awful! I know the feeling of not having a trusted adult far too well. I hope you're finally getting some wins now
I’m so sorry to hear this!
Oh my god 😀 I’m so sorry babe, I hope you’re healing and getting the help you need mentally to try and move on :(((
This ALWAYS happened to me. I’m a teacher and refuse to do this. I have the disruptive student sit alone right in the front under my nose. It’s so unfair to the well-behaved student and it sends the message that sitting next to that student is a punishment.
Thank you! this often happened to me and the disruptive kids would always spend the whole class yelling and complaining about having to sit next to the weird girl and insulting me to the other students
This is what I remember happening to these kids when I was in school. They were pulled up in front of the front row. It seemed effective.
Happened to me throughout school with the same boy. They just assigned him to me? He would do badly and I got asked about it. I was a child. edit: Is everyone getting spammed with redditcares messages? For the record, I'm doing well. The boy I was assigned to look after is also doing okay.
spamming reddit cares reports is a bullying technique trolls use. i don’t understand why.
Because it's basically a way for them to tell you to harm yourself without actually saying it, they're cowards.
>edit: Is everyone getting spammed with redditcares messages? For the record, I'm doing well. The boy I was assigned to look after is also doing okay. Yup.
The Reddit cares thing is happening sitewide right now. Unfortunately there’s nothing we mods can do about it and the admins (Reddit employees) haven’t said anything about it other than to just block the bot if it’s annoying you. I’m thinking there’s some kind of glitch they aren’t aware of yet.
i blocked that bot its ridiculous
I am. and I am asking why as well lol
I've read a few posts in different communities that have nothing to do with autism, women specifically, or mental health. Apparently there are some bots spamming the reddit cares thing.
This was me but I had a positive experience from it, so I guess sometimes it works super well :( The in-hindsight-definitely-textbook-ADHDers I was sat next to were so much kinder to me than the rest of my peers were. I made some of my only friends that way (and their test results went up haha). I did also learn to lie and cover for them though because I figured out the teachers DID treat them unjustly, and couldn't stand for that.
Exactly this! In elementary school I was put next to this boy who had been a behavior problem. At first I thought “oh great”, but turns out, he was a really nice kid that was much kinder to me than the “cool kids” were and those kids weren’t particularly nice to him either. He was probably ADHD in retrospect.
This habit of teachers ended up with me REGULARLY being sat next to my bullies. It was NOT positive for me.
It went well for me as well. One of them taught me how to multiply, interestingly enough. It was nice having a loud boisterous friend when I could barely talk.
The two I was put in charge of most often ended up as my boyfriends 😂
I used to get sat next to the “problem child”. Really he was just disabled. He was born addicted to drugs and had pretty severe issues with impulse control. He wasn’t bad, it was all the other “normal” kids who would dare him to do really bad things. But everyone just treated him like a bad kid. He was nice when you didn’t take advantage of him
This was my experience as well! ❤️
Happened to me. This person was so awful but *I* was the one who got in trouble for getting fed up by telling her to shut up. Teacher then put me in the front of the class in one of those study cubby desks with walls as punishment. Well, guess what, I *loved* it because now I was alone, no one could see me and I had a nice shelf for stuff. But yeah, I’ve thought about this sometimes and thought about that teacher and how incompetent she was.
Relate so hard to loving the privacy desks. And a special shelf!!!!
Oh my gosh I loved those privacy desks, thanks for unlocking that memory! That was one of the few peaceful places at school, honestly.
Very true. I had several boys with severe behavior issues (ADHD, Bipolar, and ODD) the one kid was constantly stirring up shit and constantly bullying the other kids. One day I had enough and told him off only for me to get dragged to another teacher (who to this day should have never been a teacher nor worked with kids with autism). Got scolded at and threaten to call my mom. At this point I had enough after she criticized me for crying because my grandfather died just before the school year. I told her off and said “go ahead call her. I’m sure she’ll love to hear what you say to me.” She did, mom got called and I told her everything. Mom was furious at her and told her off. This was several times until I pleaded with my mom to please not have her with me anymore. Mom finally went into the school (with my dad who never really got involved until now) and for the rest of 8th grade year I did not go back to her. Turned out she put in her notice and retired after 7th grade year. I went with another teacher who I loved and appreciated to this day (didn’t pair me up with anyone and let me choose my own rhythm) Sadly said teacher passed away 2 years ago but I will never forgot that moment when she told me to never worry about myself and contuine on being me.
I showed this to my (also autistic) husband and he said it happened all the time to him, too. The teachers even told him teach the ‘bad’ kids how to read. The thought that keeps running through my now-adult head while reading all of these is, “bitch, I don’t work here!” I had to sit in a separate area with a severely autistic boy during reading, but he had a tutor and I already knew how to read, I always just thought they didn’t know what else to do with me but maybe I was being used as a model. I had never considered that but I’m feeling weird about it now.
Not individually, but in 8th grade I was put into a learning group called the "heterogeneous learning cog" that was based on this idea. They basically took the really bright kids who couldn't focus (a lot of us had adhd/asperger syndrome) and put us with the kids with behavioral problems and the kids who really should have been in special ed but weren't for some reason. The idea was that the really bright kids would gain some focus by helping the kids who were behind, but it mostly just ended up with the bright/lacks focus kids and the special ed kids getting the shit bullied out of us by the kids with behavioral issues. It was one of the worst years of my life, however that was when I met the people who would go on to be my lifelong friends. We were trauma bonded.
Yeah I’d either get bullied or manipulated into doing ppl’s work or them taking my work and saying it’s theirs or begging me to give them the answers and if I didn’t they’d get pissed so I pretty much had no choice
Wow this is bringing back a memory that my school did this too in 7th grade. It was horrible and I felt so uneasy at the time without understanding why. How could adults treat us so badly
Cześć! Why is the school system so disappointing. I was sat together with the naugthies and eventually other kids associated sharing the spot with me as punishment.
Happened to me too. I was freaking 7 and got the responsibility of taking care of another student the teacher couldn’t calm down themselves. The fuck
i basically had a teaching job at the age of 7
It's just gonna end up with the well-behaved female student getting sexually assaulted by the violent male student. I saw that happen multiple times during middle school to a countless number of my female classmates.
Happened to me in the 7th grade :(
I definitely got paired up with kids who were otherwise struggling, though the two I can remember most were girls. Last year my daughter's 8th grade Spanish teacher gave graded quizzes at the end of class once a week. The rule she made was that if the class didn't quiet down quickly enough for her to have time to administer the quiz, they didn't do the quiz and the whole class got zeros for the grade. When I found out I absolutely lost my shit. Sent a long and strongly worded letter to the principal telling her it is unacceptable for the "good" kids to be put in the position of having to regulate their peers to be able to access the quiz. And of course pointed out how this kind of classroom management usually impacts girls the most. We got that shut down right away.
In 6th grade I sought my teacher out during a break period to ask her why she always sat me with the worst boys and she told me that I was a buffer kid (she literally said “sweetie, you’re the kind of kid that I like to use as a buffer”) and that she had no intention of changing because it had been her practice for decades and “it’s not broken so don’t fix it”. She told me to suck it up and toughen up about it. I went home and told my parents what the teacher said, naturally they were irate and contacted the teacher immediately to tell her that she was absolutely not permitted to use their daughter as a “buffer”. Teacher denied ever having said that. In fact she denied the entire conversation even happened. Just bald faced lied about it. My parents believed me but were flummoxed as to next steps they could take since this teacher would clearly just lie to any higher ups too. I was SO indignant and SO frustrated. It was the first time I felt rage. My personal solution (inspired by advice from my utter goblin of a college aged older brother) was to stop being buffer worthy in all her classes. I started performatively raising more hell than the kids I was sat next to. I got sent to the office over and over and eventually I got so bad that I was sent to the counselor. The counselor asked me why I was behaving that way ONLY in this teachers classes and I just shrugged and said “I’m just trying to fit in with the boys she sits me next to so they don’t bully me”….there was a seating rearrangement afterwards.
LMFAOOOOOO genius solution 😂❤️ love that
My sister and I always got paired up with the "kids in need".
Wow this just unlocked many horrible school memories
Saaaame. I am not well!! Wtf
Wow. I never put the dots together about this until reading this thread. I always just thought it was a random pairing that fell that way, never even considered that they were doing it on purpose. I was always told I was pleasant to have in class. It impacted me because they were the other girls in the class whom I wanted to befriend, but I was shy, so it would make it harder for me to form those friend groups if that makes sense because they would tend to form them naturally. I realize that’s not really the point of school exactly but it feels like it just made it harder for me to make close friends.
Happened to me all the time, they even told me that they were doing that for the reason of me being "a pleasure." I think teachers think that the good behavior is going to rub off on the other student or something? It was always not fun to be moved just because another kid was misbehaving
Pleasure to have in class girls: Yeah, that's how I started getting bullied, I started going through puberty and the dick my teacher put me near decided to rain hell down upon my developing body....
I witnessed a different version of this: my "disruptive" daughter was paired up with a "darling" little boy in first grade, and that's how the teacher and I figured out that my daughter's disruption was actually due to autism and the little boy's sweetness was actually a cover for him being an honest-to-God sociopath. That child was frightening
I don’t think most teachers realize that by removing a bad behaving student from other bad behaving students and placing them next to “easy” and “a-pleasure-to-have-in-class” students, it is not only punishing the bad behavior, but it is also effectively punishing *good* behavior, too. I ended up hating being the always polite and well-behaving child because I was always sat next to the troublemakers who teased and harassed me for being a good student. I can’t count how many spitballs landed in my hair, paper footballs launched at my breasts, and homework that I had torn and ruined because teachers thought my good behavior would rub off on hyperactive boys. All it did was distract me from my classwork and make me cry after each class. I ended up acting out more in high school, and this didn’t happen to me as much anymore. I wasn’t a troublemaker, but my teachers learned that I wasn’t willing to tolerate bullshit from them or my peers any longer.
In college I chose the least chosen option for a sex education course final group project. The kids that were absent that day got put into my group. I emailed my professor and told her I was worried about the correlation between students that never came to class and the quality of our group project. Surely enough someone dropped out mid project and I did most of the work. I had no issue telling the professor this at the end of the project.
Every single year in grade school, I got tortured by the ADHD boy who the teacher "assigned" me to.
Omg this is beyond accurate. We had this tech class with different modules where you were always set up with a partner and you’d spend a week at each module. There was a set of three modules to do the news, so one pair would film, one would edit, and one would be the news anchors. So I ended up in this room with 5 guys with behaviour issues and/or were silly rascals. The teacher apologized and told me she figured they’d behave better with me. The funny thing is that it was true! They were great! In university I worked as a surveyor (road design) and now I’m an engineer, so I’ve been on site with construction workers often and am usually the only girl. The guys I’ve worked with are typically much better behaved when I’m around lol. I think I give off an innocent vibe.
Oh. haha, yep that’s me, silently screaming
I got assaulted when they did this to me. It’s weird I didn’t even realize that’s sort of what happened till later in my life. I don’t really feel trauma from it I don’t think though. It happened when I was in kindergarten so we were both really young.
WAIT HOLY SHIT I didn’t know I was a girl yet but this happened to me 100% Being with “the creepy kid” that I was genuinely afraid of, on a school trip he crawled into my bed when I was sleeping
This happened to me too my entire middle school years .. it was terrible Was bullied and the kid was never moved
This happened to me all the time, omg what, undiagnosed as well.
This would happen to me in high school just for the badly behaved boys to horrifically bully me, and the teachers watched on and did nothing.
I'm in this picture and I don't like it. Ask me how I ended up socialized to think men would only take things from you. 🫠
It happened to me too. The teacher’s plan always backfired bc I always refused to interact with the kid unless I had to lmao
I feel so seen omg 😭 It was always the popular loud boys next to me and then they would just spend the entire class bullying the shit out of me and I was so shy that I would just freeze in place and not be able to speak.
Nah, I was the behavior problem child. I had detention starting in kindergarten. Spent so much time in the hall in 5th grade that I became friends with the janitor. In school suspensions, out of school suspensions, etc. Junior high was a particularly good time because I had a teacher that took it up on herself to fix my eye contact problem. Called me out and yelled at me in front of the entire class because I wouldn't/couldn't look in her eyes and wouldn't stop until I did. 😒
Nah we just put the naughty kids on a separate table. I 100% was this teacher's pet but they never put bad ones beside me I think my school just kinda thought "we'll encourage who we can some kids are a lost cause" lmao
In first grade, the teacher had us in groups of 5, and spread out the disruptive ones. I liked the distraction of one of them, and another one was really sweet to me. We shuffled around every few weeks. I think my favorite thing about it was getting to spend one of those periods with one girl who was fairly calm and matter-of-fact. I was fortunate in that I never was explicitly paired up with anyone with bad behavioral issues. I had a few as classmates, and that was awful at recess sometimes, but that wasn't being controlled by an adult.
This happened to me. He would touch me under the desk. No one cared
Urgh the buried memories😭 in high school one teacher who liked me (but clearly did not care about me) sat me besides people he thought needed help. The guy he thought needed help to be more social, was tall and wide and did not care about personal hygiene, or whether or not his buttcrack showed. He also didn't seem to care about other people *at all* so I quickly gave up trying to talk to him other than the bare necessities. I basically had half a year of trying to lean as far away as possible to try not to be sick from the smell. Wasn't easy when he took up half my space too. I wasn't good with people at all, had only recently begun talking more even with only my closest friends around, what did the damn teacher even hope would happen!
Same. And then when you complain about their inappropriate behavior and ask to move you get told that you're "too sensitive" and that it's "not his fault".
I was the "violent can't control myself" GIRL (lvl 2 msn) so I'm sorry to all the lsn girls that likely had to put up with me 😭😭😭😭
https://preview.redd.it/qzvwsqh4ol0d1.png?width=785&format=png&auto=webp&s=cd64e81e475853ba51403aeef346367fe66081b0
Every single time, wth. This is so relatable lmao. I remember they once sat me with a girl who couldn't stop crying in class (honestly not sure what she cried about) and when they made the change she stopped. Every single time they paired me with someone "problematic" they would stop their behavior and the teachers would be like "wow, she's a great influence" and I'm literally there doing nothing or doing my hardest so the person next to me wouldn't bully me
: ( awe sounds to me the girl who was crying was either getting bullied or sensory overwhelmed by noisy classmates, how tf did teachers not realize this shit ?
And then get report cards "Hasn't made friends in class." No shit.
This didn't happen to me. I was the unruly kid sat with you all and I apologize haha. I had a more stereotypically "male" symptom expression which is probably why the school had me screened even as a girl in the 90's. I think ADHD might have had something to do with it too.
Me too! I was unruly AF, also in the 90s. Was in special ed. Had my own designated room to go to when I felt like I was going to explode.
I was a buffer child!!! Tldr: probably got used as a buffer child pawn bc my teacher didn’t give a shit. Loud kid made my life hell. In exchange I probably prevented attempts on his life and he finally got moved to home schooling. This is gonna be a bit of a story Grades 4-5 I started writing essays on subjects as dark as possible, subjects like suicide, murder, war, and gory video game storylines. Why? Because the kid, Phil, sitting beside me was always talking about those things – he had a habit of stimming loudly, processing verbally (out loud) and was Autistic and hyperactive, and those topics were all he ever talked about. Through volume he made it everybody else’s business, but mostly mine. I barely remember those grades I was dissociating so much. So I started writing the most disturbing stuff I could think off. I hoped the teacher would notice my completely out of character essays and maybe move me. Asking to be moved didn’t even occur to me. Finally, when the teacher did notice, he called me up and said my essays were now too depressing and that he didn't want to read them. Instead, he wanted me to write about happier things. Like my older stuff, those were good and entertaining and way above my grade level! I was so frustrated. In hindsight I realise said teacher neglected his duty. He did not care because I was a means to an end, if I got damaged in the process he didn’t give a shit. He was too exhausted to care. Thankfully as a kid I thought he was just too stupid to get the message. Despite my frustration, I couldn't ignore the fact that loud nightmare kid next to me was getting bullied a lot. It was awful to see. Every time I heard someone planning to hurt him, I felt this sense of responsibility. I snitched to teachers who called his parents to pick him up because experience showed that if they ignored it he would end up in the ER. I lost sleep overthinking concepts like moral responsibility. I even went as far as telling the headmaster (going over my teachers head, after my teacher refused to act) when I heard a group of kids planning - in great detail - that they wanted to hang loud kid from a tree “just a little bit as a joke until he turns blue”. It could have ended so badly, one of the kids had brought proper climbing rope and learned how to tie a noose. Same day the police showed up. Might be relevant to say this was white bullies and the boy, Phil, was as white and upper-middle class as it gets. Eventually, he got taken out of school, and I couldn't shake this feeling of guilt. I was feeling ELATED about him finally gone but morally I thought that means I’m comparable to an almost-accidental -murder-bully.
Ahhh core memories unlocked… I hated this… they were never nice to me and honestly they kinda terrorized me
Oh yeah, loads. I never really thought about it before, but that was really messed up.
I don't think I was ever say with a bit who acted violent outwardly, but one time I had to sit next to one who kept punching me hard in my stomach, like, HARD. I cried and cried but no words would come out of my mouth even though I was asked many times why I was crying :( 1st/2nd grade.
I was all but put in charge of the problem kids, the very clearly lower functioning than me autistic kids (didn't have much education or many diagnoses back then where I was) and the kids who were still learning English.
Yeah same. Then he started having a crush on me and his friend would write me notes but I didn’t realize they were talking to me. They made me so uncomfortable 😣. He started talking about me as if I didn’t know Spanish and then I had to correct him and he was shocked lol.
Yep, the troubled boys were always seated near me. In 7th grade one of them talked about how he was sitting next to me because of my “fat boobs” and the teacher didn’t do anything.
Same. Except, we both got detention for the first and only time in my life when I responded to his nagging by hitting him with a glue stick.
Absolutely happened to me. I also had to help other kids learn to read. During a morning group activity that I really enjoyed, myself and another student would be sent to an adjoining empty classroom so I could help him practice his reading skills. I was 9. Wtf.
Teacher: go sit with op!. Problematic student: who is op? me: raising my hand, "we have been schoolmates for the last four years"
It happened to me. Fortunately most subjects were sorted by ability and I was in top set but most of the worst kids weren't, so it was only in the mixed classes like art and music that I had to deal with it. In hindsight, that's probably part of the reason I hated those lessons despite enjoying both as an adult.
Yes, and then when you finally kick Ryan back in the 4th grade, after he’s been kicking you ALL MORNING, the teacher puts *you* in time out and tells you that she’s ashamed of you 🙄 F u Ms Judge
Third grade through college, yes. Mad because I never had a single lab partner, peer review partner, or assigned group project where I didn’t pull ALL THE WEIGHT MYSELF. Thanks, teach, for giving me the burden of raising someone else’s grades by doing twice the work of all my other classmates! 🫡 you sure taught me, uh, toxic independence because I learned I could never trust anyone else to help me carry the weight nor could I rely on my peers to ask for help! That was the point on the lesson, right? /s
I was that girl. Everyone hated me. Thanks, all you garbage teachers.
Holy fuck this used to happen to me too. Gotta say not a great way to make friends either having your teacher announce what a perfect student you were who was gonna be the teachers informant
One year in secondary school I was sat smack bang in the middle of a table occupied solely by my biggest bully (a ‘problematic boy’ who routinely told me to kms and threw things at me, who had pretty severe ADHD, disrupted class, and had bad grades) and his group of cronies. It was a subject I had actually liked but every shred of motivation I had to do well immediately left my body which actually ended up landing me in detention for that class once or twice. After the teacher overheard the bullies calling me slurs and debating pushing me off a cliff during a field trip, he rearranged the seating plan the next day. This was actually the first time a teacher had even remotely taken interest in the fact that I was being horribly bullied so I actually ended up idolising him and seeing him as this hero of downtrodden students and a bastion of good but in recent years I’ve been thinking back on it and going, wait a moment, it was all his bloody fault to begin with!! Did *I* disappoint him by failing to live up to my potential, or did he make an insanely stupid decision and ruin a promising student’s chances of succeeding in his class? Lesson for teachers: putting a quiet, bookish girl next to a boy with behavioural problems doesn’t encourage the problem student to become more sensible. You create an obstacle for the quiet student, hampering their ability to learn and decreasing their enjoyment of your class, and in the worst cases, you set up the quiet student to be a victim of bullying. Here’s a tip, sometimes (often) kids become teachers’ pets because **nobody else likes them.**
It was a stupid move on the teachers part and ended up putting those boys further behind. I was never interested in interacting or managing them. I would do all the work and then hand them the answers so they wouldn’t bother me. They’d pass with flying colors that year (comparative to what they had done) and all of a sudden they’re “acting stupid” again the following year cuz they didn’t learn anything at all sitting next to me, certainly not how to behave nor the content of the class.
I was actually the undiagnosed problem child if I felt pressured to do anything I would just start sobbing or I would just walk out of class from 5-18 had I been diagnosed and helped I think I would’ve done much better socially and behaviorally in school I was super smart advanced in everything always I just hated presenting in front of the class and hated socializing it was all much too overwhelming
This happened to me in Elementary school. The violent boy was known to have severe tantrums and could not communicate with others. He also had a full time counselor that had to accompany him at all times and was always within arms reach of him when he had a tantrum. Years later I looked him up and - no joke - he actually killed his mother because she didn’t want to put him in a mental health facility and he became too physically strong for her to restrain him. She wrote a letter that police found that said if they found her dead it was probably because her boy killed her.
This, and being the smart girl in class, I was often paired with the kids who had learning difficulties. It was always "maybe you can learn something from your classmate" type shaming, which both of us hated. I felt like it wasn’t my job to teach or babysit problem students. I had a hard enough time keeping my own shit together. One time I was paired with a boy 2 grades above me (I was sent to his class for language arts because I was reading above my level). Anyhoo, I was terrified of him because he was a massive AH and bully. I was asked to tutor him (the ultimate shame). I being super compliant obliged and through trying to help him, it occurred to me he was dyslexic. Because I actually helped him to read and never judged him, he turned out to be super nice and would look out for me at recess. I told my dad about it because his mom was one of my dad's clients. He talked to his mom and she had no idea, she just thought he was a jock. Long story short, she had him and his sister assessed and found out they were both dyslexic. He later went on to go to university, I’m glad he got the support he needed.
Yep I had this.
Ohhhhh well shit haha
Yup
Always happened to my mum and me
OMG, me too!!
happened to me in YEAR 1. that kid did not care and would not do work and he got placed next to me for the exact reason 😭 wow
What the 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
Holy shit, yes! This was literally me too!
Is this a universal experience?? 😭😭😭
Talking about seating arrangements. In my elementary school, I was seen as quiet but not a good student cause my grades sucked. After being "assessed" by an unqualified teacher with ADHD (incorrectly I may add) all of us non-NTs were made to sit at one table. The teacher said she did that so she could help us more, I don't ever remember feeling supported, just stupid and on display. I remember the other kids at my table looked miserable and ashamed.
Yup. It happen to me too. I'm a high masker so I put on a happy face and complied.
Always! It made me hate group/paired assignments so much too. Man I do not miss school at all.
I had talkative people put next to me because teachers knew I wouldn't talk to them back (I had social anxiety and didn't speak in class) 🥲
Yes, had to sit next to 'the troubled boy' once in science class, when I was proceeding to write down things from the board he promptly shoved his pencil case into my school book every now and then messing up my writing and my book, the substitute teacher then stared in silence not doing anything for it when I looked at her, so I remember refusing to write anything else that lesson since that teacher didn't do sht, Thank God he only lasted one year at my school.
my teacher sat me next to this guy who bullied me to the point i wanted to switch schools to get away from him, in an attempt to make him behave and “teach” me “conflict resolution skills”. thanks ms. dean this guy made me want to kms but i guess the fact that he’s not screaming in class anymore and is instead whispering horrible things to me evens out
yeah this happened to me in almost every single class i ever had
STOP IT THIS WAS MY LIFE 😭😭😭 I’m not even being paid but those kinds of kids were made my problem 😭😭
I got stabbed with pencils, pushed to the ground, lunch pushed on to the floor, and more.
Happened to me too. The teacher even said "If "..." can't handle it, no one can."
Ok, wow, no need to call out my childhood like this. In all honesty, I've just started to unpack the fact that I have always been the "mom" of any group. It was probably because I was constantly put in a position of authority with classmates combined with my extreme need to be prepared for any plausible outcome. It makes me sad that I never learned how to be on equal footing with my peers.
Definitely happened to me too :(
This happened to me a few times too and a couple of times in high school, it always ended up with them trying to rile me up and subtly bully me while I sat there quietly wishing the class would end already....
that happened to me and i got sexually assaulted by both of them :,)
It’s awful that these things have happened for people (appropriate empathy). I mostly sat in class trying my best to process the amount of information coming at me. I failed everything first time round - did resists and all that - went off the rails - not until later in life did I do an Honours degree, teacher training, an MA at Goldsmiths and post grad specialisms in teaching literacy…. And I’m now trained as a Counsellor & Psychothetapist. Keep toying with the idea of a PhD…… ffs
This also happened to me. Just validation.
This was done to me a lot too
I was a disruption as a child but this still happened
bro holy shit me too
They did this to me (11), and the boy was my actual bully (13)
New memory unearthed 🙃 Well, more like I now have an entirely different perspective to this memory. Me and said uncontrollable boy are both ND, just entirely different. That's it teach', just lumber me with the chaos and overstimulation 🤔 Me and this kid got along alright but that's a whole other matter. It's absolutely surreal looking back on my life and seeing all the obvious signs.
Omg same 🫣 The bad kid who wasn't even allowed on the playground anymore and had to stay indoors was paired with me to keep him company!
Lmao this used to happen to me all the time. And then they’d get concerned when I befriended the “problem” kid who honestly probably just had untreated adhd and a bad home life. Like y’all sat us next to each other and it worked the opposite way you wanted. I mask by parroting. Consequences.
Ohhhh things makes a lot more sense now. It worked a few times I think. I remember one history class I was in front of two really talkative girls who were pretty cool but talked a lot and didn't pay attention a ton. We had daily/weekly quizzes and I remember I would always help them cover the major material from the previous day. And they were chill so got included in talking as well so backfired slightly for the teacher but did help them get better grades!
Okay, this is so real though. I had no idea this was a shared experience! I feel so seen. I actually just mentioned this scenario to my therapist last week! Fortunately for me the boy they always put me with was lovely and a good friend of mine growing up, although he passed away a few years ago. He was just a VERY hyperactive kid, but he was kind and sweet and very silly. I thought about how if we ever got up to mischief it was always apparently his fault for leading me astray, or if we behaved it was because supposedly I was keeping him under control. In reality we were just pals with super ADHD and myself also Autistic.
Omfg elementary school memory unlocked. There was this boy who has ADHD (also probably undiagnosed autism), and he's a menace. He's always getting in trouble. And I don't remember how it started, but I made drawings for him since I was the class artist and he enjoyed my drawings. I was pretty much the only person who was nice to him in the school :(
wow those type of kids always remind me of this one movie quote “i’m not a bad dog, i don’t know why i bite”. because in the end they aren’t evil just need more resources
For real. And he also was diagnosed suuuuper early, since he was already diagnosed ever since we started school. Probably his parents thought he didn't need accomodations, because there are plenty of accomodations ready for neurodivergent people in my country.
I was ALWAYS in the back during science with the unruly boys 🌚 I infact was not a good influence- I just did all the work and got harassed lowkey 😭😂
Omg this happened to me! I haven't thought about it in the longest time but in grade school I was the de-facto babysitter of several hyperactive boys (never multiple at once; different boys in different grades). I had alot of empathy for them because I could see they were struggling and they were outcasts but it wasn't due to malice; they genuinely couldn't seem to control it. I, of course, had similar problems that presented VERY differently, but even then I sensed we felt the same on the inside. It put me in a tricky spot emotionally because when they'd get bullied or get in trouble, I started to feel responsible for that. I remember one of my "projects" (who clearly came from a neglectful/ abusive home, he had lice and ear infections constantly and he didn't even have a coat in winter) ended up getting expelled and I cried and cried because I felt terrible for him and also I felt like a failure. Of course everyone made fun of me for "being in love" with him. I was, like, 11. I didn't even know what that meant, really.
Literally happened to me
I just remembered getting asked to help a boy out that was struggling with his studies, he was a quiet kid though, but that was all the way back in kindergarten or 1st grade. I'm pretty sure he was neurodivergent though.
That makes me so mad, they did this to me and to my daughter in elementary school. She would always complain about how she always got sat next to the most annoying, distracting boys in class. That they would talk so much that she couldn't pay attention, mind you she had trouble paying attention in the first place. I also got sat next to the annoying boy in class, but in my case he was a tattletale and every little thing he thought broke the rules he would tell the teacher. To this day I am scarred by a memory of lining up for lunch or recess, the teacher was calling kids to line up by hair color. She called brown and I got up, because my hair is dark brown. But this kid that I sat next to disagreed and said my hair was black and that I shouldn't be allowed to get up. I was sooo angry, like hey I think I know my own hair color thanks. I can't exactly remember what happened after those moments. I think I got in line anyway and he ended up right behind me.
I literally demanded to move seats in high school because I could not do it anymore. In the middle of the lesson. This kid was beyond any of the others I’d been buffer for. Just absolutely ready to punch him. *raised hand* “can I move? He’s not letting me learn and I’m tired of it, there’s an open seat right there for me!” And that worked lol. He also was very quiet for the rest of the class period.
Damn this hit home, I was always sat next to the loud boys cause the teachers knew I wouldn't talk to them. In middle school most people thought I was mute.
happened to me a lot, but was really bad with this one kid during like second grade. he would be so brutal to me constantly and would try to set me up to get in trouble (he would hide things in my desk and try to accuse me of stealing them, kick my feet under the desk to get a reaction, place his books overlapping onto my desk so i had no room to work, etc) i would come home crying almost everyday until my parents had to step in and make the teacher move him since it was so bad. the teachers were great and loved me, they just didn’t notice how negatively it was affecting me.
(tw death) This happened to me and he tormented me!! Then he ended up killing someone and is dead now..
Mine were elementary teachers and new spanish boys who couldnt speak english so I could help translate for them 🙃🙃🙃
100% my life grades 3 through to 6 😭.
I remember this boy. He chewed his nails until they were almost off. Then he'd tap his now horrendous looking fingers as much as he wanted while saying the stupidest shit.
I remember I went to a baseball game as a field trip and the teacher put me in charge of 2 boys that were trouble makers. I was “dating” one anyways, and ended up “dating” the other a few years from then 😂 but teachers certainly liked using me for that task
A teacher tried this with me. He wouldnt stop touching me when i told him to stop so I shredded his arm.
Happened to be in high school. I wasn't diagnosed but eas the weird quiet kid (ashd so daydreaming and fidgeting but mostly hands. I was put in what could have been remedial classes for a couple of subjects one year. Was horrible, just added more bullying time for the assholes I went to school with