

Kids & Social Rejection: Why Kids Get Bullied and Rejected - cwan
http://www.livescience.com/culture/children-social-rejection-100202.html

======
solson
I mostly disagree with this based on my own observations. I don't know what
age group they are talking about here, but I have a 5 and 7 yo. My 7 yo has
problems with some of the boys in the neighborhood. They gang up and beat on
him sometimes. It isn't because he doesn't understand social skills and he
doesn't share. None of them share. They're all selfish. They're seven! If I
were to judge, I'd say my son has the best social and verbal skills of all of
them, but I'm probably biased. One of the boys that does most of the bullying
can barely speak and has the worst social skills of all of them. The reason
they pick on him is because he doesn't like to play sports with them and he
isn't very good at sports. He also doesn't care to smash each other in the
face with sticks. He'd rather play imaginary games outside or computer games
inside or program the computer in MIT's Scratch IDE. The reason they isolate
him is because he's different and there aren't any other kids like him the
neighborhood. If there were 10 other 7-yo computer geeks in the neighborhood
and one kid who liked football. The kid who liked football would be bullied
and rejected. It's a numbers game.

~~~
asolove
There are two different phenomena here, one they studied and one you've
observed.

There are intelligent but different people who experience some social
rejection but have their own interests and eventually come around to being
accepted after puberty when they are obviously more intellectually and
emotionally stable than the formerly "cool" people. That is probably the
majority of readers of HN and their kids.

What this study is talking about is social rejection among kids who are not
that intelligent or self-driven. In school, you may remember one person who,
though not "geeky," did seem slightly off. Kids jump on this quickly, lacking
any absolute ideas about behavior and only knowing what they are used to.

For geeks, this rejection can become a strong drive and badge of honor among
ourselves. But for "normal" kids who just happen to be out of sync with their
peers, and have nothing else to define themselves in terms of, it is a big
problem.

