Thanks everyone for the discussion. It is both comforting to hear that other people have experienced and dealt with bullying, and simultaneously rather depressing to hear how pervasive it is.
I haven't learned how to reply by quoting other posts yet, but Neato, your sentence below really hit the spot!
"In theory I prefer to take the high road everytime. In reality; have you ever hiked down that road? Holy cow, you can go for miles and days without every seeing another living soul."
I think I going to have to print that out and paste it over my computer. LOL!
Lorel: We are currently trying to remodel our basement ourselves, and have sunk some money into our current location. Otherwise I would move in a heartbeat. I still keep one eye on the real estate ads, though. I just can't see us putting our house on the market with half-built walls and dangling electrical outlets. (grin). But we may consider it in the future. It is a shame since I really love this house. My evil side has considered printing out some wonderfully enticing ads for houses for sale in our neighborhood and sticking them in my neighbor's mailbox, though!
Austin: Could you give me more info on some of these classes? I have been reluctant to go the Tae Kwon Do type route for fear of encouraging my DS8 to take matters physically. But I like your mention of the "uselessness of violence". Could you explain MMA?
We just started taking our DS8 to counselor who specializes in gifted kids. He really loves it and asks constantly when we are going back. (He even invited her over to dinner so that afterwards he could show her his lego creations!) She got him to start talking to her by building a lego creation for her. He built a "protector" for her. So he is definitely internalizing some of these problems. Her advice, so far (after two sessions), is to find other kids to play with away from this group... parks, pool, camps. So we will try that for a while. We are also reading a couple of kid's books that deal with the subject... "Speak Up and Get Along" by Scott Cooper and "Bullies are a Pain in the Brain" by Trevor Romain.
