Ok, just a question, have any of you been bullied because of your diabetes? Derogatory comments, being excluded, etc.?
I have a "friend" who tells me, when ever I say anything about my diabetes "Shut up no one cares about your diabetes" or will tell me "your not low/high you just don't want to do it" when I am.
I've gone to people at my school about it, and not much has been done. Any suggestions?
I don't recall being bullied about it. I was dx'ed towards the end of high school, sort of post-bullying by that point in time and was more likely to be bullied for being into new wave/ punk rock than diabetes. Then off to college and all of that crap went away. I don't recall saying "I won't because I'm [low/high] though.". If it's something I want to do, I won't let that stand in my way. I don't talk about it with too many people either though, except here.
wow, that is harsh! sounds like you just need to blank this person.
i got this as an adult, but teach school age kids. one of my 6th graders last year got it the year before and his whole class is with him on it, a blessing.
count on karma, ignore the idiot. have you got other friends that deal with it better, that you can talk to about it, that are with you on it? on being exclude, take a proactive stance, plan the stuff you want to do, invite who you want to invite to do things with.
sorry youre having such a hard time.
Yes, I have been there. I don't know how old you are, but I can assure you that this kind of stuff largely stops once you leave high school and enter the adult world. Don't get me wrong - adults can also say some pretty insensitive/stupid things, but it happens less frequently. AND, we get better at handling those situations as we become older.
My advice would be to just tell the person who says these things, "Well, you don't live in my body, so you can't really understand what I go through." Maybe even show them BG readings when you're high or low to help them understand that highs and lows are REAL and have REAL effects on how you feel. Or you could just find some new friends because this person does NOT sound like a friend.
That all said, I promise that things do get better (in many ways) once you leave high school. The world becomes a much different place and you have greater freedom to chose who you associate with.
I remember kids (mostly JR High) telling me I used my "lows" to get out of class, but I have NEVER had a friend that didn't understand or bullied me because I am diabetic, but then I again only my close friends even knew I had diabetes.
Sorry your so called friend is being hateful but keep your head up and move on to bigger and better!! ;)
This is going to sound really bad. As in, I'm surprised I didn't get expelled for this... People tried to bully me, but I was aware that I was allowed to carry needles and other people weren't. Since you already know that the school isn't going to do anything about it, I would often politely "remind" people that I had them.
I really only used that on people who knew me enough to know that I wouldn't actually poke them with a needle. For other people, a well placed F bomb often did the trick.
Again, I know this is terrible advice, but that is what I did in middle and high school and it stopped the bullying.
I think that girl social dynamics work differently than boy dynamics. We went to a meeting last night, kids and parents, mostly from a different school. There was a group of girls who were clearly *together* who, at the end, asked about 10 nearly similar questions "will we be allowed to stay/ eat/ spend time together and I asked junior sotto voce "would your friends ask the same question over and over?" to which she replied, not so sotto, "no, we're not that stupid" which made me laugh out loud, although I think some parents may have been alarmed at her bluntness.
We get reports about girls who get off the bus and fall "out" of the "in crowd" and I always feel sort of badly, like from their side it may amount to some sort of bullying type of allegations which would be dismissible by the perpetrators as "stupid"
Hi Adriana,
After listening to your story, I think the best thing you could do is try to educate other kids about what it's like to live with type 1 diabetes. They are probably criticizing you because they don't know anything about the disease. You'll find a lot of people in the world don't. A lot of people don't know the difference between Type 1 and Type 2, and they don't understand why some people have to take pills for it, while others need to inject themselves with insulin. You could turn this negative situation into a positive one.
Good luck with everything!
hahaha! excellent, timmymac