Actually, according to family members (and Elon as well) he was bullied rather savagely in school:
In 2012, his mother, Maye Musk told Esquire magazine writer Tom Junod that Elon was "the youngest and smallest guy in his school" and that he was picked on all the time.
Musk's brother, Kimbal, says "Kids gave Elon a very hard time."
""It's pretty rough in South Africa," he says. "If you're getting bullied, you still have to go to school. You just have to get up in the morning and go. He hated it so much."
Musk's first wife, Justine, says "I don't think people understand how tough he had it growing up. He was a really lonely kid."
Even these descriptions from family members are probably whitewashing it very significantly: Elon was likely regularly abused by other kids in school, both physically (beaten) and emotionally (bullied, ridiculed, excluded) - on a
daily basis. Parents and even teachers are rarely aware of the precise details of bullying, and Kimbal was a year younger and as the elder brother Elon very likely hid the details from him as well.
Elon went through ~10 years of hell in school and escaped to science and computers - and was still understandably lonely. This marred him for life and explains many of his 'awkward' interactions with others and the insecure body language. He doesn't have the self-confidence of a kid grown up in physical and emotional security.
This experience also made him stronger in many regards - but that's more like an unintentional side effect, an accident of life.
Advice to parents: PLEASE don't rush your kids to primary school, ESPECIALLY if they are talented. Enroll them 1 year later than the other kids - they'll benefit from that ~1 year head-start for a lifetime. That's one of the reasons why Finland has such high education scores in international comparisons: kids start primary school when they are 7 years old. In most other advanced economies it's done at 6 years.
