To think the school should be doing more to help dd

[AFOLNerd]

I have posted about this before but unfortunately it’s started again.

Dd 12 has a deformity on her hands and feet. There is some little shits at her school who are making her life miserable by keeping on commenting on them. From “what the fuck is wrong with your feet?”
To encouraging other kids to “go and look at her fucked up hands.” And various other comments along the same lines.

The ringleader has been spoken to 3 times about how upsetting this is for dd and that it has to stop. He hasn’t stopped so as far as I am concerned this is now bullying as he knows it is upsetting her.

I have a meeting at the school this afternoon with the person in charge of discipline in school to discuss how they are going to help her.

What can i reasonably expect them to do?

For context her brother in year 10 and his best mate both got isolation for a full day for sending offensive messages to each other over the school computers. As even though it was mutual insults, sending those messages came under their bullying policy. Yet this ring leader just gets told to pack it in!

She has a month to go until she sees the genetic specialist again and the most likely outcome is to they have to start puberty artificially and that she won’t be able to have children. So the poor girl has enough to deal with without these boys.

As PPs have said, this crosses from “just” bullying into being a hate crime as they are targeting your DD due to her disability - as per the helpful Home Office Advert about hate crimes. Disability-related hate crime in England & Wales rose by a third last year & it is really important people report it. Because for some reason [casual] ableism is not only alarmingly widespread it often goes unchallenged. (And no I can’t provide a handy link for that, just my experience, that of many friends, & that discussed all across social media. The plural of anecdote isn’t data, but let’s not forget the UN think the UK government systematically violates the rights of disabled people, so it can’t be a shocker that certain sections of the population think we’re fair game.)

But yes, the school should already have done much more. Maybe see if pointing out the whole hate crime thing puts a rocket up them. TBH the student in question ought to know for their own benefit because if they do that in public & get reported it won’t be detention that’s the outcome. It’s really irresponsible of schools not to deal with stuff like this seriously for the sake of the perpetrator as well as for the student they’re targeting because - as horrendous as it obviously is for your DD & please don’t mistake where my sympathy lies! - they’re setting children & young people up for far worse consequences than necessary & risking exposing more people to harm. Is even worse they’re not following their own policy...grr...

Really hope things improve for your DD soon.