Start over - Bullies

[mom2asd]

Ok let's start this thread over then...

What can we do to protect our kids?

How can we teach our kids to defend themselves?

How can we teach our kids how to recognize when people are verbally abusing the?

How can we prevent these things from happening?

My child as of right now wouldn't understand, not sure how he would be when he gets older.

i can only give my experience of what we have done with DS and he has Aspergers.

We have used Social Stories and me and DH have even "acted out" scenarios to show him how his friends are acting is wrong and we,ve tried to turn it around to say things like "if someone did this to dd how would you feel"?

And, we dont let him go anywhere unsupervised, even around the corner to my mums one of us watches him or walks with him and my parents do the same, its really sad that a 10 year old boy cant walk round the corner to his grandma,s when a lot of 10 year old boys take themselves to school/are at home on their own due to parents working.

But thats the way it is.

HTH

ds is 9
Unfortunately he has had quite a bit of experience of bullying already... ( 1 teacher and a few kids over the years ) He's learnt a tiny bit about guarding himself against it
We talk about the kids and teacher a lot. We talk about why they would do it... and about feelings etc. He can be quite insightful into the nature of bullies...but ultimately because of the way he is and his complete inability to see himself from anothers viewpoint, he is so very vunerable.
I shall watch this thread with interest Mom2asd...thanks for starting it.

I really don't have all the answers and all our children are so different and with different needs. I know a lot of what I post isn't possible for some kids and iknow if a cruel spiteful kids decides our children will be his or her target nothing any of us say or do will stop that initially, but ...:

What can we do to protect our kids?

At school we need to speak to teachers, keep friendly with them and with the parents of the other kids. Make sure our children are confident and you invite kids over to play so that he or she has a good support network at school.

How can we teach our kids to defend themselves?

Just try and make them confident children. As they get older encorage them to take up a sport so they are fit and healthy. Teach them to run fast and who to run to.

How can we teach our kids how to recognize when people are verbally abusing the?

I don't know but when they feel uncomfortable we should teach them to remove themselves. Hope that that support network is never far away.

How can we prevent these things from happening?

I don't think we can really. We have to let them be independent and to let them go. We can't keep them in cotton wool. We just have to do our best to help make them into strong, popular, children with good friends.

It's a scary and cruel world.

my question is always going to be. How do you educate people. to stop children doing it in the first place.

2shoes I think that people are being educated all the time. I think that society?s attitude to disability has changed drastically even in the past 10 years. And the more people with sn are integrated into society, the more people will be educated into realizing that people with sn are just as entitled to be treated with dignity/respect as those without.

However, with this integration comes inclusive education, and by putting children who have special needs into mainstream schools, they are inadvertently more exposed to bullying than they would have been in the days when sn children went to special schools. Is it ok? No it isn?t, but it?s a sad fact that children will always pick up on a weakness, and will exploit that weakness. The redhead, the kid with thick glasses who?s considered the geek, the one with a big nose/sticking out ears, or the one with sn.

How can we protect them? Well in a lot of instances we can protect them by sending them to special schools where they won?t be exposed to this kind of treatment, but by doing that we are failing to educate the population that this kind of treatment is wrong.

By including children in mainstream schools, we are educating people, but it?s a slow process, and in the meantime children are being hurt.

I don?t think you will ever totally eradicate bullying of children with sn, purely because bullying is something that goes on in all walks of life, but I do think that with time, and inclusion, awareness will increase, and with that increased awareness will come increased acceptance.

mon2asd I have said this on other threads, but just so you know I'm not ignoring the thread. I can't really have an opinion on this on the way you want because my son will never be bullied because of the school he is at.

I do think that the bullying that goes on raises questions about inclusion. At the moment with inclusion taking place in settings where it is common for staff to have no understanding of autism bullying appears to have free reign. It appears to be very common for children to wind up their classmate with AS/HFA until they hit out then for the child with autism to take the blame for example. A bit of autism awareness could allow staff to intervene apppropriately.

wannaBeWhateverIWannaBe I think you have hit the nail on the head about weaknesses. I know that is what happens with ds. and he is nt. They know his weakness is dd. so calling him a spaz/retard will get a reaction.
Jimjams, DD will never suffer bulling like this either. as she is in an sn school. ds has told me about a couple of children in his ms school who have autism and are targeted. It is horrid.

Agreed 2shoes. But it is very diffocult to tackle as its right in the children's area of vulnerability. One big problem is that the children are often seen by staff as "bringing it on themselves"- oh how much awareness is needed.

I watched a couple of the youtube videos and was shocked to see a teacher in one turning a blind eye to what was happening.

It might help if teachers had a better understanding of the SNs they meet in MS.

Ive met teachers who thought that ADHD=naughty (actually said that to me!) and who thought I ws going to cure children of whatever.

Im involved with a group of health and education professionals trying to set up training for local schools on dyspraxia and related conditions. We spent nearly 5 years trying to get funding, gave that up and did it anyway.

had to cancel the sessions due to lack of response from schools. Only 5 wanted to come, and they were all schools that were known to have good practice anyway.

How sad is that?

If teachers in MS schools had a better understanding and had significant training to help children with SN's, then we might be a little bit there with regards to helping to stop this type of bullying. I have no answers to the OP question, I wish I did, as already my ds is experiencing children who find much enjoyment tormenting him, he reacts so strongly that they find it highly amusing, and they're all only 6-7 years, and the video (sorry to bring it up!) showed college children who were 10 years older! The most worrying part was that in a couple of videos there appeared to be a teacher present, who did absolutley sod all!!

if you do a check onm y name you will see that i am having this exact battle right now.
my son is 6 and is being bullied, the school inform me of incidents in such a way as to say "isn't it great that he doesn't retaliate"

When i confront them about the fact that this is bullying and that actually, my son is becoming ncreasingly aware of the fact that his peers are being mean to him, im told "well i'll keep an eye out" he's meant to have full time 1:1 support!

I quite frankly have no idea what i can do to protect him other than keep him at home all day and therefore prevent the amazing progress he is making with social interactions.

I like to think i agree with inclusion in genreal but before it can work society's views need to change....unfortunatly i also inderstand that for society to change we need to educate the children in the hopes that they and fuiture generations will grow up with an understanding of disability.
Sadly that means that in order for future disabled children my son needs to be put through the "experiment" that is our curretn inclusion provision.

how can you explain to a 6 year old in floods of tears because a child at school keeps throwing carrots at him and calling him piggy, that its pk because he is making it better for future generations?

I can only pray that within the school environment my DD the other pupils who will have known her since she was 5 will be there to protect her if someone coming up through the school or someone decides they are going to target her suddenly. It would be nice to think that because it's a catholic school the children will all be God-fearing good catholic kids, but I?m not that naive!

When she gets to high school age we'll be sending her to a school more suited to her needs, and who's to say she might not get picked on my someone else with special needs there? I'll have to cross that bridsge when I come to it. All I can do in the meantime is teach her to be a good person, a good, strong, confident person.

But bullying doesn't only take place in schools. She may choose to live semi-independantly later in life, someone else in the home may bully her, she may get a job, another employee could bully her.

There's nothing I can do about that now other than what I'm already doing, slowly, one by one as I meet people educating them about Charlotte and her particular needs etc. By doing interviews about having a child with DS and teaching lottie right from wrong.

If anyone has any better ideas I'd be happy to hear them.

I think there have been some steps in the right direction but there's still a long way to go. I think the attitudes towards bullying in general is slowly changing. People are gradually moving away from the "Well I had to put up with it at school so why shouldn't you?" attitude. It's also a good thing that schools now have anti-bullying policies but these aren't foolproof and they are not always followed. I've mentioned on here before that there doesn't seem to be any communication between lunchtime supervisors and class teachers. Ds1 had several incidents happen in the space of one week. Each time he had told a dinner lady. There was another incident in the classroom when a child took something that belonged to ds1 and hid it, knowing that he would be upset. Fortunately another child witnessed this and told the teacher. The teacher dealt with it appropriately but as far as she was aware it was a one-off incident. It was only when I told her about the playground stuff that she discovered that this was just the latest in a series of events. If she'd known about it earlier she could have nipped it in the bud sooner.

The class had lots of discussinons during Anti-Bullying Week where they talked about what constituted bullying. Ds1 found it very helpful. Perhaps it would be a good idea for children with SN to be given similar information in whichever form they best learn with, eg social stories, symbols etc?

MamazonAKAfatty I do agree with you (and so sorry to hear ds is till having to put up with this crap)
Inclusion is a great Idea IF the backup is there and sadly it is not.
I from a more personal opion would like to see more links between ms and sn secondry schools. Ds had no trouble at primary, It was a small school and all his peers had known dd for ever. But the moment he moved to secondry the problems started. He maybe be nt so not really what is being talked about here. But he has to put up day in day out with being called a spaz(because they know his weekness) with his sister being called a spaz/retard.
How ever much I complain to the school nothing gets better.

DS1 is 7 and ahs been badly bullied (at school but was also attacked in disabled toilets at the pool a few weeks back).

The problem is complex really. DS1 doesnt always understand an interaction- so if he taunts a child, then that child taunts him back, to DS1 it is bullying. Soworking on his social interactions is HUGE. That beig said, he ahs received some nasty stuf fin the apst and we are always up the school complaining.

To me, the solution ivolves everyone. The kids have to be educated as to what disability is, the disabled kids ahve to be educated how to avoid the situations in the future, the staff have to be educated how to handle comnplaints (for example, takeing them seriously) and also have to make themseves available.

DS2 wouldnt understand a jot of this, which is why I fear for him.