Bullying and your child with Aspergers

In March 2007 in the UK moves were made to start putting pressure
on Tony Blair and the rest of government to start recognising
and helping autistic children in schools who are being bullied.
A number of parents have outlined that their children are being
bullied and that a lot of the time this is leading to different types
of "exclusion" for the autistic child. So as well as the trauma
and upset of being bullied - the chances are that the autistic child
is facing sanctions at the school as well. Ivan Corea, Chair of the
Autism Awareness Campaign who are leading the campaign said: ‘Bullying
of autistic children is going on in primary and secondary schools.
This must stop, some schools are punishing the autistic child
rather than the bully. We are asking the Secretary of State Alan
Johnson to keep specific data of incidents of bullying and exclusion of
autistic children and set up a mechanism where parents and
carers of children with autism can register incidents of bullying
because some autistic children with communication disorders may
not even be able to tell their teachers about the bullies. We need
real action on this and Lee Scott MP has already highlighted the
seriousness of this issue in his debate on autism in parliament.’
Lee Scott is due to meet with Tony Blair later in the year and
will discuss the very serious nature of autism and bullying then.

Bullying is an awful problem with any child but the needs of
a child on the autistic spectrum make this even worse. The lack of
understanding of social cues, difficulties in communicating the
problems to others, interests and hobbies that often seem a little
"goofy" and make the child an easy "target" - to name but a few.
So it is so important that this issue is taken seriously by the
government and then hopefully some kind of agenda for
change will filter down to teachers, classroom assistants,
domestic staff and everyone else in the schools. As we all know
the multi-sensory and often very hectic nature of schools can be
difficult enough for children with autism - so they can really do
without having to contend with the extra "attention" of playground
bullies.

Obviously as parents it is important to ensure that your child
has some kind of feedback loop to a trusted person so that any
signs of bullying can be picked up. Whether this is verbal, through
some kind of symbol or PECS board, or more creative like
"puppet talk" for youngsters, it needs to be crystal clear for the child
what is and what isn't acceptable - and then what they should do
about it. The simpler the better with this approach and I guess this is
easier for things like physical bullying - as the more subtle types
of verbal bullying can be more difficult to explain. But generally your
child's behaviors will be a key to something being not right and then
you have the ,often difficult, task of working out what is happening
from there. If you do have the ear of your child's teacher it is worth
raising this issue with them and finding out what mechanisms they
have in place for your child to communicate if they are being bullied.
There is a useful "bullying worksheet" that you can use to
look at the issues around bullying with your Aspergers child.
You can find it at http://autism.about.com/od/theautismcommunity/a/bullies_2.htm

So to briefly summarize this article; bullying is sadly something
that all parents with a child on the autistic spectrum need to
think about. This involves looking at different ways in which you
can monitor your child to check if something is going on so that
you can take action.

Copyright © 2007 Dave Angel