Friendship turned to bullying

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Sometime in the middle of last year, the kids that my son has been friends with since kindergarten have turned on him. I am not at all sure what specifically set it off, but more importantly, I'm not sure what to do to get these kids to leave him alone now.

He's telling me that they are spending recess teasing him, yesterday they made fun of his shoes (just a random thing) He told me he said "get away from me, you!" and then went and stood by the lunch supervisor, which is what we'd come up with last year, but he can't do that for an entire year. I told the social worker before he started school that this was an issue, and she said she'd look into it, but clearly she has not yet - last year she said something about the "natural consequences of his behavior," which, yes, I'm sure something happened - but none of us have any idea what he might have done to anger these kids. My son said he went to visit her and reported what happened.

We had been friends with the three families of the three boys who are engaging in this behavior. Two of the kids have siblings either on the spectrum or with spectrum-like issues. I've been going back and forth as to whether we talk to the parents to try to figure out what is going on, or whether that will make things worse. While it is very, very sad for my son to lose his three best friends, what I really want right now is for these kids to leave my son alone.

Has anyone had any success in addressing a bullying situation?

I assume this is primarily verbal bullying, which is tougher problem to solve, since schools are more reluctant to intervene in name calling. Is your son still attempting to engage in play with these boys, even now? If so, that may be what sets off the newest round of bullying. Not that sitting by yourself keeps bullies away -Trust me, it doesn't - but if he continually tries and tries again, then things will get worse and worse with these boys who've done everything possible to tell him they're not his friends. anymore.

In a battle of words, aspies tend to lose, especially when outnumbered. Talking to the boys parents might help, but the boys, including your son, CANNOT know that you initiated the talk, lest they dislike your son more for 'getting them in trouble'. Coaching a boy in comebacks and general self esteem sometimes helps, but when parents don't know the language that kids talk nowadays, it's hard to gauge just what's cool to say and what makes you sound even more like a geek.

We routinely tell kids "don't start fights," but when vicious name calling hurts like a fist, it's a hard thing to tell the difference. I hate to say this, but if a boy is known to never, ever get physical in the face of insults and mockery, he's seen as weak willed. Sometimes, if a boy shows that there's a point where enoughs enough, even if he's not particularly strong or mean, things get better. I'm not saying to say "Go ahead and punch them next time," just saying that "never throw the first punch" isn't always good advice.

My 8 yr old daughter has problems making and keeping friends. It is upsetting when they come home and tell you that so-and-so who had been their friend before is now being mean. With my daughter, she cannot see how her behavior is generating the results that she's getting so it's hard for her to understand why they treat her the way they do at times, which makes it all the more hurtful for her. She is also one who will not be mean to the other kids - she won't name call back, or be intentionally hateful towards them. She has a tendency to go out of her way to get them to like her and it makes it worse. Kids view her as an easy target because they know she won't fight back. She will tell the teacher on them - but that in itself brings more bullying towards her for being a "tattle teller".

I got the schools counselor involved who pulled aside one particular boy who was doing most of the bullying and who was the "leader" of a group of kids who were teasing her. Every time she came home telling me that he had done this, or said that, or encouraged the other kids to do and say things I would call the school counselor and report it. The little "ring leader", among doing many other things, had told the other kids that my daughter had a disease and if she touched them they would get it. The little boys parents were called a few times. The counselor had also counseled the little boy and my daughter separately and then together. Eventually, the little boy stopped and started telling the other kids that she did not have a disease and that he made it up. After that, things got better.

So maybe, if you can identify if there is a little "ring leader" who is encouraging the behavior from other students you could have the school counselor step in and pull him aside. Just keep on complaining until something is done.

*duplicate post removed*

Last edited by pennywisezzz on 31 Aug 2010, 12:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Luckily when I was 8, I was in special ed. You would think that would make kids bully me more and call me the "r-word" (partially true), but the benefits outweighed the costs. I had a very supportive teacher who would always try to protect me and give me the skills to deal with people I may not like very well. I was able to make a few friends in a controlled environment. At times, we bluntly said to each other "I don't want to be your friend anymore" because we may not have gotten after playing games and one of us lost, or we did not want to share crayons, etc. When I was really young, I had trouble keeping consistent friendships. We would always have times when we hated each other and even bullied each other, probably because we were all very black and white thinkers. Usually we regained our friendships after a few weeks when the teacher intervenes.

The US Dept of Ed has reported that 85 to 89% of the HFAs and Aspies who graduate high school, even if they earn a degree or advanced degree in college, are unable to find or keep meaningful employment. They lack the social, executive function and life skills necessary to succeed. The only way to learn to survive in the world is to learn to deal with it.



That kind of behavior is not unusual for Aspies and it is absolutely intolerable. The school is responsible for providing a safe environment. Period. Accepting 'bullying' as a rite of passage is crap. The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry notes that 50% of all kids are victims and 10% are regular targets of this unwanted attention. "Children who are bullied experience real suffering that can interfere with their social and emotional development, as well as their school performance. Some victims of bullying have even attempted suicide rather than continue to endure such harassment and punishment." In fact, it has lead to several suicides over the last few years, including four girls in the Schenectady, NY school district, last year.
http://www.aacap.org/galleries/FactsFor ... llying.pdf

Dennis Debbaudt, author of "Autism, Advocates and Law Enforcement Professionals: Recognizing and Reducing Risk Situations for People With Autism Spectrum Disorders" is the father of a young man on the spectrum and lectures police departments and others involved with autism on the legal issues involved when cops are required to deal with auties. He does not accept the use of the term 'bully' when it comes to the torment inflicted by the aggressors in school. He uses the word ASSAULT and points out that if the same actions took place between adults, it would be grounds for criminal charges.

The accepted procedure for dealing with a bully is to have your child tell you when it happens, but as they internalize what happened, many Aspies see it happening because of something they did wrong to 'deserve' it and are embarrassed. If there is a sudden change in their grades, demeanor or their desire/willingness to go to school, it may be because they are afraid to have to face further incidents.

The AACAP offers the following,

Ask your child what he or she thinks should be done. What’s already been tried? What
worked and what didn’t?
Seek help from your child’s teacher or the school guidance counselor. Most bullying
occurs on playgrounds, in lunchrooms, and bathrooms, on school buses or in
unsupervised halls.
Ask the school administrators to find out about programs other
schools and communities have used to help combat bullying, such as peer mediation,
conflict resolution, and anger management training, and increased adult supervision.
Don’t encourage your child to fight back. Instead, suggest that he or she try walking
away to avoid the bully, or that they seek help from a teacher, coach, or other adult.
Help your child practice what to say to the bully so he or she will be prepared the next
time.
Help your child practice being assertive. The simple act of insisting that the bully leave
him alone may have a surprising effect. Explain to your child that the bully’s true goal is
to get a response.
Encourage your child to be with friends when traveling back and forth from school,
during shopping trips, or on other outings. Bullies are less likely to pick on a child in a
group.

Some of those suggestions may work with NT kids, but Aspies lack the social skills to be able to convince their attacker that they are a poor target and, with their processing delays, the old idea of punching their nemesis in the nose to convince them to back will usually result in the Aspie getting his block knocked off, not to mention being suspended, arrested and/or expelled.

Once you determine that they are facing harassment, record everything about the incidents. Notify the teacher and the school Principal immediately and demand, NOT request, that they see that it is stopped. The notification should be CC'd to the Special Ed Director and the Superintendent and ALL communications MUST be sent Return Receipt Requested, so you have a record that it was received. They may institute programs to help combat bullying, such as peer mediation, conflict resolution, anger management training, and increased adult supervision, but the key is to insure that your child is protected from their tormentor(s). Request an Emergency CSE meeting to deal with the situation.

If the administration is unable or unwilling to comply, there are several avenues you can follow to get the needed relief. The CSE can order a change of placement to keep your child separate from the thug, but that means your child is the one who will e moved. If the repeated incidents cause the child to be afraid, anxious, depressed, physically ill, etc. you are within your rights to have them provide home school services (tutors) to keep them from falling behind and all other services included in the IEP.

Should the incidents continue after notifying the school, you can file a criminal complaint (assault, harassment, stalking) against the victimizer and ask the court for an Order of Protection to keep them away from your child. The 'bully' is often from an influential family that the administration is afraid of offending, so using the legal system can be the most effective tool in getting action.

You can bring the matter to the state Dept of Ed for resolution. They have the power to investigate and order changes to protect the victim. NYS DofEd has an Inspector General's office which is responsible for seeing that the schools follow the rules and do what is necessary for the students. Check your state's DoE web site.

The US Dept of Ed has the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), which makes sure that the rights of students in the protected classes (race, sex, disability, etc) are not violated.

The mission of the Office for Civil Rights is to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence throughout the nation through vigorous enforcement of civil rights.

We serve student populations facing discrimination and the advocates and institutions promoting systemic solutions to civil rights problems. An important responsibility is resolving complaints of discrimination. Agency-initiated cases, typically called compliance reviews, permit OCR to target resources on compliance problems that appear particularly acute. OCR also provides technical assistance to help institutions achieve voluntary compliance with the civil rights laws that OCR enforces. An important part of OCR's technical assistance is partnerships designed to develop creative approaches to preventing and addressing discrimination.
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/index.html

There is a complaint form on their website that can be used to get the ball rolling and they are more than willing. The DoJ announced that the discrimination cases fell off during the last ten years and they were charging OCR with pursuing the offenders aggressively. That's your invitation.

It is also possible to hire a lawyer and bring suit in court for damages the district's failure to act has caused, but you will be required to show how the victim was damaged. That should include medial reports, including psychiatric reports, particularly if it was necessary for the child to be removed from school. Your documentation of your efforts to get the school to intercede will be invaluable, as will the pictures you take of any bruises and injuries sustained in the attacks or damaged clothes and belongings, etc. Prevailing in court can provide funds for their future, but it does little to punish the offenders and adds to the financial burden on the other parents in the district. You will have to decide whether your child will be able to explain what happened to testify in court, too.

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Several researchers have found that Aspies brains function differently and the areas which control their developmental delays develop at 2/3 the rate of their NT peers. When the AS student is 3 yo, their functional age can be that of a 2 yo. The gap widens as they age. The 6 yo acts, thinks and behaves like a 4 yo, the 9 yo likes to play with 6 year olds, because that is where they are developmentally and so on. By the time they are supposed to be ready for adult life at 18, their brain is still functioning like that of a 12 yo in the skills which control their abilities in social, life and executive functioning.

In light of that, your son has done nothing to anger them. Boys tend to adopt a pack mentality, where there is a leader, his supporters, the rest of the group and the victims. The victim distinction is reserved for those kids who are slow or different from the rest. Aspies are definitely different and many have processing delays that make them slow. The leader is empowered by reigning over the victim; the supporters go along with the leader to keep from being seen as weak and the rest of the group is glad that they are not the targets and don't intervene out of fear that they will anger the leader.

As noted above, you have to place the responsibility for the continued bullying on the school and their failure to nip it in the bud. The staff must be trained to identify bullying and the bullies and stop them from attacking other students. The students can receive tolerance training, to understand others with handicaps and that they are not to be targets.



Many parents don't want to believe that their child is capable of wrongdoing, but trying to get the other parents on the same page now will be easier than if you take more drastic measures and they have to hear it from the school or the cops. Tell them that you have a problem that you need help with and ask how they would deal with it if it was happening to their child. Segue from there into how they would address it if their child was the bully which will lead into asking when they will get him to stop. It may cost you some friends, but if they are unwilling to get their kids to stop, so what?

Read up on the school's responsibilities and your rights at www.wrightslaw.com. The US Supreme Court has affirmed parents as full members of the CSE, with veto powers, so you can get the school to do what the laws demand of them, not abuse the kids they are supposed to be helping.

If you sue, establish a special Needs Trust for the funds, so the money will not interfere with his ability to receive SSI and Medicaid.

I hope this helps.

Good luck.

Thank you all for your kind and informative responses. In the meantime, I told my son this morning that if anybody teased him during recess, he was to go to the supervisor and ask to see the social worker RIGHT THEN. He seemed to be OK.

One issue is that my son is very high-functioning (diagnosis is PDD-NOS, there are many ways in which he's very Aspie, but not when it comes to aggression.) Most people, including kids, don't believe there is a problem - but, he becomes violent when overwhelmed and he doesn't respond well to social cues. (Physical altercations are problematic, kids have discovered he's very easy to set off, and will get the blame because he's slightly slower and doesn't de-escalate when an adult intervenes.) I am very proud of him for not escalating the situation this time. Last year, after the "natural consequences" situation, I felt that something was in the offing and warned the social worker...and my son wound up in a physical fight in the lunchroom where the other kid was so frightened he ran to call 911 (this brings up a number of issues that I'm still trying to figure out: the outline of our legal rights is extremely helpful - for instance, why on earth did a fight break out in a supervised lunchroom? Why did the other boy not go to the supervisor?)

Today he said that one boy (the follower) played with him nicely, while another boy played with a different group and the third (who is ringleading this particular situation) sat by himself and played with no one, so IMO today this situation worked out in the best way possible. He doesn't seem to want to play with the ringleader boy at all now though they had been best friends a year ago, but this morning he said he'd gone over to him, held out his hand and said "truce" and when the other boy didn't respond, he's decided to cut him off entirely - I'm sad, but OK with that.

It's so difficult to figure out as a parent when something is a situation he can't handle on his own and he needs intervention, and when it isn't!

My son went through something similar for about 8 months, starting last winter.

And, then, magically, it resolved itself.

I do think that, in the interest of having as many facts as possible, there is no reason you cannot ask the parents of those other boys for their account of what happened to rupture the friendship. You don't have to offer any judgment or defense; just say that you feel the need to know what their kids have said about it, in order to have as much information as possible to help your child.

In my case, the mother offered with my asking that she did not know what happened, but that since her son had done this before, she assumed it was "just him," and told me that she expected it would eventually resolve itself. We analyzed it best we could on our end, and eventually the other child seemed to decide he was tired of trying to fight.

Last edited by DW_a_mom on 03 Sep 2010, 3:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thank you, DW - that is very helpful. I think that is what we will do if this continues (I have the feeling that today was a respite, not a resolution, but I'm proud that my son seems to be handling it fairly well)

It doesn't sound that serious, but I do think you should make the school address it. Just keep calling until they address it.

I do not know your child, but, have you considered that he is interpreting the words from the other children incorrectly? My son would describe some jokes, which would be funny to others, as making fun of him or targeted at him directly when they are not. He does misinterpret tone and taking things literally. Just something to think about.

Thank you, bjtao - this is something I'm also very concerned about, not just what he hears (he described what was said, it seemed clear it was garden-variety hurtful teasing "your shoes aren't so cool, they're stupid" etc. - and it may well have started out friendly, but when he had to get an adult involved after telling them to stop, it clearly wasn't) but more that one of my son's deficits is he can't imagine how the things he says or the way he acts might seem hurtful and dismissive to other kids. Except for the outbursts and the OCD-like behavior, he's very, very good at hiding his disability, so he often appears rude (unresponsive to social cues) or bossy (perseverating) or guilty (avoiding eye contact.)

It is very hard to sort out this tangled mess of my own kid's issues, general kid social stuff, the other kids' stuff, etc.

Yeah, my son goes both ways - says stuff that he doesn't realize sounds mean and misinterprets what others say. Luckily what kids say to him doesn't seem to bother him at all.

Unfortunatly all of so called friend turned into bullies twoards the end. I was kept out of public school at the begining of fith grade and lost all contact with m 4th grade best friend but I bet she would have turned into a bully as well. I was agressive and would fight back though. Kids weren't very smart becaus they would still bully me even though they knew I would go for the kill.

Taking it out of context, I tend to think of that as peer pressure, not bullying. The discussion is about an object of choice, not the child or anything important to the child (unless the child had just tried to show off those same shoes as being super-duper-wonderful). Kids want their friends to conform to the vision of cool for the simple reason that they want their friends to reflect well on them. Very superficial, but things like shoes are within someone's control to change; tics and stims less so. I've told my son that part of social life is to conform to a few silly little things just to fit in better (as long as you aren't selling your soul in the process, of course; and he still thinks it's ridiculous).

When my son told me he was under pressure to get different shoes, I told him that the humoring the one friend didn't seem like a big deal to me and that I'd be happy to buy the "right" shoes, if we could figure out what those were (I was, after all, the one who had picked the not-so-cool shoes). My son wasn't interested in playing that conformity game, but I did make a mental note that maybe shopping the bargain basement just because my son didn't care might not be the best choice. Next time we simply started in a more upscale location and I let my son pick from there. While the new shoes still didn't make the grade of "fashion," his friend liked them enough to compliment them, and that was that.

My general attitude being, put as few targets on our kid's backs as possible. We don't buy fashion clothing, and my son has distinct reasons for wanting his shirts tucked in (very not fashionable), but we make a point of giving him a clean look that has some taste to it, even if he still thinks the whole thing is silly (he's allowed his opinion).

I think kids need to learn that disctinction so that they know what to report, and what to just get over. It is far too easy for that sort of thing to escalate with a child who doesn't see the difference, and I don't feel such escalation is necessary. If I'm breaking down a situation with my son and we come to something like, we talk about it further, how maybe HE could ease up on his choices, instead of blaming the other kids for not universally accepting all of his choices. Life is full of give and take, and most of the kids who have brought up some of these things give him a lot in other ways.

Sigh. I feel the pain here too. My son has gone through many friends over the years. He's 12 and an Aspergers kid. He would often find a kid to talk to, and then refer to that kid as his best friend. He then crowds in and smothers the other kid to the point where they pull away, ultimately not wanting to be friends with my son anymore.

My son can be bossy and say things that he does not interpret as unkind. I've tried many different tactics to explain to him that he needs to back off, allow personal space, make playtime equal between kids and let friendships evolve slowly. Whenever I try to counsel him on his sometimes abrasive behavior, he gives me the "yeah, ok" with the rolled eyes. It's as if he feels so superior that he doesn't listen to me, especially when I know that what I am saying is right, and am trying to help him. He gets so excited when he has a new friend that he goes overboard and ends up alienating himself and the kid.

He started a new school in a new district yesterday and came home off the bus saying, "I made two new friends today!". To most parents, this is music. To me, it's another ride on the rollercoaster.

I am hoping, praying that he will have a good experience in this school. In his old school (where he was since kindergarten with most of the same kids over the years), he was an outcast, thought of as "weird" and basically had no friends. His eccentricity and overbearing personality (which is just his way of showing excitement at the prospect of friends) had labeled him to the point where he just couldn't win. It's so sad and it breaks my heart.

I've been trying to find a parent group in my area with kids who are AS as well.

Well, after a week of school things seem to have changed enough that he seems happy and isn't reporting any more incidents.

This stuff is tough - we are never sure when it is "normal" stupid elementary-school-boy stuff, and when it's because of his disability. I don't know what to do about it in either case, other than demanding better supervision on the playground.) Frankly, I'm still not sure what happened, (awfully odd that he got picked on on the FIRST day, usually that stuff has to build in momentum) and I'm keeping an eye on it and all my fingers and toes crossed.