what to tell your kid when they get physicaly bullied

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Hi there,
Just wondering what other parents do when their ASD child gets physicaly bullied at school or in playground. They are told not to hit back, or they get in trouble.

What happened yesterday was that my son was playing a game with his friend at the end of year class picinic, at the local park. the friend he was playing with went to the swing, so my son was playing on his own at that point.
Then 2 boys in his class came along, one held his arms behind his back while the other one kicked him. My son tried to get away, but couldn't. After the boys had kicked him, they went away. My son did nothing, didn't yell, didn't fight back, nothing.
I am getting sick of this happening to him. I know he is a target, and always will be because he is different.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to handle this? what to tell him to do?
If I wasn't there I doubt I would have found out about it. My son doesn't talk about things that happen to him like that untill much later on, like sometimes days or weeks later, then it comes out in the form of a melt down.......
Any ideas would be great.
Thanks.

What we finally did with my son that worked was have him walk over to the recess supervisor and say in a loud voice - to the other kids, NOT the adult - PLEASE STOP DOING THAT. I DON'T LIKE IT WHEN YOU DO THAT. (If appropriate, add things like THAT HURTS!) Kids who bully are unlikely to do so right in front of an adult whose attention has been drawn to them.

He may get mad at this suggestion (mine did) but I would suggest you practice this at home; three steps - find the adult, stand nearby (depending on your kid 'nearby' can take some tweaking) and loudly ask the bullies to stop and why. Practicing will mean it will take less time for him to put this plan into effect.

Second, go to the school and detail exactly what happened and how. Ask that someone observe him during free periods and passing periods and find out what is going on. Schools are supposed to keep your child safe: require a plan. One other poster mentioned that bullying and the bullying plan can be a part of a child's IEP (this does NOT give the school license to blame the victim, either.)

There are people that will actually advise you to have your child hit back - as the mother of a child who does, I DO NOT recommend this idea. My son came up with this idea on his own - unfortunately, he had an extremely difficult time discerning when kids were actually bullying him and when they just tripped and bumped into him, for instance - and would often hit innocent kids as a result. He now has to struggle against a reputation for being violent at school.

Does your son have any friends? (e.g. Girls?) My son had a group of what I now call "social workers" who were quite concerned for his well-being and if they'd been aware other kids were targeting him, they would have gone to a teacher on his behalf.

I am with your son on this one. I had the same difficulty so I did the opposite of your son which was I did nothing.

For bullying at school, I would put the school district on notice that if they don't use appropriate measures to put an end to the bullying, to expect a lawsuit.

One time in high school, another student who had never bothered me before shoved me in the hallway. I turned around swinging and we got into quite a fight there. I later found out that someone had shoved him into me -- I got in a fight with the wrong person.

Another time someone kicked me. I turned around and saw a common bully behind me who was a couple years older and much bigger. I lit into him as hard as I could (and got the crap beat out of me again). That time it turned out to be the bully's younger brother who kicked me. It's probably just as well I didn't get into a fight with the younger brother because the older brother would have jumped in and I would have had to fight both of them at the same time.

I am enough Aspie myself to understand how difficult it is to navigate the intentions of things that happen outside of my particular frame of reference that day. I'm pretty good when I can look somebody in the face, but once they are in my peripheral vision, my ability to watch their body language is zero.

The answer to this deficit is the same as if you were actually blind: ask for help.

When I have kids, they will know self defense and they will know there is no shame in self defense.

They will be taught never, ever to start a fight, but that if your attacked you have the green light to finish the fight.

I second the self defense idea. My son has taken Karate only for 6 months but has used it appropriately. Sad that he needed to. Some aspies won't use it when needed so we lectured him that he was allowed to when needed. The instructors make it very clear that you only use it for self defense. My son attends classes 3 days per week so the moves become second nature. So when he is in a bind, it is just natural to defend himself. Now I think my NT daughter should start classes. I highly recommend it.

My son is a target in the neighborhood even though I've become friends with the parents. My son was wrestling on a trampoline and "won" over a boy who thinks he's far more athletic. The boy went ballistic punching and biting so my son pinned him down. We haven't seen the boy since.

Sign up for karate. They can teach him how to defend himself without using any more force than is appropriate to the situation.

We are actually taking a Tai Chi class taught by a martial arts instructor. While we're doing it primarily for the proprioperceptive and exercise benefits, it is actually a martial art - but the good thing is that it is slow, thoughtful, and nigh on impossible to use in any way other than defense.

DS has moved past this issue, but I am glad he has tools to disarm or dodge a potential attacker.

I understand what all of you are saying about self-defense, and with NT kids or Aspies who can understand the difference between an attack and an accident, I'm with you. However, for the kids that can't - self-defense techniques may make things worse. They need other tools.

Using violence (or self-defence) to respond to bullies was a double edged sword when I was a kid. I was bullied for several years then learned to fight back around the age of 10. That stopped the bullies of my own age, but unfortunately it attracted the older kids because I got a reputation as a kid who could handle himself. Schools (back in my day) had a rather brutal pecking order in terms of which kids could beat other kids in a fight. I spent the rest of my school years in fist fights with kids older than me who tried to bully me or simply wanted to improve their position in the pecking order. Personally I wanted non of it; I was more interested in my studies than some macho pecking order - but by using violence to defend myself it simply attracted violence from different people.

It wasn't until I left that school at age 16 and went to a further education college many miles away amongst people who didn't know me that the violent heritage was left behind.

Don't know what I could have done different though in retrospect. Anyone being a "snitch" simply attracted more bullying, so "telling teacher" was never a viable alternative. Similarly "turning the other cheek" just attracted more abuse.

I don't know how old your child is but I think it is really important to teach them to ask for help. This applies not only to playground situations where they are being physically assaulted but in other areas too. This is one of the biggest problems my DS has. The school has made a point of introducing him to all the playground attendants and making sure he can spot an adult on the playground when he needs help. I agree with momsparky in the idea of teaching him to try to get near an adult and to protest loudly. As some others have posted, self-defense can back fire in myriad ways. For one, chances are that an adult is more likely to see your child lashing out in self-defense and, having missed the other child's initial aggression, your child is the one who is going to get disciplined. Make no mistake, they are not going to take your child's word for it that the other kid started it. In part because the NT agressors are more likely to be able to communicate coherently in the aftermath of such a situation. I know my DS is typically incoherent in these situations because he is too emotionally overwhelmed to communicate what happened to him.

And, Tallyman has another very valid point, violence just begets violence. Encourage him to stay with a buddy or near an adult.

We came up with the idea because DS was at least socially savvy enough to know a) that snitching is bad, and b) that he might possibly be misconstruing a situation.

Plus, as a barometer for the parent, if a child is in a supervised situation saying loudly "STOP THAT, I DON'T LIKE IT!" and the supervising adults do nothing, they have some explaining to do.

At DS's current middle school (the school of my dreams thus far) the playground supervisor actually introduced himself to me when I was there doing an afterschool project and DS and a buddy were running around (he was checking to make sure they were supervised!)
I mentioned that DS might need extra supervision during recess and have heard not one complaint from either DS or the school.

I am pretty sure this guy is doing the supervisory response to what I taught DS to do - just making sure he's nearby and visible. He rocks.

I was bullied in school and didn't learn to fight back until I was in about 9th grade, so it didn't stop until then. Of course nowdays we have the zero tolerance for hitting in schools so if you tell your kid to hit back, they will get suspended as well as the one who started it. My advice is to tell them to hit back anyway and support them when the suspension happens. Tell the school that if they want it to stop, they need to stop the ones who start it. Take it to the media if you have to. Fighting back shouldn't be punished as long as it's not overkill.

Look into what karate or other martial arts is and what it isn't. It isn't hitting back. It's often using the force of what's coming at you and redirecting it or getting out from under it. It's not hitting the guy, it's stopping the guy so you don't get hurt. I'm probably not describing it well but I would highly recommend the OP looking in to it. Your son was assulted and the school didn't even notice. That's just terrible.

That is just going to give the bigger bullies more fun... it will become a "game" trying to hit you successfully. Especially if they know you aren't going to hit them back.