My son is being bullied :(

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My son told me to day that he only feels safe at home. So I asked him if he was being bullied and he said he didn't know. He didn't know if the kid was bullying him, or if he was misperceiving his intentions.

So, I got the kids' names (there are 3 with one ring leader) and found out if anyone else was being bullied and he told me two of his friends. I know one of the kid's parents (who is being bullied, not the bully), so I called them to ask if there son has ever mentioned this bully kid before. They said no and went and got their son and put me on speaker and I explained what my son said and he said it is all true, the way my son said, and that he is not misperceiving anything. His friend said that it is not physical bullying, although he has seen this kid hit another kid before. I am concerned because my son said he wanted to hit this bully kid to protect his friend. My son is TOTALLY NOT a violent kid. I don't even remember him hitting anyone when he was a toddler. I am so worried that he will hit this kid and somehow get in trouble for it.

I cannot go to the school tomorrow morning because of work, but my son's friend's dad is going right away. They have dealt with bullying before in another school district, so he is not going to stand it again. I am going to call and relay what my son told me.

Can anyone share with me any words of advice regarding what I can do to make sure that if my son hauls off and hits this kid that he can't get in trouble for it? He will be devastated and I don't want him to get into trouble, but to be completely honest, if he hit a bully to protect his friend (who is a very small kid, btw), I'd have to say that I wouldn't be at all mad about it. I don't believe in violence to solve problems, but I also don't believe in just letting other people bully you and I don't believe in standing by and watching your friend be abused and not doing anything about it.

My thoughts are really jumbled right now.

How do you think the school will react? How have they responded to concerns in the past?

If you have a decent relationship with the school, I'd simply email them your concerns: your child has apparently been bullied openly for some time, you found this out when you followed up on his report with other children who corroborated him, he told you that he was deeply worried about his friend and you are concerned that he feels unsafe and that he feels he needs to protect himself and his friend.

You've then framed whatever he does in terms of him protecting himself. Make sure you use the word "bullied" and that you describe what your son reported as specifically as you can.

Thank you.

The school has a strong anti-bullying program and when I spoke with his friend's dad, he felt confident the school would take it seriously and handle it appropriately once informed. They have communicated with the school about bullying before and they (the parents) said they have been happy with the response.

I always wonder...what would this kid's parents say if they knew? Would they be mortified and start working intensely with their kid? Or would they brush it off or blame the victims? Or would they beat the kid? I am fearful it is often the third response because I feel like maybe the kid learned the behavior at home. Then I start to feel nervous that the report will cause the kid to be beaten. Is it normal to have these concerns?

I think it's normal to have these concerns - but in my own experience, most of the bully kids are just kids working out social hierarchy issues (you weren't specific, so I don't know exactly what we're talking about) and not really abused kids taking their abuse out on others. Our kids are walking targets for those kinds of pecking order situations, because they totally don't get the concept.

Is your school using the PBIS system? http://www.pbis.org/ Our district does, and it seems to be working well. It's data-driven, but also the way the program works is to talk to kids rather than get them in trouble. When DS was being bullied, I don't think the parents were brought into it at all: the vice-principal (IMO, a genius at his trade) pulled the kids into the office and talked things over and the bullying stopped THAT DAY. I kid you not. Sometimes, NT kids just have to be called on stuff - they aren't actually evil, just developmentally unable to put themselves in another kid's shoes.

I don't know what system they use, but I do not ever recall them saying the one you referred to.

My son had a difficult time explaining exactly what they were doing to him. That is very characteristic for him. It is vague statements about "they are messing with me. I don't know how to tell you what they do because I don't understand what is going on" But he did explain what they do to his friends. For example, his one friend who is smaller than them carries "important" books around with him (for example, when we went on a hike, he carried a journal so he could draw anything new he saw). I think the books vary in what they actually are, but it seems they are always important to him (and probably "weird" to other kids). Anyway, my son said they took them from him on the playground and threw them over a fence. My son said they did it on purpose to make him angry, and then they taunted him when he got angry. The father of the other kid (my son's friend) said his son shared that they do similar things to my son. Purposely make him angry and then taunt him when he responds. I am not surprised this happens because my son cries profusely when he is angry. Not good for a middle schooler. He has tried So. Hard. to learn to control his crying. So hard. He knows it makes him a target and it embarrasses him. To know that someone is purposely causing it makes my blood boil.

In my experience, other people--ignorant, mean people--suck way worse than autism or ADHD ever could. I feel so helpless. For all of the "autism awareness" out there, it sure doesn't seem to have helped too much on the day-to-day living front, has it? Ignorance still abounds. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's not like I believe bullying will ever really go away. I just wish it wasn't happening to my kid. He works so hard. I don't expect everyone to be his friend and embrace him. I just wish they would leave him alone and let him be happy in the little niche he has tried to create for himself.

Tell your son - from experience - while crying sucks (I was a cryer myself) losing it violently is waaaay worse. DS has learned to stop losing it and hitting people and is just now learning to cry in these situations. Seems like it would be a step down, but it isn't: Kids who bully eventually get bored with making a kid cry, but making a kid freak out, get violent and get punished for it is apparently endlessly entertaining.

The good news is that if your school is smart about it, they actually do have the power to stop this. It was amazing to watch when it happened for my son.

I think that is why it sounds like his friend may be getting it worse. He gets very angry and they think it is funny.

Thanks for letting me know that the school was able to stop it for your son. It is good to hear stories where the system actually works the way it should. That makes me hopeful it will happen for us, too.

This is one of those situations where from a theoretical point of view, I get it all. I know why kids do it, and I know why kids target kids like my son.

But then I still want to just throw my hands up and say "But WHY? Why would someone do this?"

Do you know anyone in the legal profession?

I have learned that nothing gets results from a school administration faster than a letter from a lawyer.

The magic words for bullying are "failure to maintain a safe learning environment."

I have a friend who will write such a letter a no cost. It is not a formal declaration of intent to launch litigation, but it is a warning and it puts the administration on notice that there is now a paper trail of a kind that will be used should litigation be necessary in future. It is a coded message that says "deal with this now, or face the consequences in court."

A copy of the note can be sent to the Superintendent of Schools to be placed on file at the Board of Education. This will put pressure on the school administration from above and within their organization as well as from you. The operative figures of speech are "a shot across the bow" and "the squeaky wheel gets the greese."

Good luck!

First off, I'm glad you were able to find someone who could validate what's really going on at school because often times, our kids don't understand social nuances - the friendly teasing, the banters, the silly name-calling friends say to one another. Having a second voice is huge! I'm sorry this is happening in the first place.

Honestly, he should get in trouble for it. Not only is reacting aggressively wrong, it will also give the bully leverage to argue with. Your son does not want that in his record - he will lose credibility and most likely at a time when he'll need the support.

My advice would be to pair your son up with that friend as a means to back each other up. When you file a complaint, all parents of both children should attend the meeting with the principal (you, your son, his friend, friend's parents). Great results work in great numbers.

I just remembered: the technique we taught DS that finally worked: tell him to go (take his friend, too) stand as near as possible to the adult who is supervising, and say "STOP THAT!! ! I DON'T LIKE/DON'T WANT YOU TO DO THAT!! !" (sometimes it is even better if he can name the specific thing - like "I don't want you to take my book!")

DS understood the social rule of NOT telling an adult (the reality is, those kids get picked on worse.) This way, he's standing up for himself, but doing it in a way that should bring attention to the AGGRESSOR and not to him. He will gain the perception of someone who's willing to stand up for himself, and especially if this has been brought to the school's attention, he will put himself in a situation where someone else will step in to deal with the problem, without getting the reputation of being a "snitch."

This works just as well if he can do it with a large number of kids who are sympathetic, if he can organize them all ahead of time (I recognize that this isn't a likelihood.) If they all stand together to face the aggressor, that will send a message that bullying behavior is not tolerated.

At any rate, while I hear you about being at your wit's end and wanting your son to be safe - I tend to agree that violence often backfires. I did it once - and only once - in junior high, and got the reputation of being a crazy person. The bullies didn't lay hands on me after that, and the teachers FINALLY followed up (fortunately, they realized that 12-year-old girls don't suddenly become murderously violent towards boys for no reason - sadly, nonviolent boys might not get the same kind of pass) but being shunned like I was contaminated for the rest of the year wasn't any fun, either.

I have heard if one is going to get into a fight that one better not throw the 1st punch.

Yes. The 2nd punch is self defense and self defense is legal.



I say this as someone who lived with bullying for a long time:

This is why we have a bullying problem, because we aren't teaching our kids to stand up to bullys but instead of run to teacher. Bullies feed off that. We did all that s**t, teachers, principals, support staff, guess what, it did NOTHING to improve the problem. NOTHING.

I can't say 100% that standing up and fighting the bullies would have made things better, but I CAN say filing reports and telling teacher did JACK s**t!

it used to be like that but the zero tolerance rules nowadays both party's get in trouble. its best not to fight back because then its not a fight its an assault.

have you considered some kind of a recording device? nothing beats hard evidence you never really get anywhere with he said she said

Problem is that kids with AS often LOOK or are made to look like they are throwing the first punch, so the danger is the same.

As someone who stood up and who has a son who stood up and fought them, I can attest that I only had some success (bullies just changed tactics and everybody else who wasn't bullying me became scared of me) and DS made it significantly worse - and, sadly, the consequences are different for boys than for girls.

Filing reports with the administration helps. Telling the teacher, at least in the moment, probably not so much.

We did find that having DS call them out on their specific behavior and ask them to stop, while standing next to the adult who was supposed to intervene, to be very effective. (This is one of the reasons why I liked the definition of bullying I listed in another thread - it makes whatever happens a clear violation: bully committed action, DS clearly stated it was unwanted - the only piece left is repetition.)

We had no success with the administration, so my views may be slanted.

How long ago and in what country/state? I ask because the B-word is a hotbutton item these days - our school took just my suggestion that DS was being bullied (with AS it is sometimes hard to tell, right?) pretty seriously - but I had to go up the chain. His social worker didn't get it, but the vice-principal did.