Declaring War on Bullies

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Serious pain is what teaches bullies. A kid much larger than I was messed with me in Gym class in 9th grade. After class I yelled "Hey Dittman" and when he turned around he got the spine of a book horizantly in the mouth followed quickly by a kick to the groin. He punched me in the stomach and when he threatened further retaliation I let him know that I would come back with a baseball bat next time. He must have figured I meant it because I had no further trouble.

Lol, Madonna did the same thing in the movie. Evelyn brings her kid with her on road trips because her hubby is too busy reading the want ads so he told her to shut up and bring her son with on road trips so she does and he turns out to be a brat. He causes their bus driver to quit his job after covering his eyes and nearly running off the road. So Mae (Madonna) grabs the bat telling Evelyn she is sorry but she is going to have to kill her son and she chases him off the bus with a baseball bat and chases him around the bus. Then the other team mates grabbed the bat from her. Evelyn still didn't learn her lesson. She still lets her kid be a brat. I saw a website where she was one of the top 20 worst moms in movies. She ranked number 10.


http://www.premiere.com/Feature/The-20-Worst-Movie-Moms

I think i managed to avoid a few potential bullying situations at school by acting up in class and being nasty to the teachers. Some kids seem to respect that. But thats not really a good option for your son since hes getting good marks. Just throwing it out there.

Speaking from a very extensive experience of being bullied myself and observing other being bullied I can make a few points:

1. Since your son is 12, unless something is done about it, the worst bullying is ahead in the next 2-5 years. When teenagers enter puberty, all hell get loose.
2. The best protection against bullying is having friends to hand out with. Even if the friends are a bunch of dorks, geeks and outcasts, it's better than having none. I do not know how you can influence him making friends; it's hard for anyone with AS.
3. The other best thing is to get him into intensive physical training. I'd recommend starting with private lessons with emphasis on martial arts and progress to training in small groups. A personal training may cost a lot of money, but this is the best way to achieve the maximum progress in the shortest time and it also eliminates the possibility of additional bullying in martial arts class.
4. You can try to get the school to intervene, but, from my experience, unless you really know how to work the system, it's a waste of time. Fundamentally, the interests of the school and your child are two very different things. The only time they'll do something is when their behinds are threatened by either a lawsuit or public exposure of some sort.
5. You could try to talk to bullies' parents. However, usually these people are so dense, you might as well be talking to boxes of rocks. They usually only respond to threats and the responses are rarely mature.

As tempting as is sounds, do not try to completely shelter him from bullying by, say, homeschooling or close "helicopter parenting". Some time in his life he will need to learn:
a. that some people are SOBs
b. how to deal with SOBs
c. that he is in control of the outcome of almost every situation

Well, I'm wiped out so I'll make this short. D. got into a fight on the bus this morning with one of these kids and now both of them are banned from the bus for 5 days. The school didn't really assign blame but apparently D. just blew when the guy called him names and threw paper at him. I had been talking to him about reacting in self defense and he apparently decided a wad of paper constituted a grave physical threat. I can see how it happened, he's been taking abuse for long time and that was just the tipping point. The school says they can't do anything about the bullying unless he reports it. I said that I had read many times of victims of abuse saying that only increased the bullying and she said "THAT'S NOT TRUE!' and that they had had success with it. She said kids who reported bullying were asked later if it was still happening after the school warned the bullies and they said no. Her tone was a little parental, which I didn't like. So apparently we have to follow the school policy which I have advised D. to do. We'll see.

Outstanding.

That sounds awesome.

Reporting bullying increases it? Doing something about it would stop it. Giving them a talk to about it doesn't do a thing.

Tell em if it increases or doesnt stop despite following their policy, that they will be held legally liable and you WILL SUE THEM.

this is why I want my future kids homeschooled.

Usually, bullies have douchebags for parents.

Most of the time, the other kids are to morally weak and afraid to challenge the bully.

And lemme tell ya--if the kid's Autistic, forget it...the other kids will practically root for the bully over the target.

Trust me...I should know.

Hire a very litigous attorney. You need to go into hair trigger mode. Sue the kids who are bullying parents. Use the attorney to get EVERY kid who bullies your son EXPELLED.

I have said this before, and I will say this again. Every parent with a kid with an ASD needs an attorney on retainer to deal with bullying, and they must realize thier child's safety is more important then thier social standing. You need to be extremely agressive LEGALLY. Make EVERY PARENT FEAR YOU to the point where they tell thier kids that picking on your son will result in them being homeless. And seriously...this is how far you need to take it. You also need to make it where your son is unsuspendable. No detentions, no suspensions, nothing. There needs to be the automatic presumption of being the victim.

I am sorry to sound so harsh...but this is the best advice you will get. You need an attorney at this point, and be a no compromising advocate for your son. You have to resort to lawsuits...this is the only way bullying comes to a halt. I know you may not like this...but this is really the one viable solution. As much as you hate this solution, this is the only way it will stop and come to a halt. Your job is now to make the families of those who bully your son, homeless, broke, etc and to make the school your son goes to unforgiving to those bullies.

His IEP should now read...all people who bully your son will face immediate expulsion. Your son should also have immunity from discipline. The ONLY way things work is to tilt the system your way because everything is tilted against your son. The bullying is much worse than you think.

By the end of 5th grade I escaped the bulllies by staying close of the warden. By 6th grade I've been matched with another with which I became a friend. From then on I was more integrated in the school social life and I was not bullied anymore... Sadly the bullying came back in middle school...

- tell him they are A-holes

- Send him to a self defence class, a good one. It works. I used to get bullied a lot, until another girl attacked me and I fought back and seriously injured her. They left me alone after that.

- What starygrrl said. Go after them legally. It's probably the only language they understand.

Things have been a little quieter. D. told me about an issue he had with the kid he fought on the bus on the previous day in the lunchroom. I thought it was some name calling but apparently it got physical. I think maybe now that they have seen that he has a tipping point and he will fight back may have caused them to think twice about giving him a hard time. He has chosen to walk to school which is about 1/2 mile away. He likes it and now wants to skip dessert. He gained 30 lbs. in 3 months when they put him on Remeron. I took him off because it didn't help him. They put him on when he had two meltdowns in 5th grade because (guess what) they weren't protecting him from bullies. They claim (and he denies) that he tried to bite the kid in the lunchroom so I guess now they think he's a wild card and shouldn't be messed with. D. is not an instigator but if you push him long enough and hard enough he is very much a reactor.

Even if he did, it was probably justified. school lunchrooms SUCK. The cafeteria was worse for me than the bus was. Nothing worse than lunch at school at that age.

Kudos to your son for not going off on kids earlier-- sort of. Bullying is a terrible, horrible thing and you can't even be honest with kids and tell them that it will get better. It really doesn't. The best thing that he (and anyone) can do is to just stand up for himself and what he cares about. Even if he cries, even if he hits someone, even if he's inarticulate and bullied for doing that. When you can't tell who is on your side and who is against you, that makes things hard. Is there anyone in the school he trusts? A teacher, a counselor, heck-- a janitor? Having someone around who you know is on your side can be a big help, too.

I don't really have advice, just sympathy. I'm an adult and am currently being bullied by my classmates and by the head of the department (all SLPs-in-the-making, God help us all!). I finally stood up for myself and one of the few people around there I trust (who is a Godsend) earlier this week and got shot down terribly. It turns out that the department head is the biggest bully of all. But after a lifetime of not realizing I was being bullied, and either striking out physically or doing nothing at all when I did notice, standing up for myself (with tears pouring down my face as I stuttered through the words) has made all the difference. Even though I just got bullied worse, I now know that I have value as a person because I stood up for myself.

My dad always said two things about the bullies when I was a kid:

1) You will be their boss one day.
2) Make sure you can run faster than they can.

Sorry to not be of more help, but my thoughts are with you and your son.

here's some advice I have:

either make them fear you, or respect you, and chances are...they're not gonna wind up falling into the latter category in most cases.

I've scared the sh*t out of a lot of people by showing them I knew what I was doing, but didn't have time for their crap. I pretty much slammed it into their faces, and shut 'em up fast.

When they came back and tried explaining themselves, I basically implied how utterly insignificant they were in the nicest possible way.

Believe me...you can have so much fun with douchebags, it's not even funny.

And yes, when you're above them, they know they're screwed...that's when fun only gets better, and then they start kissing your *ss; it's great