Helping a child who will likely be bullied

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-bullying-kids-autism-parents.html#nRlv

(The story of a blond, little boy with a great mom…)
Bullying harms kids with autism, parents say

January 11, 2013

(HealthDay)—Nearly 70 percent of children with autism suffer emotional trauma as a result of bullying, according to a new study.

The study also found that many children with autism fear for their safety at school and that those with autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or depression had the highest risk of being bullied.

Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by social, communication and behavioral difficulties.

Researchers surveyed the parents of more than 1,200 children with autism, and found that 38 percent of the children were bullied over a one-month period, and 28 percent were frequently bullied.

Immediate consequences of being bullied included emotional trauma (69 percent) and physical injuries (8 percent). Nearly 14 percent of the children who were bullied said they feared for their safety.

Eighteen percent of the children with autism were triggered into fighting back after being bullied, and 40 percent had an emotional outburst that led to school disciplinary action.

Eduhonesty: Schools work relentlessly to try to contain bullying, but they sometimes lose that fight. Something in the species seems to spur students, especially students of middle school age, to try to establish social totem poles. Kids work to get on top of the social hierarchy. Unfortunately, some kids can never climb that totem pole. Social interaction is key and autistic kids struggle with social interaction. That’s part of how we identify suspected autism.

That 40 percent outburst that led to disciplinary action particularly pains me. How much stress do we expect kids to take before the tantrum erupts? Somehow kids recognize the weakness in their autistic, ADHD and depressed classmates, and I believe they often react unthinkingly, isolating these kids and leaving them to feel alone, leaving them to feel like the kids in the Echosmith song:

“She sees them walking in a straight line, that’s not really her style.
And they all got the same heartbeat, but hers is falling behind.
Nothing in this world could ever bring them down.
Yeah, they’re invincible, and she’s just in the background.
And she says,

“I wish that I could be like the cool kids,
‘Cause all the cool kids, they seem to fit in.
I wish that I could be like the cool kids, like the cool kids.”

Eduhonesty: Sometimes, we can win this one. My daughter had an autistic classmate in elementary school. I’m a little hazy on the details now, but I know that mom went into the classroom and explained to the class that her son had a brain problem and needed their help. My daughter’s class was no collection of sweet, little fluffy bunnies. Down the line, they would throw a book at a sub’s head and send a sub out of a gifted class crying. They could be sarcastic and mean. But that class treated the autistic boy in their midst pretty well. They seemed to protect him. He eventually graduated from high school among friends.

This post will work best for elementary teachers. Having mom or dad come in to talk with the class may be a good preventative move to prevent future bullying. Younger students can often be persuaded to help the less fortunate. I suspect it helped that mom threw great birthday parties in elementary school. What that mom did, though, was to ask kids for help. They responded to that earnest appeal.

By middle school, I doubt this approach would work. But in a self-contained elementary school classroom, a teacher might be able to make an autistic child’s whole future easier by creating the view that “Allan” or “Madison” were classmates who should be helped and protected, thus setting up a shield to forestall or diminish future moments of meanness.