Trigger warning:  descriptions of bullying

 

“I feel like the public school system failed me.”[1]

 

If you are a school bully looking for an easy target, you will soon discover that the nearest kid with autism fits your needs perfectly. Being generally naïve about social customs and interactions, children with autism are easily manipulated or tricked into dangerous situations.  Because of their unusual behaviors (and sometimes by personal preference), they tend to be socially isolated, leaving them with no protective support network of peers.  Teachers and other authority figures may mistrust or even dislike them, and so often fail to back them up when they report being bullied (see below).[2]

Scholars who have researched this subject all agree that students with autism spectrum conditions are disproportionately affected by bullying.  Depending on their definitions of bullying, the samples of children they study, and their methodology, their estimates of how many autistic kids have experienced bullying within a single year range from a low of 57% to a high of 94%.[3]  Some have concluded that children with autism are four times more likely to be targeted than neurotypical kids, and that 40% of autistic kids are bullied daily, compared with only 15% of neurotypical kids. Children with autism are also more likely to be targeted than other children with special needs (except perhaps for those with ADHD—another “unpopular” group at school) or obese children (also common targets for bullies).[4]  Having been bullied, some children with autism then go on to become bullies themselves, but only at about the same rate as neurotypical kids who have been bullied.  However, if they have both autism and ADHD, the likelihood of their becoming bullies in response to bullying increases. ^[5] 

Most U.S. schools now have anti-bullying programs, but few of these programs are effective.  (One exception is a program, developed in Finland but now being adopted in the United States, that targets by-standers[6].)  Overall, autistic students who have been bullied report receiving little support from their schools.  It is possible that busy teachers genuinely don’t see the cruelty perpetrated in their classrooms.  However, victims—to whom the situation is painfully obvious—often find it hard to imagine that their teachers don’t see what’s happening, so they conclude that the teachers simply don’t care: “They did absolutely nothing. Ignoring it was their best policy.”[7]  This perceived (and sometimes real) indifference adds an additional layer to the trauma the victims of bullying are already suffering.

Even when bullying is formally reported to the school authorities, the victim’s testimony may not be believed.  (My own family had to deal with this problem several times.)  If there are two different accounts of what happened, the school will often refuse to take a side: “I swear on my grave I never lied about anything. But when it came to authority, I’d report a kid, the principal or vice principal would do nothing. They would tell me how they talked to the other kid and listened to my story and didn’t know who was lying.“[8][9] “[The teachers’] favorite mantra was always ‘it’s their word against yours.’”[10]  However, since those who bully generally have a stronger support network than their autistic victims, they may actually find it easier to get their accounts corroborated.  This is especially the case with the “popular” kids, whom adults may perceive as “good people,” who “would never engage in bullying.”  And so, in far too many cases, the school actually accepts what the bullies have to say: “when I told a co-ordinator that 2 girls in my class were bullying me, her ‘solution’ was to call the girls up to her office and ask them in front of me if they were bullying me. Of course they told lies and the situation got worse after that . . .”[11]  “ . . . .  when I reported it to the teachers, ‘sorry we have to go with majority on this’.”[12] In cases like these, the situation either fails to improve or more commonly gets worse.  Sometimes the person who has been bullied gets punished (most often for retaliating, but sometimes even for reporting) and the bully gets off scot free.[13]  In Arkansas, for example, a student who reported being bullied to his teacher was called a “tattle-tale,” and forced to sit in the “time-out” chair.[14]  At this point, a victim will simply stops looking to the school for support: “I got tired of teachers never doing anything about the bullying so I quit telling my teachers about the bullying.”[15]

To make matters worse, the adults in charge of schools are sometimes bullies themselves.  Leaving aside the sometimes abusive use of physical restraint and seclusion, and other institutional forms of control and discipline (which will be the subject of a later post), individual teachers, aides, coaches, and school administrators sometimes victimize their students in appalling ways.  In Georgia, one teacher resigned, after a school determined she had repeatedly  sprayed Lysol into her student’s face.[16]  In Texas, a group of teachers gave a student awards for being “Most Gullible” and a “Drama King” at the end-of-year awards ceremony.[17]  In Michigan, a teacher recorded and distributed a video of herself and the school principal taunting a child who had gotten stuck in a chair.[18]  I come from a family of public school teachers, and I am very sympathetic to the difficulties teachers today face in the classroom, but there is no excuse for this kind of behavior.  Never.  Any.  Excuse.

 

 

 

[1] IdahoRose, in the “How Did Your Teacher’s Deal with Bullies?” discussion on the Wrong Planet website: http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=146798.

[2] On the reasons behind bullying autistics, see Rebekah Heinrichs, Perfect Targets:  Asperger Syndrome and Bullying (Shawnee Mission, KS:  Autism Asperger Publishing, 2003), as well as the articles cited below.

[3] M. C. Cappadocia, et al., “Bullying Experiences Among Children and Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorders,” Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 42 (2012), 267 and 271; Neil Humphrey and Judith Hebron, “Bullying of Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Conditions:  A ‘State of the Field’ Review,” International Journal of Inclusive Education 19 (2015), 849.

[4] For comparison with neurotypical children and children with other special needs, see Jessica Schroeder, et al., “Shedding Light on a Pervasive Problem:  A Review of Research on Bullying Experiences Among Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders,” Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 44 (2014), 1522-26; Neil Humphrey and Judith Hebron, “Bullying of Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Conditions:  A ‘State of the Field’ Review,” International Journal of Inclusive Education 19 (2015), 849.  For comparison with obese children, see Ryan Adams, Somer Bishop, and Julie Taylor, “Negative Peer Experiences in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders,” International Review of Research in Developmental Disabilities 52 (2017), 75-107.

[5] Jessica Schroeder, et al., “Shedding Light on a Pervasive Problem:  A Review of Research on Bullying Experiences Among Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders,” Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 44 (2014), 1522.  Cynthia Kim offers an autobiographical account of how she went from victim to bully:  Nerdy, Shy, and Socially Inappropriate:  A User Guide to an Asperger Life (London:  Jessica Kingsley, 2015), p. 14-15.

[6] A. Karna, M. Voeten, et al., “A Large-Scale Evaluation of the KiVa Antibullying Program, Grades 4-6,” Child Development 82 (2011), 311-30.

[7] LeeAnderson, in the “How Did Your Teacher’s Deal with Bullies?” discussion on the Wrong Planet website: http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=146798.

[8] Pandora_Box, in the “How Did Your Teacher’s Deal with Bullies?” discussion on the Wrong Planet website: http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=146798.

[9] Pandora_Box, in the “How Did Your Teacher’s Deal with Bullies?” discussion on the Wrong Planet website: http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=146798.

[10] Verdandi, in the “How Did Your Teacher’s Deal with Bullies?” discussion on the Wrong Planet website:

http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=146798.

[11] CreativeInfluenza, in the “How Did Your Teacher’s Deal with Bullies?” discussion on the Wrong Planet website: http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=146798.

[12] Pandora_Box, in the “How Did Your Teacher’s Deal with Bullies?” discussion on the Wrong Planet website: http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=146798.

[13] Some examples of the negative consequences of reporting:  MightyMorphin, in the “If You Were Bullied At School . . . “ discussion on the Wrong Planet website:  http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=204456&start=45;

JoeDaBro, in the “My School Hates Autism” discussion on the Wrong Planet website:  http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=231793; Sparrow Rose Jones, No You Don’t: Essays from an Unstrange Mind (Self-published, 2013), p. 94.

[14] “Parents of Child with Autism File Bullying Lawsuit Against Omaha, Ark. School District,”  KY3 TV, December 12, 2017:  http://www.ky3.com/content/news/Parents-of-child-with-autism-file-bullying-lawsuit-against-Omaha-AR-School-District–463754753.html.

[15] ladyelaine, in the “Why School Sucked” discussion on the Wrong Planet website:  https://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=357585&start=45.

[16] Carl Willis, “Mother Says Son Was Sprayed with Lysol by Teacher,” WSBTV, November 14, 2017: http://www.whio.com/news/national/mother-says-son-with-autism-was-sprayed-with-lysol-teacher/MoQdOQjYHI7i4NA35prrLJ/.

[17] Kristie Smith, “Educators Should Never Set Students Up to Be Bullied,” Dallas News, June, 2014:  https://www.dallasnews.com/news/special-needs/2014/06/09/educators-should-never-set-students-up-to-be-bullied.

[18] Lee Moran, “See It:  Teacher Films Herself, Principal Teasing Autistic Boy Stuck in Chair,” New York Daily News, February 26, 2014:  http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/teacher-films-principal-teasing-autistic-boy-article-1.1702106.

[19] Tharja, in the “Bullied By Teachers???” discussion on the Wrong Planet website:  http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=98154&start=75

[20] thechadmaster, in the “How Did Your Teacher’s Deal with Bullies?” discussion on the Wrong Planet website: http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=146798.