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Bullying at school ADVICE NEEDED

tarn31

Hi, im new to this and looking for some advice, my son (9years old) diagnosed with ASD has been being bullied at school for a long time now and i have spoken to the school on many occasions but as soon as they speak to him he says that all is alright and nothing is wrong or that they are not bullying because they have told him they are his friends and that you shouldnt tell on your friends! last wednesday he told me that a child has been bullying him and that the teacher is horrible to him (has said after marking his worK " I DONT KNOW WHY YOU GOT THAT WRONG ITS EASY!") he has said that he does not want to back into that school and could he write a letter to the head to say how he feels, i agreed to this but explained to him that they would want to talk to him and that he has to tell them how he really feels. i handed his letter in on thursday morning with a covering letter to which i recieved a call to arrange a meeting and that to tell me that the child that is bullying my son has been spoken to, he came out of school on thursday in a state as the child had said to him that he was a big mistake and shouldnt have been created! he was very distressed and refused to go back to the school untill they changed his class, i told them he would not be in school untill after the meeting which was today. They sat my son down and asked him what was wrong and he told them that he felt the teacher and the other boy were picking on him. he told them that he didnt want to be anywhere near that teacher (he has never disliked any adult working at the school before) or come back to school untill they move his class, he got quite distressed, he has said he wants to go to school just not this one.then the teacher in question happened to pop in to collect something (a set up!) he got quite distressed and she sat down and started to talk to him, she then told him if he come in tomorrow he could go on the new ipad air and research Meerkats (my son has 2 obsessions that they know about and they are technology and Meerkats!) he agreed to coming in. now this evening he is saying that they were tricking him and saying things that he likes because they knew he would say yes, i myself was not happy with how it went and he has 3 teaching staff in the room with him. he said he had to agree because there was too many of them, where do i go from here?? any advice would be greatly recieved

  • I see longman sees this as more of a teachers profressions view (Which I gotta say I find that rather interesting and slightly hilarious...not in a mean way!)

    From my history I dealt with alot of the similiar problems as your son did, I had a teacher who made me feel very distressed countless times and used the fact I have ann obsession with dinosaurs to act like she understood what was going on...

    And I went through something similar, the school pychiatrist told my mum I was just attention seeking because they didnt understand why I was so distressed in their classroom. 

    My advice is this, As a parent you want the best education for your son. Clearly this school does not understand what your son needs. People with aspergers including myself have a very good memory when it comes to wrongdoings in our minnd, if your son feels uncomfortable where he is, feels distressed, rather than putting him through how many years (which he will no doubt grow up to resent). put him in an enviroment where they can, a school where they do understand his needs, make sure they do befor eplacing him in, make sure his teacher is 150% aware and knows how to deal with him, that or my personal advice, is homeschooling.

    I Wish on so many earths I was homeschooled, because Im sure your son doesnt need to worry about the enviroment or people who dont understand. 

  • In the adult world we are told that discrimination or harrassment applies if the person on the receiving end perceives it is so. When a child is involved we don't believe it.

    Bullying of children with autism isn't the same as conventional school bullying (even though all the advice of bullying in relation to autism repeats the steroetypes).

    OK I'm biased - my memories of bullying tend to lead my understanding. But my perception is that much of the bullying of children with autism exploits the very symptoms of the condition - difficulty reading social inflections, inflexible or black & white thinking, difficulty with double meanings, difficulty distinguishing humour from serious intention, misreading of situations, sensory processing difficulties. And abler kids will take advantage of that and exploit those weaknesses for fun.

    I'd want to say any school that doesn't understand these difficulties shouldn't be claiming to be able to cater for children on the spectrum,. Reality, I fear, is that few teachers really understand it, and schools are failing autistic children in a big way.

    I've said this on other threads. There needs to be a mechanism, like Enter and View, that enables some external monitoring of how schools address autism.

    The very nature of autism is that your child will have difficulty distinguishing bullying and humour (I know I did). That's a symptom of autism not an excuse for not doing anything about it.

    He will misunderstand. That needs sympathetic handling. It is obvious that is not happening.

    Ask the school to explain to you their understanding of autism needs - preferably a written statement of school policy including SEN strategy. That'll make interesting reading. 

    They should have such a policy statement and they should be able to show it to you.

  • This Teacher is not great with any children with additional needs, I have spoken to many mums at the school and have also come up against her before when she told my elder sons phychiatrist she saw no signs of ADHD in him he was just an attention seeking little boy! The phychiatrist himself  couldn't believe what he had heard and told the head he would be happy to use his spare time to come in and educate the teachers on dealing with additional needs children! I do understand that he can misunderstand what has been said sometimes and that he can take things  the wrong way but he is constantly telling them he is finding the work to hard and she continues  give him the same work as everyone else in the class 9-10year olds (bearing in mind his reading and writing levels are 3yrs 4 months) 

  • Former Member
    Former Member

    Bullying is very very common for people with ASD. We often don't understand when people say things that may be meant to be friendly and joking.

    For example. When the teacher says "I don't know why you got that wrong, it's easy" it was probably intended as a friendly remark but your son understood it as criticism and feels bullied by that. he probably didn't see the smile on the teacher's face and didn't understand that it was OK to make mistakes.