Our long fight against bullying

The boy was first bullied this year. A bigger boy from the Kindergarten 2 class came up to him and provoked him to fight. My son understood what fighting meant and immediately cried, "I don't want to fight" and went to another direction. I did not get to witness this, but my helper did. She made sure that she told the teacher about the incident and pointed the young bully to her.  When she was reporting this to me, I just felt sad, mad and upset at the same time.

This happened a few months ago and I suspect this is one of the factors which exacerbated the boy's school refusal.

These days, the boy has been cooperative and does not throw a fuss anymore when he enters the mainstream school. He has 'angels' in the class - kids who help take him from the door to the assembly area where they will sing the national anthem and hello songs, kids who assist him and explain things to him when it all gets so overwhelming.

I am thinking about bullying a lot the past few days, since my friend's aspie son C was socially bullied in a party. The other kids chose people to join their team and C was picked last.  The blessing is that C is oblivious what the other kids are doing and still went on his merry way to play the game.

It is unfortunate that bullying happens everywhere, to anyone. It can happen to neurotypicals, but more so, to special needs individuals because they are easy targets. The thing about power struggles is that it is always easier to target someone who is weaker.

Social media has made bullying even worse because it extends the negative influence of the bully. Search youtube for bullying cases and the number of search results is enough to make you cry. These bullies have nothing else better to do and I wonder how they are able to sleep at night. I hope that karma will be a bitch to them.

As parents of special needs kids, we are programmed to fight the good fight against bullying. Sometimes the thought of having to fight everyone else -- from therapists, to teachers, to schools who would not accept our kids -- can be daunting. But in the end, we are the first, best and only line of defense. And we would like the change the world one perspective at a time.